The Center for American Progress’ Early Childhood Policy team is committed to creating and advancing progressive policies centering on bold, family-friendly solutions that equitably support all children, families, and early educators. Key components of the team’s work include building actionable, inclusive, and racially equitable policies that serve all families regardless of income, geographic location, ability, gender, or race; believing in and supporting the inherent value and rights of young children (infants, toddlers, and preschoolers); valuing the early childhood teaching profession by providing livable wages and additional workforce supports; and building new systems with equitable investments in families.
Together, the policies included in the Biden administration’s Build Back Better agenda would propel families’ and the country’s economic security by prioritizing child care, the child tax credit, paid family and medical leave, and good jobs that get Americans back to work.
State of Child Care project advocates for an increase in the Child Care and Development Block Grant so that U.S. families, workers, and the economy can work.
The lack of affordable and high-quality child care has disproportionately pushed women out of the workforce for decades. It is long past time for the United States to provide adequate, sustained funding and end the child care crisis.
The Movement for Child Care comprises diverse national organizations across the country that are committed to expanding affordable child care and early education.
Please pledge to support federal child care funding that goes beyond COVID-19.
Congress must not miss the opportunity to improve children’s lives and reduce economic and racial inequality.
The Biden-Harris administration has an opportunity to create a world-class preschool program that addresses racial and income inequities, but it must be part of a continuum of support for children from birth to kindergarten.
To prepare the child care sector for the future, America must invest significantly in the child care workforce and provide quality, accessible, affordable child care for all.
Nearly 11 million children are living in poverty in America. Here is how the crisis reached this point—and what steps must be taken to solve it.
Congress must pass a comprehensive COVID-19 relief package that includes at least $50 billion to save the child care industry for families and providers.
Communities across the country have passed state and local ballot measures to increase public funding for early childhood services, demonstrating a path forward for federal action in 2021.
A statewide survey of Colorado child care providers shows unsustainable business conditions and bolsters the need for federal child care relief.
The collapse of the child care sector and drastic reductions in school supervision hours as a result of COVID-19 could drive millions of mothers out of the paid workforce. Inaction could cost billions, undermine family economic security, and set gender equity back a generation.
As the child care market struggles to survive the impact of the pandemic, states can implement strategies to improve child care so that it better meets the needs of working families, children, educators, and employers.
The horrors of family separation and the lasting harms of these policies on children shall remain in the minds of every American.
