Absent Federal Support, States Become Innovators in Early Care and Education

Join our zero2eight Substack community for more discussion about the latest news in early care and education. Sign up now.

This roundup features a curated collection of stories on an important early care and education topic.

When “Build Back Better” failed to pass with robust child care investment in 2021, many early care and education advocates saw it as the end of a long, winding road to provide a more universal system of child care in which families could access high quality care and educators were paid wages commensurate with K-12 teachers. 

But even as the federal landscape has shifted away from providing more support for the sector, states have continued to innovate by making policy, tax and spending decisions designed to support early educators and families. Several such states are attracting national attention for their solutions, as advocates and educators seek out successful models that are replicable elsewhere. The stories highlighted below feature state-level innovations, improvements and policy changes in early care and education. 

Vermont’s landmark bill, Act 76, designed to bring near-universal child care to the state, passed in 2023 — and it’s already offering a notable financial boost for many child care providers. It brought changes to various areas of child care and early childhood education, including significant updates to the Child Care Financial Assistance Program (CCFAP), which distributes subsidy payments to providers for children from eligible families. Under CCFAP, providers now get a significantly higher rate per child than what they typically charge. For Chelsea Chase, a family child care provider who is featured in the story, this change nearly doubled the amount of money she brings in weekly for each child. That increase led her to expand her program to serve more children. The additional subsidies have made a substantive difference in the lives of many family child care providers across the state, though only those serving qualified families can access it.

An apprenticeship program for early childhood educators is boosting the number of qualified professionals in the space. Neighborhood Villages, a nonprofit based in Massachusetts, sought ways to increase the pipeline of early child educators in a field that’s notoriously underpaid and struggling to retain staff. In 2024, the first cohort graduated with a Registered Apprenticeship in Early Childhood Administrator/Director (ECAD) through the state Department of Labor, as part of the Neighborhood Villages’ Early Childhood Emerging Leaders program. 

Apprenticeship programs are lauded for combining on-the-job training with classroom instruction, so that workers gain skills needed for the job while still having the requisite experience many employers require before hiring. Many of these programs are also paid, allowing people from different socioeconomic backgrounds to take part. Upon completion, the certification, license or degree can lead to future earnings opportunities. For a field like child care which is experiencing a dire staffing shortage — particularly in leadership fields — these programs can boost the pipeline of qualified staff. 

When Neighborhood Villages graduated 68 apprentices in February 2024, this made it the largest early childhood Registered Apprenticeship program in Massachusetts. Over half of the graduates (37 participants) received their Child Development Associate Certificate (CDA)  and the remaining 31 received their Lead Teacher certificate, which qualifies them to be the director of a child care or preschool program. The model has since scaled to other states, with Kentucky and New Hampshire implementing apprenticeship programs in early childhood.  

In Texas, support for child care providers comes from a break in property taxes, though it is up to each locality to decide to implement it. Once Texas spent down the funds from the American Rescue Plan, child care programs were stretched thin without any additional support. Enter Proposition 2: Texas’ plan to help child care providers by waiving property taxes. Though Proposition 2 has a number of hurdles to clear in order to qualify and receive payment, the savings can add up. One provider estimated that she will save $5,000-$7,000 per year when the proposal goes into effect in her locality. Property taxes play an outsized role in Texas as compared to other states, since it does not have a state income tax. As a result, property and sales taxes are higher than in other states to make up for that shortfall.

“We were reading the political tea leaves, and the money was being given back to Texas citizens in the form of property tax relief,” said Kim Kofron, senior director of education at Children at Risk, which advocates on behalf of early childhood education in Texas. “So that’s when we decided to see if property taxes might be a way for child care providers to get a break.”

There has been a construction boom in Oregon,  yet 90% of construction companies say they don’t have enough qualified workers to meet demand. To boost the worker pipeline, the state offers apprenticeship programs, which can help participants land a more lucrative construction job. But without reliable child care options, too many working parents couldn’t find a way to make the apprenticeship work.

Then Oregon found a solution. Since 2011, three state agencies in Oregon have come together to create one of the country’s most generous and comprehensive child care subsidies to support worker training and development through the state program: Apprentice-Related Child Care (ARCC). To support apprentices, Oregon offers robust subsidy reimbursement rates — up to $2,500 per child per month, and in some cases, without any co-pay from the families. Maura Kelly, a Portland State University sociology professor, examined the effectiveness of the ARCC supports and found that the child care subsidies had a positive impact on completion rates for the state’s apprenticeship programs.

In New Mexico, grassroots and advocacy communities have been pushing for significant investments in early childhood education for a decade. Now, they are seeing results. New Mexico has consistently been one of the lowest ranked states for school attendance, economic stability, child poverty, education proficiency and child well-being. But it does have access to a Land Grant Trust Fund from its oil and gas profits, worth about $32 billion, which grassroots child care activists have been trying to tap into for years. Beginning in 2009, they leveraged the land grant fund as a way to pay for child care. Political pressure and local organizing led to a Democratic primary challenge to one of its key opponents, and the state voted to open up the trust fund and allow for more early care and education funding. 

Already, across the state, child care providers who serve children from families receiving state subsidies have seen their reimbursement rates rise. The subsidies are now tax-exempt, saving families and providers even more money. With this new investment, more families are eligible to receive child care subsidies. Other states may not have the robust external funding source to utilize for early childhood funding, but some advocates believe New Mexico’s efforts are replicable elsewhere, especially combined with political might.

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter