Introduction: What is Mixed Delivery?

Mixed delivery models are state and locally funded early childhood programs where services are delivered by multiple types of entities. This might include any combination of traditional public schools; public charter schools; private, for-profit child care centers; private, nonprofit child care centers (including Head Start providers); parochial schools and other religious institutions; private or independent pre-K–12 schools; and licensed family child care homes. Like so many aspects of early childhood system design, the specific makeup of mixed delivery models varies tremendously from state to state and locality to locality. Nearly all state pre-K programs explicitly allow—or require—an approach that provides multiple options. However, the distribution of seats across entities, the type of entities permitted to offer services, and ways providers access public funds vary.

At the local level, not all systems take a mixed delivery approach; some school districts have opted only to offer pre-K services themselves, either because they believe they can fully meet demand or that is what is operationally feasible. However, more and more systems are relying on mixed delivery models, particularly as they look to expand services to a broader population of preschoolers and seek to meet the needs of younger children. Many see mixed delivery as integral to an equitable system, both for educators and families.

Every member of our Early Care and Education (ECE) Implementation Working Group operates a mixed delivery model in some capacity. As cities and counties continue to launch and expand their early education systems, they are likely to opt for mixed delivery models as well. However, operating mixed delivery models is not without complexity. Providers within an early childhood system may view each other as the competition, even if they are structurally thought of as parts of a whole. Natural tensions arise from this dynamic as providers compete for children and educators.

In this report, we outline a specific set of challenges related to setting up mixed delivery models: determining which providers will participate, how they will be selected, and how to set the conditions for collaboration across providers, particularly between school districts and private providers. This is informed by the diverse experiences of members of the ECE Implementation Working Group and other locally run early childhood programs across the country.

For many communities, making decisions about implementation of mixed delivery can be a fraught process—but these decisions are critical to building expansive, equitable early childhood systems. Taking lessons from communities that have built and expanded mixed delivery models can support local leaders in other cities and counties as they take on this critical work.

There are many reasons why system leaders opt for mixed delivery models:

• Meets family preference. Families may have a personal or cultural preference for different early education settings. It is challenging to quantify the exact variation in families’ different preferences today because families are making their early care and education choices under the extreme constraints of high cost and limited supply (though many researchers have tried!); in a world of perfectly unconstrained choice, not all families would make the same decision. Mixed delivery models give parents greater voice in the type of environment they prefer for their child.
• Provides sufficient supply to meet demand. In communities that set lofty goals around access to early education, a mixed delivery approach may be strictly necessary to meet seat targets. Because of the smaller class sizes required for early education and other pressures on space in school buildings, it is often not feasible for local school districts to offer 100 percent of preschool capacity—even if they wanted to. Supply is not just about the raw number of seats: It also speaks to the availability of different models and approaches to early childhood education that meet families’ diverse linguistic and cultural preferences. A more robust supply of program offerings is more likely to meet family demand and encourage participation.
• Leverages existing infrastructure and expertise. When public funds enable a community to expand access to free or subsidized early education, many of the children who will ultimately benefit are already receiving early education services—just at their family’s expense. The providers that serve these children already have the physical capacity and the workforce to run an early education program; partnering with existing providers is much more efficient than building new spaces, going through lengthy licensing processes, and finding entirely new educators. Most systems will need to build new capacity to fully meet demand, but partnering with existing providers gives them a leg up in growing the number of seats. These providers, and the educators who teach in their classrooms, often have deep, rich experience in early childhood development and education. Providers may offer a diverse set of linguistic and cultural approaches to early education that families seek, including dual language and language immersion programs. Mixed delivery models create an opportunity for these providers to bring their expertise to the broader system, and ensure they continue to have a role as pillars of their community.
• Sustains early childhood ecosystem. When private providers are shut out of publicly funded pre-K systems, it can have devastating consequences for the supply of infant and toddler care in a community. The economics of child care are such that private providers typically struggle to sustain businesses that serve only children under age three, who are the most expensive to care for given the small adult-to-child ratios required for health, safety, and positive child development. When private providers are able to receive public funds and maintain their preschool-aged capacity, they are more likely to stay in business and, thus, sustain their private capacity for infants and toddlers. There is a strong equity argument to this point as the owners of early care and education small businesses are disproportionately women of color. Bringing these small but essential providers into a formal, government-backed system can be stabilizing for providers and ensure that children and families continue to benefit. It is also a critical lever to ensure communities retain diverse educators who reflect the children they serve.
• Maximizes public revenue. Mixed delivery models are more easily able to blend and braid different public funding sources, particularly since different funding streams are directed at different types of providers. In 2024, the U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services issued guidance urging states and localities to pursue mixed delivery models, in part as a strategy to continue expanding access to early education in a time with limited new federal funds. For example, bringing Head Start providers (who receive federal funds directly) into state and local pre-K programs and bolstering their funds may allow those providers to expand their hours or service offerings while leveraging existing resources.
• Lowers cost. On a per-child basis, not all settings are funded equally. Educators employed in public schools typically have higher salaries, more robust benefit structures, and costlier pension plans than those in private child care programs, who may lack benefits or retirement plans entirely. Public schools have other fixed costs that smaller providers do not, including large central offices that help with administrative tasks and instructional support. Though it can be controversial in some communities, by shifting some preschool capacity out of public schools, system leaders may reduce costs.
• Addresses political considerations. The current political and funding context for early care and education may further drive system leaders toward mixed delivery models. In particular, as the Trump administration places more emphasis on parental choice in education, the popular political mantra trickles down to early education. President Trump’s January 2025 executive order on school choice explicitly names the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) as a lever to drive parental choice in education; CCDBG is a primary source of funding for early care and education in all communities.
• Creates more funding flexibility. Major cuts to social service budgets at the federal and state levels will force new creative thinking to keep early education systems intact. Local leaders already innovate to make their program models work, often knitting together multiple funding streams to create more comprehensive approaches to early childhood education. Utilizing mixed delivery model design to maximize funding is one of the more relevant tools in that creative toolbox. Resource scarcity is likely to increase pressure on systems to leverage their existing funds and to build on the capacity offered by existing early education providers.

Mixed delivery models are not without controversy, though. There are some risks worth noting. However, thoughtful education system design can help mitigate these issues.

• Racial and socioeconomic segregation of students: Early childhood education classrooms are often even more segregated than K–12 school systems. Like lower elementary grades, early childhood classrooms are segregated largely because of residential segregation; families often are unable to travel far, and the catchment areas for early elementary grades are small relative to older grades. Segregation in early childhood classrooms is also driven by the rules and policies that come with each funding stream about which children can be served. With so many more choices for pre-K than kindergarten, families may gravitate more toward settings they feel comfortable in, with research demonstrating that most families choose their programs based on word of mouth and recommendations from family and friends. Research shows that all children benefit from diverse preschool classrooms. Leaders in mixed delivery models may need to consider how to enable conditions for integrated early childhood classrooms by blending and braiding their funding streams differently, and then consider how to help families make choices for their children that lead to diverse classrooms.
• Resource imbalance: Quality early childhood instruction can be found in all settings, and no one modality of care is inherently better than another. However, there are often resource imbalances that can create differences in the quality of a child’s experience. Public schools are often able to offer job security, higher salaries, more comprehensive benefits, and pension plans, setting them apart from smaller private programs. (Public schools also often have more stringent degree and certification requirements for teaching staff.) This may make it easier for them to recruit the strongest teachers, while private programs face staffing challenges. There are other scale benefits that come from offering preschool education inside a fully funded and staffed elementary school: enrichment programming during and after the school day, facilities that include robust indoor and outdoor play space, and more flex staffing to give teachers planning time and provide instructional coaches. Schools have a central office administrative structure they can lean on for everything from data collection to compliance; most community child care providers have just a single director and maybe an assistant if they are relatively large. While there are proactive steps that system leaders can take to address some of these inequities, like pushing for wage parity for teachers across settings, there are real and perceived resource inequities inherent to a system that includes many different models of care.
• Private equity and questions of who benefits: Increasingly, private investors are taking interest in early childhood education; eight of the 11 largest early education chains nationally are owned by private equity companies. Many in the sector have raised red flags about this growing trend; private equity ownership in other human services sectors has negatively impacted consumers/users in other settings: diminished quality of care in nursing homes, increased complications in hospitalizations, and lowered access to health care in rural communities. Trying to eke profit out of child care centers—well known for incredibly narrow margins—can hurt the educators and the families. When these businesses participate in mixed delivery models, it means that public revenue ultimately ends up in the hands of private investors, which is far from the intentions that most policymakers have when increasing their public investment in early care and education. At the same time, many of these businesses have advocated against increased investment in early education because it might create new competition by drawing new providers into the sector and limit what they can charge their privately paying families. Private equity–⁠backed early education programs lobbied against investment in preschool education in the Biden administration’s Build Back Better legislation—a clear sign that​ their interests are not necessarily aligned with what families need. This does not mean private providers should be excluded from mixed delivery early education systems, but it does suggest that some protections may be required to ensure that public funds go toward meeting the needs of families, children, and educators. At a state level, some leaders are considering legislative restrictions on ownership structures or profit caps for any providers that table public funds.

Designing mixed delivery models that maximize the benefits and minimize the risks is not always easy; it takes intentional effort from system leaders and, often, a willingness to engage families and providers to ensure a system that meets their needs. Historically, many states leveraged federal grant funds from the Preschool Development Grant Birth through Five (PDG B-5) to support system design and to build the infrastructure needed to enable stronger mixed delivery models. While the Trump administration expressed support for Head Start as a mechanism to support parent choice through mixed delivery with one hand, they threatened the Preschool Development Grant funds with the other, risking innovation and momentum toward mixed delivery in early education system design. Future funding of the Preschool Development Grant remains in question at the time of this report. More recently, the staff working on PDG B-5 at the federal Department of Education were eliminated as part of a reduction in force. The politicization of this funding and of the people who administer it is a tremendous loss for the early education field; state and local leaders will lose one of their few levers for innovation.