How States Are Strengthening Their Early Childhood Systems

In the last few years, numerous policy conversations have focused on the functioning of government: whether it is efficient, whether it can produce abundance, or whether it works at all. In Washington and state capitals, those discussions sometimes lead to friction between the political left and right, or even within political parties. But there is one issue where governors across the political spectrum have been working on improving the functioning of government with support from federal dollars: early childhood education and care.

Part of why early childhood has inspired bipartisan action at both the federal and state level is that the need has been so obvious. Children can benefit significantly from high-quality education and care experiences that set them up for success in school and beyond – and parents often need somewhere for their child to be while they’re at work. Over the years governments have launched various services to address parts of that need – including Head Start, subsidized child care, and state pre-K programs. My new book, Readiness: Preparing State Early Childhood Systems for a Brighter Future, examines how states govern their early childhood systems, highlighting the progress made in the last 25 years and identifying some key issues that need to be dealt with in the years ahead.

Historically, states have administered early education and care programs across multiple agencies; most educationally-focused pre-K programs were launched at state education agencies, whereas when subsidized child care emerged it was treated as a workforce support and housed in a human services agency. As a result, agency early childhood units are sometimes buried within agencies, often leaving them outside the inner circle where key resource and policy decisions get made.

This approach is also poorly suited to engaging with the real-world conditions experienced by families with young children. While nationally public investment in early education and care runs in the tens of billions, parent payments are still the primary driver of the system. Moreover, providers of early education and care are an incredibly diverse group; some of the services are at schools or in large centers, while other services are home-based. For states to support families in this complex marketplace requires a holistic approach, not siloed units focused on compliance.

Another challenge in early childhood has been the lack of local capacity. For many public services – education, public safety, housing, transportation, and more – there are well-established local government structures that are often the primary point of contact for local residents. That’s much less true in early childhood; in many cities, even the people who work in the field aren’t entirely sure who, if anyone, in local government is paying attention to early childhood. States can help communities with that work, but only if at least one person in state government has that assistance in their job description.

The question states have increasingly been asking is this: who is the senior-most person in state government who has oversight of the key early education and care funding streams, and whose full-time job is the early childhood system? Twenty-five years ago, basically every state would answer that question the same way: There isn’t anyone. But starting in 2004, a handful of leading states – Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington – moved to streamline their oversight of early childhood, recognizing that having unified leadership was essential to successfully delivering services to children and families.

In recent years, a growing number of states across the political spectrum have invested political capital in strengthening their oversight of early childhood. Since 2019, the states to make meaningful changes in their early childhood administration include New Mexico, Colorado, Missouri, North Dakota, Oregon, Minnesota, Michigan, Arkansas, Ohio, Illinois, and Kansas. These states have more work to do, but all of them have recognized that the early childhood sector needs stronger leadership and better organization.

For states to succeed in their oversight of early childhood requires good data, which isn’t easy when existing data is held in multiple silos. But there is important work going on to use data more effectively to inform policy in places like California, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Wyoming, among others. Many states are also using data to create parent portals that make it easier for families to access needed services, with South Carolina a national leader.

The federal government has supported many of these state system-building efforts through a series of grant programs. Those federal grants have been critical to progress in many states, but in too many instances the federal grant competitions – including the Early Learning Challenge and Preschool Development Grants – have required states to check a lot of small boxes rather than thinking big. If the federal government is willing to continue supporting these important state efforts, it should update its approach to give states more flexibility and stability.

Some of the most exciting work to strengthen early childhood systems has come in Virginia. Former Governor Ralph Northam (D) brought in Jenna Conway – who had already driven transformative early childhood systems work in Louisiana – to lead the implementation of Virginia’s vision for early childhood, and his administration made significant headway toward doing so. When new governor Glenn Youngkin (R) took over, he kept the same team in place under Conway’s leadership and committed his own political capital to advancing the state’s policies and infrastructure. With strong commitment from a bipartisan group of state legislators and the active engagement of philanthropically-funded advocates, Virginia has made important strides toward improving quality and access. And that work is likely to continue under Governor Abigail Spanberger (D), who has appointed Conway as Superintendent of Public Instruction.

There are many good reasons to invest in early childhood education and care. For many years governors of both parties have seen the value of those investments. Now governors of both parties are accelerating their efforts to take the next step by maximizing the effectiveness of their investment. These nuts-and-bolts improvements aren’t politically sexy and don’t always get a lot of attention. But in an era starved for bipartisan success stories, it’s important to recognize the meaningful work states across the country have been doing to improve how they support families with young children.