Federal Recommendations

Problem

The CCDF is the primary source of federal funding to help low-income families afford child care. The Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act of 1990 authorizes discretionary grants to state, territorial, and tribal agencies. Discretionary CCDBG funds are combined with mandatory Child Care Entitlement to States (CCES) funds, commonly referred to together as CCDF.¹ These may be supplemented by states transferring up to 30 percent of their Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds to CCDBG. Agencies use these funding streams together to subsidize child care for eligible children and to improve child care quality and supply, as governed by CCDBG rules.

CCDF subsidies reach only a fraction of income-eligible families nationally due to chronic underfunding. Student parents, in particular, face compounded challenges: Many are excluded due to state-level policy decisions around eligibility for parents enrolled in education or training,² and colleges often lack the capacity, infrastructure, or awareness needed to help student parents navigate subsidy access.

In addition to increasing overall funding levels, stronger federal leadership is needed to ensure that student parents are recognized and prioritized in child care policy. Many campuses lack access to dedicated funding to renovate, expand, or build child care facilities, and public higher education institutions are often excluded from accessing resources meant to improve care quality. Clearer federal guidance can help states leverage existing flexibilities to support student parents through CCDF, including recognizing education and training as valid participation activities and supporting on-campus service delivery.

Recommendations

1a. Increase congressional appropriations to expand child care access for more low-income families, including student parents, through a significant increase in the CCDBG. Advocates, including congressional leaders, urged Congress to provide at least $12.4 billion for CCDBG in federal fiscal year 2026.³ Fiscal year 2025 CCDBG funding was authorized at $8.75 billion.⁴

Intended outcome: More eligible families are able to access child care subsidies.

1b. Establish dedicated facilities grants to fund renovation or construction of on-campus or community-based child care centers that serve student parents.⁵

Intended outcome: More campuses and community-based child care centers are resourced to build or expand child care centers, reducing capacity constraints and wait-lists for student parents.

1c. Allow public higher education institutions to be eligible for the 9 percent CCDBG quality improvement set-aside funds to strengthen on-campus child care services.⁶

Intended outcome: Institutions are able to improve the quality of on-campus child care services.

1d. Issue guidance to states encouraging the prioritization of student parents in education and training programs and clarifying allowable activities under CCDF. Although federal rules already allow education and training to qualify families for CCDF, many states still impose additional barriers, such as requiring student parents to work in addition to participating in education or training or restricting which types of educational programs qualify.⁷ Guidance should clarify that education and training alone qualify families for CCDF support and encourage states to remove unnecessary restrictions.

Intended outcome: Student parents have improved access to CCDF subsidies through state implementation of federal guidance that removes barriers to access for student parents.

Problem

Since 1999, the CCAMPIS program has supported Pell-eligible student parents by enabling colleges to subsidize child care for them. Evidence from campus-level research indicates that student parents who access on-campus child care have higher persistence and graduation rates.⁸ Yet CCAMPIS remains underfunded and difficult for many institutions to access. Public data on who the program serves is lacking, making it difficult to evaluate reach or equity, and recent research suggests that institutions serving high numbers of Black students are underrepresented among grantees.⁹ Without racially disaggregated reporting, these disparities persist unaddressed. In the most recent publicly available data (2016–2017), 3,300 student parents were served.¹⁰ In 2018, when the program was funded at $50 million annually (it is now funded at $75 million), the Institute for Women’s Policy Research estimated 11,000 student parents were served, when an estimated 1.8 million student parents could qualify.¹¹

Additionally, colleges face restrictive grant requirements, limited flexibility in how funds can be used, and burdensome application and reporting processes. Current rules around national accreditation can exclude otherwise high-quality providers who meet state quality standards. Currently, institutions lack the authority to use funds to develop or improve campus-based child care facilities, further limiting capacity. Colleges have no formal channel to provide input on program design or receive technical assistance, limiting the program’s responsiveness to institutional and student-parent needs.

Finally, CCAMPIS does not currently support more flexible options like family, friend, and neighbor (FFN) care, even though student parents often need care during evenings and weekends, or they live in child care deserts where traditional providers are unavailable.

Recommendations

2a. Increase CCAMPIS appropriations to $500 million annually to better meet student need.¹²

Intended outcome: More student-parent families are able to access quality, subsidized care through CCAMPIS.

2b. Allow CCAMPIS grants to go towards child care for parenting students with providers that are nationally accredited, working toward national accreditation, or at any level of quality rating in a state’s quality rating and improvement system (QRIS).¹³

Intended outcome: Colleges that have historically not applied for CCAMPIS grants because they lack the resources to provide students with access to nationally accredited care are now able to access the grant and connect students to quality child care.

2c. Simplify the grant application and reporting process to reduce administrative burdens on colleges. Simplification should allow institutions to focus on describing how they will use funds to support students rather than conforming to rigid or duplicative requirements.¹⁴

Intended outcome: CCAMPIS is more accessible to colleges with limited resources and capacity for grant application and reporting processes.

2d. Allow CCAMPIS funds to be used to develop and improve on-campus child care facilities.

Intended outcome: Increase the number of colleges that have capacity to offer child care services to student parents by providing resources to build or renovate spaces that can be used for care.

2e. Convene a U.S. Department of Education campus advisory group to inform the CCAMPIS program, application process, reporting requirements, and areas of need for technical assistance.

Intended outcome: CCAMPIS program design, technical assistance, and implementation strategies are shaped by stakeholders with experience with the program. Longstanding challenges in applying for or reporting on the grant are addressed to make the process more manageable for underresourced colleges.

2f. Allow funds to support student parents who need FFN care when traditional child care centers cannot meet their needs on evenings and weekends, or where student parents live where traditional child care centers or in-home providers are not available.

Intended outcome: Student parents can access flexible care options that fit their dynamic lives using CCAMPIS subsidies.

2g. Direct the U.S. Department of Education to publish de-identified CCAMPIS performance data, disaggregated by race and summarized by institution or sector, and to conduct a federal equity analysis of CCAMPIS awardees to evaluate how well the grant process and distribution reflect the racial demographics of parenting students and to identify gaps in access.

Intended outcome: Policymakers and the higher education community can understand and address existing gaps in how CCAMPIS serves different populations of student parents.

Problem

Most higher education institutions do not systematically track student parents, leaving schools unable to identify and support this population effectively through comprehensive services. Without data collection, colleges may overlook student parents in decisions about campus programming, child care infrastructure and services, financial aid, and academic policies. Integrating parenting status into student records allows institutions to coordinate support more effectively, by, for example, aligning course schedules and services with students’ family responsibilities.¹⁵ As highlighted in an analysis of recent federal and state proposals,¹⁶ better data would strengthen institutional planning, enable more targeted funding, and help build an evidence base for strategies that support child care access and retention of parenting students.

Recommendations

3a. Mandate standardized federal data collection on student parenting status and related caregiving responsibilities across all higher education institutions in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. At a minimum, require collection of key child care-related metrics, including number and ages of dependents, type of child care used (e.g., on-campus, off-campus, informal, or none), weekly hours of care, unmet child care needs, caregiving responsibilities, and whether the student receives support through CCAMPIS or other public program.

Intended outcome: Data on the prevalence of student parents in higher education and their needs informs targeted child care services, funding allocation, and policy decisions.

3b. Provide funding and technical assistance to support institutions in integrating student-parent data into enrollment and support systems, improving colleges’ ability to collect and use data to inform the development of services and policies for student parents.

Intended outcome: Colleges have the data infrastructure needed to track and serve parenting students, and policymakers are informed about parenting students’ needs.

Problem

While Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sex, including pregnancy-related conditions, it has historically failed to provide strong, enforceable protections for parenting students. Although the 2024 Title IX rule made significant progress for pregnant and postpartum students, those regulations were vacated, leaving the 1975 law and 2020 Title IX rule in effect. The 2020 rule is silent on pregnant, postpartum, and parenting students. Because Title IX’s definition of sex discrimination has been narrowly interpreted, parenting students’ protections are premised on whether they can demonstrate differential treatment based on gender or pregnancy. This framework limits the law’s utility for addressing the day-to-day barriers that parenting students (mothers and fathers) face in higher education. Further, enforcement by the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is currently limited by staffing constraints and political interference, undermining Title IX’s effectiveness. Federal leadership is needed to establish durable, targeted protections for parenting students through new legislation, stand-alone regulations, or robust guidance divorced from the broader Title IX rulemaking process.

Recommendations

4a. Codify the protections for pregnant and parenting students found in the 2024 Title IX rule through stand-alone federal legislation or targeted regulations, ensuring that excused absences, reasonable caregiving accommodations, and class participation modifications are guaranteed and enforceable across institutions.

Intended outcome: Parenting students are legally protected in accessing higher education, and access to lactation spaces, child care services, and flexibility to manage caregiving responsibilities is assured.

4b. Issue federal guidance, through expanded Title IX regulations where appropriate, as well as through other avenues outside of the Title IX regulatory framework, that clarifies institutions’ obligations to support student caregivers, including access to lactation spaces, referral to child care services, and the right to flexibility during postpartum recovery and child illness.

Intended outcome: Institutions adopt inclusive policies for parenting students and prioritize their access to lactation spaces, child care services, and accommodations to meet caregiving responsibilities while enrolled in school.

4c. Fund and direct the OCR to improve enforcement capacity and develop specialized technical assistance for complaints related to pregnancy and parenting, including model policies, compliance reviews, and training modules.

Intended outcome: Colleges receive and implement OCR guidance to protect pregnant and parenting students’ right to access higher education. Institutions that fail to accommodate parenting students are investigated and compelled to resolve related civil rights complaints.

4d. Incentivize colleges to voluntarily adopt protections aligned with the vacated 2024 Title IX rule and recommendations from the National Women’s Law Center,¹⁷ such as excused caregiving absences and protection from retaliation, by tying eligibility for federal grants, such as CCAMPIS, FIPSE’s Basic Needs for Postsecondary Students Program, or Title III/Title V Student Success grants, to adoption of these practices.

Intended outcome: Colleges proactively address parenting students’ needs, even as formal regulatory protections remain in flux or under legal challenges.