Child care is one of the hottest topics in public discourse today, and for good reason. The sector is finally (if a bit slowly) getting the attention it deserves, and several universal truths have emerged:

1. The ROI for early childhood investment is staggering. From a purely economic standpoint, few investments pay off as strongly or as consistently as early childhood. The National Forum on Early Childhood Policy and Programs estimates returns between $4 and $9 for every $1 invested in high-quality early childhood programs.
2. Child care is a bipartisan issue. Although specific strategies and priorities may differ from right to left, all of society benefits from well-funded and well-functioning early care and education systems.
3. Child care is ripe for modernization. We’re not going to see sustainable gains by pouring more money into the old way of doing things. Better data and technology infrastructure can reduce barriers to entry, improve efficiencies, and give policymakers the data they need to make informed decisions.

Head Start In Peril (Again)

If this feels like a familiar headline, you’re not imagining things. Head Start has been under attack from various angles for the entire of this presidential administration, from shuttered administrative offices, to delayed grant funding, to the recent whittling away of the standards and requirements that make the program what it is today. 

For those who don’t know, the infamous Project 2025 playbook published by the Heritage Foundation in the lead-up to the last presidential election called for the complete elimination of Head Start. The Center for American Progress called attention to the proposal in June of 2024, alongside an overview of the many proven benefits Head Start offers to American families. 

Last year, the administration batted around the idea of trying to defund Head Start through the congressional budget process in preliminary documents related to the president’s budget request, as reported by the Washington Post in April of 2025. When the White House realized they would not be able to garner buy-in from even an otherwise compliant Congress for those efforts (Head Start has historically enjoyed massive bipartisan support), the proposal was ultimately removed from the request. 

This year, the administration has begun wielding Notices of Public Rulemaking (NPRMs) like a bludgeon, advancing elements of its agenda without the checks and balances typically required of federal programs. In May, Restoring Flexibility to Support Head Start Program Access was released, rolling back initiatives that would have paid Head Start educators a living wage, increased access to benefits, and promoted compensation comparability across Head Start, Early Head Start, and public preschool alternatives. 

This month, ACF released Reducing Federal Burden for Head Start Programs, an effort to strip away most of the federal regulations that make the program what it is in favor of state control. This should not come as a surprise to those familiar with the work of Alex "Bonfire of Regulations" Adams, who, prior to leading ACF under this administration, was most well-known for his failed attempt to completely eliminate required child-adult ratios in Idaho.

The marketing of the NPRM has been couched in familiar language that appeals to the conservative base, including “expand access,” “reduce red tape,” “trust parents,” and more of the usual suspects, providing the necessary political cover for an obviously ill-intentioned maneuver. Adams' assertion that money saved can be "reinvested in higher-value things, such as teacher pay..." is almost diabolical in the wake of the NPRM from just two months ago that ripped the federal promise of increased compensation away from the Head Start workforce. In truth, the general consensus is that these changes will actually result in larger class sizes, a less qualified workforce, explicitly less support for children with disabilities and those who speak languages other than English, fewer parent choices, and a general reduction in the quality of the learning environment. 

Unlike many who find themselves in more sensitive positions, I don’t feel obliged to sugarcoat this or talk around it. The executive branch realized there was no viable path to disbanding Head Start overnight, so they called an audible to instead set the program up for a protracted death by a thousand cuts. The process will be long, it will be painful for families and educators alike, but make no mistake—the outcome will be the end of Head Start as we know it unless someone (looking at you, Congress) puts a stop to it. 

I want to emphasize that this is still just a proposal and Congress still holds the purse strings. The best (only?) way to save Head Start now is to make a big deal out of this, write or call your representatives, submit a comment, and spread the word. The public commentary period is open through October 5.

Additional resources: 

• State of Play: The Head Start NPRMs (First Five Years Fund)
• The Quiet Dismantling of Head Start: How the Trump Administration Is Using Regulation to Reshape a Program It Can’t Eliminate (Aaron Loewenburg for New America)
• Press Release: Fewer Rules Cannot Mean Fewer Results (National Head Start Association)

Bipartisan Bills of Note

That was fast! Just two months after the U.S. Government Accountability Office issued two reports on challenges within the military child care system, Reps. Brittany Peterson (D-Colorado) and Ryan Mackenzie (R-Pennsylvania) introduced the Supporting Our Military Childcare Workforce Act, to address issues with staffing, retention, and compensation that are leading to diminished access to high-quality childcare for military families. The Bill was referred to the House Committee on Armed Services on July 23. 

Read: H.R.9930 - Supporting Our Military Child Care Workforce Act (Congress.gov)

Indiana Community Invests in Child Care Access

Allen County, Indiana, which includes the Greater Fort Wayne area, is home to a new $2.5 million Childcare Bridge Fund, supported by Lilly Endowment Inc. The investment will supplement the state’s overstretched Child Care Development Fund dollars, helping working families pay for care and alleviating a small amount of pressure on child care providers. 

Enrollment in the Bridge Fund will happen through a relatively unique invite-only model, wherein “eligible families will be identified through participating childcare providers and coalition partners.” The fund “is expected to support about 150 families and 30 to 40 childcare providers during the implementation period.” 

Read: Community Foundation, other partners launch childcare bridge fund for Fort Wayne area (The Journal Gazette)

Updates From the States

Arizona has seen its child care waitlist grow from 2,000 in 2024 to 13,500 today. In a state where the average cost of care is more than $16,000, two consecutive years of underfunded child care ($45 million compared to an estimated $160 million to clear the waitlist), has led to a growing crisis that will need to be addressed sooner than later. Read: Arizona childcare assistance waitlist jumps to 13,500 (Arizona Capitol Times)

Delaware Governor Matt Meyer signed two bills (SB 278 and SB 293) that will enable more families who rely on the state-funded Purchase of Care subsidy program to access summer camps with those funds, while also simplifying and clarifying licensing requirements for summer camp providers. “The changes are designed to allow more summer camps to serve families receiving Purchase of Care assistance without lowering health and safety standards.” Read: Governor Meyer Signs Bipartisan Legislation Expanding Access to Affordable Summer Childcare for Delaware Families (Delaware.gov)

Guam needs $7.6 million to fund its child care subsidy program through Q3 of this year after falling behind on provider payments, which haven't yet been disbursed for June. The last-minute request appears to have come as a surprise to the state legislature, which called a recess on the special session in which it was to have been approved. In the interim, providers have been increasingly vocal about the urgency of the situation and a perceived lack of transparency from the Department of Public Health and Social Services. Read: Childcare providers speak on recessed session to cover $7.6m in subsidies, late payments (Pacific Daily News)

North Carolina may need to mix things up a bit to better monitor and track compliance in its child care centers. A performance audit released at the end of July showed that “unannounced” compliance visits too often followed “repeat scheduling patterns,” which “weakens the oversight value of the division’s monitoring activities…” The Division of Child Development and Early Education largely disagreed with the findings and recommendations of the audit, but did agree to clarify their policies and monitor scheduling practices. Read: Audit: NC child care center visits too predictable (The Carolina Journal)

West Virginia’s Department of Human Services is struggling to meet implementation deadlines for their landmark piece of child care legislation from the most recent session, House Bill 4191, which changed the state’s child care subsidy model to pay-by-enrollment, expanded the childcare tax credit for businesses, and mandated administrative changes to the subsidy program, including an electronic filing system for providers. The department has pointed to additional “policy, operational, and technology work” that needs to be completed before the changes can be implemented. Read: WV Department of Human Services hasn’t implemented lawmakers’ key childcare bill by deadline (West Virginia Watch)

Trending Original Research and Reports

Top pick of the month: The National Conference for State Legislatures (NCSL) brought together a bipartisan group of 13 state legislators known for their leadership in child care policy for multiple meetings over the past two years. The primary takeaways from those meetings were summarized in a July report that provides a framework for state governments looking to address some of the most pressing issues in early care and education, including access and affordability, workforce development, modernizing licensing and quality systems, strengthening small businesses, planning for the future, and elevating early childhood governance. Read: Childcare at a Crossroads: A State Legislative Framework for Strengthening Childcare Systems (NCSL)

Elliot Haspel analyzed a recent poll-based report from Joan C. Williams and Jared Abbot that touched on the topic of messaging and why it’s so important in the child care conversation. Of note: support for universal childcare from working-class voters jumped from 55% to 83% when the question “Do you favor or oppose a universal system of subsidized childcare?” was reframed to “Do you favor or oppose ensuring that all children have access to affordable, high-quality childcare so parents don’t need to quit jobs they need to support their families?” It’s a good reminder that semantics matter. Read: One Weird Trick To Getting Working Class Support for Family Policies (The Family Frontier by Elliot Haspel)

First Five Years Fund published a new national survey of approximately 1000 likely voters throughout the country. The survey found “that families see child care as a key driver of the nation’s affordability challenges and believe policymakers should take action to make child care more accessible and affordable.” Read: July 2026 National Child Care Poll (First Five Years Fund)

New America published a resource for policymakers, agency leaders, and advocates on the critical topic of building better data infrastructure for early childhood systems. The resource features two best-practice case studies from Kansas and Chicago, along with common trends, implementation challenges, other promising approaches, and more. This has been a recurring theme in our blog—the ECE data gap is widening and it’s time to take action. Read: Count What Matters: Building Data Infrastructure for Early Childhood Systems (New America)

Zero2Eight shined a light on the trend of fathers finally catching up to mothers in taking paid family leave. Did you know that prior to 1994, only 4.5% of dads took parental leave? That number has shot all the way up to 26.5% by 2024, but large gaps remain in states that don’t offer paid family leave. Read: More Dads Are Taking Paid Paternity Leave (Zero2Eight)

July 2026 Updates

HHS Has a Transparency Problem

HHS and ACF continue to raise eyebrows with perceived censorship and funding blocks affecting programs, proposals, and research results that seemingly do not align with the administration’s agenda. We saw two more examples of this in the past month. 

HHS canceled one-fifth of the research sessions on the National Research Conference on Early Childhood’s agenda less than a week before the conference began. As reported by The Hechinger Report, the connections between the canceled sessions were ambiguous, with no clear rationale for why some similar sessions remained on the docket. One conference attendee remarked that “...these are not radical sessions, these are seemingly run-of-the-mill research presentations.” Researchers did not receive any explanation for the cancellations.

This kind of closed-door, seemingly arbitrary decision-making reared its head early in the year when the administration’s “fraud” claims resulting from the work of a right-wing YouTuber led to a since-lifted funding freeze in five Democrat-led states. As reported by The Hill and others, the American Civil Liberties Union, two of its state-level affiliates, the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, and the National Women’s Law Center have joined forces to file a lawsuit seeking records related to that funding freeze. The groups had originally submitted a Freedom of Information Act request in March, but no records have been received. 

As the federal agency under which so many early care and education programs fall, ACF’s recent pattern of obfuscation and misdirection is alarming. It’s easy to understand how states, researchers, and ECE advocates on the ground are increasingly wary of pursuing long-term projects or relying too heavily on federal funding when it often feels like the next politically motivated shoe could drop at any minute. 

Bipartisan Bills of Note

The Child Care Small Business Insight and Improvement Act of 2026 (H.R.9553), introduced by Reps. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) and Dan Meuser (R-Pennsylvania), would “require the Administrator of the Small Business Administration to submit to Congress a report on for-profit child care providers, and for other purposes.” The authors of the report would be required to: 

• Assess the challenges and needs of for-profit providers
• Provide an accounting of the resources and support SBA offers to such providers
• Identify deficiencies in said resources and support
• Recommend legislative actions necessary to address the aforementioned challenges and needs
• Identify leadership needs for implementation of such recommendations
• Identify instances of fraud among these providers and recommend statutory changes to prevent misuses of federal funds

The READ Act (S.4689), introduced by Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) and Maggie Hassan (D-New Hampshire), would federalize regulations that have previously been taken up by states to align reading instruction with evidence-based (science of reading) approaches. The Act would: 

• Align curriculum and classroom instruction with the science of reading
• Support state agencies in their implementation of the science of reading
• Improve teacher prep and professional development
• Promote early identification and intervention for students at risk of reading difficulties
• Support data-driven literacy strategies with an eye toward closing opportunity gaps
• Protect and strengthen the literary research capacity of IES and other credible sources

This kind of action will be increasingly relevant for the ECE community, given the growing understanding that “the foundations of literacy begin before kindergarten.” Read: How Early Childhood and K-12 Systems Can Work Together to Support Early Literacy (Center for American Progress)

Updates from the States

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a final budget featuring funding to expand the state’s child care subsidy program by nearly 23,000 slots. The bill also granted universal eligibility to families in poor school districts and children of school district employees. This was a big win for families and advocates after previous talks of possible cuts to the program. California did not end up increasing compensation for preschool providers, a long-term concern in so many parts of the country today. Read: After threat of cuts, California expands subsidized child care by more than 20,000 spaces (Los Angeles Times)

Illinois and Kansas both celebrated the launch of their new early childhood state agencies on July 1. The Illinois Department of Early Childhood and the Kansas Office of Early Childhood will join the growing list of designated state agencies for early care and education with a direct line to the governor, a best practice we examined in detail last month in Faces of ECE with Elliot Regenstein. 

New York school districts sent more than $170 million in unused Universal Pre-K funding back to the state after last school year. While some districts did so because they met 100% of the demand for services, others have been returning the money every year without filling the need. This inconsistency has been addressed through legislation, and all school districts will be required to use their available funding beginning in the 2028-2029 school year. Read: $170m in unused UPK funding returned to state; senator says Monroe-Woodbury sent back the most (News 12 Hudson Valley)

North Carolina ended up infusing its child care subsidy program with $97 million in new funding without touching its $400 million Opportunity Scholarship school choice program, which had previously been considered as a potential source for the expansion. Instead, the final budget directs $97 million in federal funds to boost reimbursement rates for providers and set a statewide floor, a significant boon to rural providers who received far less under the previous model. With the state’s waitlist sitting at more than 15,000 children, the additional funding should relieve some of the immediate pressure. Read: Budget delivers child care subsidies without defunding school vouchers (The Carolina Journal)

Virginia’s recently approved biennium budget would fully eliminate waitlists for the state’s Child Care Subsidy Program, while also providing room to expand the budget by just under 10% (~6,700 new slots). This milestone marks a massive turnaround from this time last year when the waitlist was approaching 13,000 children. Virginia policy advocates say there is still work to be done to build the supply needed to expand access throughout the state. Read: State budget would eliminate Child Care Subsidy Program waitlist (VPM)  

Trending Original Research and Reports

New America’s Aaron Loewenberg sparked an important conversation about the fine line between necessary regulation reform and dangerous deregulation with his exploration of recently proposed and enacted changes in Indiana and Iowa. His closing point says it all: “The goal of reform should be to make it easier for providers to deliver high-quality care, not to make it easier to deliver cheaper care at the expense of quality.” Read: Reducing Red Tape in Child Care: Sensible Reform or a Race to the Bottom?

Linda Smith’s new Child Care Trust organization issued its first report since launching. They explored what would happen to the child care gap should federal funding for Head Start ever be eliminated. The numbers are astounding. The dissolution of Head Start would result in a 15% increase in children unable to access child care (654,500 kids in total). Read: Head Start’s Impact on the Child Care Gap

Child Care Aware of America conducted a state-by-state analysis of the gap between subsidy reimbursement rates and the true cost of providing child care. The results were as expected—state child care systems are deeply underfunded, and providers are being forced to make the choice to either shoulder the burden or shut their business down altogether. Explore: Examining the Gaps - Child Care Prices, Costs, and Subsidies

The Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center published an interesting report segmenting state early childhood governance into three distinct typologies: whole child, school readiness, and parents’ workforce participation. The report does a good job of weighing pros and cons at a high level, supplemented by deep-dive case studies from multiple states. Explore: Early Childhood Governance Typologies - Patterns in State Governance Across the Nation

The Bipartisan Policy Center published an eye-opening case study of the CHIPS Act child care requirement, written by the senior advisors for child care within the CHIPS Program Office. This report offers a unique inside look into the outcomes and challenges associated with implementing one of the country’s largest ever employer-driven child care initiatives. The results offered a strong microcosm of the same issues being experienced by other private-public partnership ventures, including the structural barriers that get in the way of employer participation. Read: The Infrastructure Needed to Make Child Care Investments Work: The CHIPS Act Child Care Requirement as a Case Study