"Hunger is increasing among those who provide care to young children." 

No matter how hard I tried over the holiday season, I just couldn't shake that ominous November headline from the Stanford Center on Early Childhood's RAPID Survey Project. 

Even in these dystopian times we live in, there’s something uniquely unsettling about the idea that a large percentage of early childhood professionals, who we entrust with children whose brains are developing faster than they will at any other point in their lives, who already sacrifice so much just to get children in the door, can’t even access regular, nutritious meals. 

We’ve all seen the stats. 43% of the child care workforce relies on public assistance like SNAP and Medicaid. Reimbursement rates for subsidized child care slots fall woefully short of the true cost of care (43% more as of 2021, per the Center for American Progress), with providers absorbing the difference. Provider profit margins range from 1-15%, with small providers far more likely to be at the very low end of that range. 

But those are just numbers. It’s too easy for someone to glance at them, shake their head, and move on. RAPID’s headline hit differently. These aren’t cold, hard stats, they’re real human beings GOING HUNGRY at unprecedented rates—nearly 60% of those surveyed, compared to just over 20% four years ago. This problem didn’t come out of nowhere, but it is snowballing quicker than anybody can keep up.  

Some states and organizations have stepped up to face this crisis head-on. The last few years have seen some innovative approaches to early educator compensation packages, spanning both wages and benefits. In some parts of the country, child care professionals are even making what most would consider a living wage (imagine!). Let’s dive into the ideas, the outcomes, and the ongoing challenges associated with lifting the field out of poverty for good. 

Case Studies in Successful Compensation Strategies

The D.C. Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund

One of the most ambitious early educator workforce initiatives in the modern era, Washington, D.C.’s Pay Equity Fund (PEF) was signed into law in 2021 and implemented under the oversight of the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) in 2022. The goal of this effort was to establish parity between early childhood educators and public school teachers with similar roles, credentials, and experience. Funding came from a new tax on high earners in the District. Before the Fund was launched, early educators with a bachelor’s degree were paid approximately 33% less than their peers in K-8. 

In the initiative’s early stages, eligible educators received direct payments ranging from $5,000 to $14,000 depending on role and employment status (full time vs. part time). Beginning in 2023, OSSE made payments directly to providers to incorporate them into their employees’ paychecks. The Fund also subsidizes the cost of health insurance premiums. Participating providers are required to meet at least the minimum salary schedule defined by OSSE for all educators based on role, status, and credentials earned. 

The Fund, which blazed a trail for how states and municipalities can potentially tackle this longstanding issue, was a godsend for the state’s struggling early education workforce. Most importantly, it worked! The Fund’s impact included demonstrated improvements across nearly every conceivable metric of success. As seen in this Results for America case study based on an ongoing impact analysis by Mathematica: 

• 69% of educators agreed that their employer’s participation in the PEF is part of the reason they planned to stay in their current job. 
• 18% fewer educators who benefitted from the Fund were at risk of food insecurity. 
• 69% of participating educators reported being satisfied or very satisfied with their pay, compared to 37% of those whose employers did not opt into the Fund.
• Wages of DC early educators have risen by $10,000 annually, on average, since the launch of the PEF.
• Nearly half as many participating educators reported depression and nearly a third as many reported anxiety, compared to those whose employers did not participate. 
• The Fund increased early educator employment levels by nearly 7%, while also anecdotally raising the quality of interactions with children.  
• When factoring in the benefits produced for child care providers, educators, children, and parents, the PEF’s one-year return on investment was calculated to be 23%. 

Unfortunately, budget pressures have hit the PEF hard in the past year, resulting in reduced required pay rates for both assistant and lead teachers beginning January 2026 and the discontinuation of funding beyond FY 26. Unless further action is taken, this year will mark the end of a trailblazing program with a strong evidence base that is returning more money to the economy than what it's costing taxpayers. This is exactly the sort of program we should be protecting at all costs, not eliminating the moment the purse strings get tight.  

Free Child Care for Early Educators

Total compensation is about so much more than just what early educators are getting paid. One of the approaches gaining the most traction in recent years got its start in Kentucky, which expanded its Child Care Assistance Program in 2022 to allow all employees of licensed child care providers who work 20 hours or more to qualify for the full value of the subsidy, regardless of total household income. 

This approach, most recently highlighted in a December 2025 zero2eight article, aims to keep early educators in the classroom by providing a benefit other industries can’t offer at a time when early childhood wages are otherwise failing to keep up with the competition. In Kentucky alone, more than 5,500 families have utilized the program for more than 9,600 children. At least 4,000 more who applied were redirected to the larger child care subsidy program due to income eligibility. Crucially, the state was able to step up last year to keep the program alive after the Covid-era federal funding used to launch it expired.

In the three years since Kentucky’s program went live, more than a dozen states have either launched or are seriously considering similar investments. Although empirical data is hard to come by with so many of these programs still in their infancy, participants have anecdotally reported strong participation, increased retention of the child care workforce, and ancillary benefits, including improved continuity of care for children and increased access to care for parents. Rhode Island’s pilot was such a hit that it has been extended through July of 2028. 

There are still questions to be answered about this approach, including what can be done about family child care (FCC) providers that care for their own children, which currently makes them ineligible to receive Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG) funds. There is also significant overlap between those who are eligible for state child care subsidies due to income levels and those who are eligible for these benefits specific to early educators. Rhode Island has addressed that issue by requiring applicants to apply for “regular” CCAP first. 

Administrative concerns, including extensive red tape and lengthy application and verification processes, have also been a source of concern for educators, but those issues are easily addressed through process modernization and adequate staffing. Those aren't blockers so much as a reminder to states that these programs don't administer themselves.

Salary Scales

One of the highlights of the Pay Equity Fund was the mandated salary scales for participating providers that aligned with K-12 educator salaries. Some states have begun laying the groundwork for similar efforts by designing their own scales in recent years, including Illinois, Minnesota, and Colorado. These scales will ideally be used for cost modeling and future investments. 

Arabella Bloom and Silvia Muñoz at the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment published an excellent summary of these efforts in a December 2025 blog. In it, they highlight four key factors for states to consider: 

• Economic indicators; e.g. whether and how salary scales will be tied to the broader economy and jobs market. 
• Geography; e.g. do adjustments need to be made for variable cost of living in different parts of the state? 
• Additional specializations; e.g. credentials, educational attainment, bilingualism, special education, or infant and toddler training.
• Educator and stakeholder engagement; e.g. who is informing the scales and providing feedback throughout their development process?

Learn more: Early Educator Salary Requirements, Guidelines, and Plans, By State and Territory, 2024 (Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, University of California, Berkeley)

The Long Road Ahead

It should go without saying that a healthy workforce made up of professionals who aren’t literally starving should be a pillar of any effective early care and education system. So why are these programs and strategies the exception, rather than the norm? The answer’s simple—it’s money. 

The good news is that we do have a blueprint for what works. The challenge is that nobody has yet figured out a way to afford it over a long period of time. In 2026, most states are going to be pulling teeth just to keep ECE funding level as they absorb the impact of the “big, beautiful” cuts to Medicaid and SNAP. Unfortunately, the issue of food insecurity among early educators seems likely to get even worse before it gets better. 

Long-term efforts to fund the system, including the much-needed reauthorization and expansion of CCDBG, must incorporate the learnings from states that have taken strides to strengthen and retain their early care and education workforce. ECE funding is about so much more than just reducing the burden on families, it’s about strengthening the system as a whole. 

The people we trust with our kids during the most important developmental years of their lives shouldn’t be going home to empty pantries. The job is just too important for us to continue asking every person who enters the field to sacrifice both their financial wellbeing and their health to do so.