3 Pressing Themes Shaping Early Care And Education The 74
3 Pressing Themes Shaping Early Care And Education The 74
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The early care and education field has experienced an eventful — sometimes tumultuous — year, placing it repeatedly in the spotlight. While some states such as New Mexico forged bold solutions to child care’s rising unaffordability, others responded to federal budget pressures by cutting or freezing their child care programs, or walking back the very regulations meant to keep kids safe. When Head Start’s federal grant disbursements were slowed or frozen, the 60-year-old early education program for low-income families suffered a severe, existential threat.
Meanwhile, as the sector continues to reel from the staffing shortages and high turnover rates that have haunted child care since the pandemic, heightened immigration enforcement activity is sending chills through the field’s workforce, which is nearly 20% foreign born. Through these challenges, some child care providers have found themselves becoming involved with advocacy efforts to bring about change, with some even running for office.
Amid these developments — some amazing research and resources have emerged for the field. As the year comes to a close, zero2eight asked early care and education experts to share what they consider to be the sector’s must-read research of 2025.
What emerged from their responses were a collection of reports, studies and data tools relevant to a number of urgent themes. These include the sector’s ability to respond to current events, new ways of thinking about preschool gains and economic analysis of some of the ongoing challenges facing the early care and education workforce.
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Here are some of the themes, studies and resources identified by the field’s insiders as essential to moving the sector forward.
1.Timely Research and Resources for Challenging Times
Steeply rising costs, dwindling federal child care funds, and an aggressive federal immigration crackdown have all contributed to a challenging, fast-changing landscape for families and early educators, many of whom are immigrants and reliant on public benefits. The following new research and tools offer timely insights into how such pressures are reshaping families’ lives and the early care and education sector, with some offering inspiration for how to respond.
Working Paper:Recent Immigration Raids Increased Student Absences
Authors:Thomas S. Dee, economist and the Barnett Family Professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education
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Key Takeaway:Immigration raids coincided with a 22% increase in daily student absences, with especially large increases among the youngest students.
This study highlights the field’s “ability to innovate and be nimble to understand impacts of policy and policy enforcement,” said nominator Cristi Carman, director of the RAPID Survey Project at Stanford Center on Early Childhood who studies family well-being. It examines the collateral damage of unexpected immigration raids in California’s Central Valley, documenting a clear pattern in children’s school attendance, said second nominator Philip Fisher, director of the Stanford Center on Early Childhood, adding that “ICE raids are associated with increased school absenteeism.” According to the working paper, young children are expected to be the most likely to miss school, with students in kindergarten through fifth grade estimated to be far likely to miss school as a result of immigration raids than high school students.
Report:State Strategies for Sustained Investment in Kids: A Landscape of Dedicated Funding
Authors:Children’s Funding Project staff, including Bruno Showers, state policy manager; Lisa Christensen Gee, director of tax policy; Olivia Allen, vice president of strategy and advocacy; Josh Weinstock, policy analyst (former); and Marina Mendoza, senior manager of early childhood impact
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Key Takeaway:Facing dwindling federal funds, several states have innovated ways to provide dedicated funding for early care and education and youth programs.
With pandemic-era relief funds running out, states are in desperate need of models for how to continue supporting early care and education, said Erica Phillips, executive director of the National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC), who nominated this recent report. The report — from Children’s Funding Project, a nonprofit that helps secure sustainable public funding for children’s services — offers exactly that by providing a crucial, “very comprehensive overview” of how some states are building long-term, dedicated revenue streams for child care, early education and youth programs as federal money runs dry. As the report’s authors explain, stable, dedicated funding is critical to thriving programs, letting states and providers to “budget than one year at a time, allowing them to make longer-term investments in quality improvement, facilities, staff education, and other key elements of evidence-based programs and services.”
Data Tools:Mapping Diaper Need in the U.S. and The American Affordability Tracker
Authors:The diaper need mapping tool was published as part of a research collaboration between the Urban Institute and the National Diaper Bank Network. The affordability tracker was published by the Urban Institute.
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Key takeaway:Families are facing mounting economic insecurity
The Urban Institute recently released two innovative data tools for policymakers, advocates and researchersthat illuminate the increasing economic precariousness facing too many families, said Carman of the RAPID Survey Project. The interactive toolMapping Diaper Need in the U.S.,produced in partnership with the National Diaper Bank Initiative,shows how many diapers each county across the nation needs to address diaper shortages facing homes with young children that are below 300% of the federal poverty level.
The American Affordability Trackerillustrates the rising cost pressures facing families across various indicators, including how the price of groceries has changed in counties and congressional districts in recent years. “Being able to see and understand scale and drivers of economic insecurity nationally is very powerful,” wrote Carman.
2.New Research Reveals Preschool’s Overlooked Impacts
The body of early education research about how preschool affects children often measures child outcomes such as kindergarten readiness, standardized test scores or later graduation rates. While those are all important, Christina Weiland, professor at the Marsal School of Education at the University of Michigan and the Ford School of Public Policy, wrote in an email, “we’ve long suspected they aren’t the full picture of preschool’s effects.” Weiland nominated the following working paper as part of what she considers to be a new wave of research that explores a broader set of outcomes than the field has typically examined, such as parent earnings, accelerated coursework and subsequent schooling environments. “Together, these studies suggest benefits of preschool programs that have been largely overlooked,” but that are key to fully understanding the potential benefits of early learning investments for children and families, noted Weiland.
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Working Paper:Parents’ Earnings and the Returns to Universal Pre-Kindergarten
Authors:John Eric Humphries, faculty research fellow at Yale University’s Department of Economics; Christopher Neilson, research associate at Yale University; Xiaoyang Ye, Brown University; and Seth D. Zimmerman, research associate at Yale School of Management
Key Takeaway:New Haven’s universal pre-K (UPK) program raised parents’ earnings by nearly 22% during pre-kindergarten, with gains persisting for at least six years.
Weiland said that this notable study, published in 2024 and updated in 2025, expands the preschool picture by looking at how UPK might impact parents’ earnings,” and uses that to estimate the program’s returns on investment. It found that New Haven’s UPK program raised parents’ earnings by nearly 22% during pre-kindergarten, with gains persisting for at least six years, concluding that the returns to UPK investment are “high.” As one of the first studies looking at “earnings data in modern-day pre-K studies,” noted Weiland, it offers evidence that the field is “likely underestimating the return on investment early education programs have.”
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3.Spotlight on the Early Child Care Workforce
Back in the spring,child care economist Chris Herbst spoke with zero2eight about how the COVID pandemic demonstrated how the child care workforce is “like a leaf blowing in the wind” — “sensitive to all kinds of changes in the policy and economic environment because it is is inextricably linked to the larger labor market.” Because of this, a new surge of recent research by economists has focused on the workforce, with researchers seeking to understand how early care providers respond to policy and market changes. Nominators pointed toward two such studies.
Working Paper:The Effect of the Minimum Wage on Childcare Establishments
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Authors:Katharine C. Sadowski, assistant professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education
Key Takeaway:An increase in minimum wage changes who provides child care
Combining “rich data with sensible research designs,” this study examines how an increase in the minimum wage could impact child care quality and access, noted nominator Aaron Sojourner, senior economist at W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
Author Katharine C. Sadowski’s findings suggest that an increase to the minimum wage doesn’t lead to a decrease in the number of child care programs or the number of people working in the sector. However, minimum wage policies can influence who provides child care: larger enterprises, such as child care centers, are likely to open and remain in operation, while smaller, self-employed providers, such as home-based child care programs, are less likely to open or remain in business.
in و child و care – تفاصيل مهمة
Among the smaller establishments that do stay open, the owners are less likely to have advanced degrees, the study found, potentially impacting the quality of child care provided, according to the author. “Unfortunately, minimum wage policy is binding and too important for a lot of child care employers and employees due to chronic underinvestment in the sector,” wrote Sojourner, adding that this is the first paper he’s seen to leverage “restricted-use data available through the U.S. Census Research Data Center system to generate insights on the sector.”
Study:The Declining Relative Quality of the Child Care Workforce
Authors:Chris M. Herbst, foundation professor in Arizona State University’s School of Public Affairs
Key Takeaway:The education of the early education workforce has dropped over time, possibly due to the sector’s low wages
of و the و The – تفاصيل مهمة
This study found that the education levels and cognitive test scores of the early education workforce have been declining over time, suggesting lower teacher quality, which could have implications for children’s development. The study links this dip in teacher skills to the proliferation of early education programs which might divert future child care workers away from four-year colleges. It also looks at how low wages — which have remained low even as wages for other jobs for similarly-skilled workers have increased — might lead highly qualified individuals to choose other occupations.
“This is analogous to what previous research has found in the K-12 workforce,” wrote Jessica Brown, assistant professor of economics at University of South Carolina, who nominated the study. It “underscores the importance of the discussion of compensation in early childhood education.” Brown notes that it’s a difficult topic for the field to discuss, because “no one wants to imply that the current workforce is not high quality. But the reality is that compensation challenges mean that child care is not a very attractive job, and that has implications for the quality of the workforce.”
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Disclaimer: This news article has been republished exactly as it appeared on its original source, without any modification.
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!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n; n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;n.queue=();t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)(0);s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,’https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’); fbq(‘init’, ‘626037510879173’); // 626037510879173 fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);{“@context”:”http://schema.org”,”@type”:”NewsArticle”,”dateCreated”:”2025-12-30T00:50:08+04:00″,”datePublished”:”2025-12-30T00:50:08+04:00″,”dateModified”:”2025-12-30T00:50:08+04:00″,”headline”:”3 Pressing Themes Shaping Early Care and Education The 74″,”name”:”3 Pressing Themes Shaping Early Care and Education The 74″,”keywords”:[],”url”:”https://uaetodaynews.com/3-pressing-themes-shaping-early-care-and-education-the-74/”,”description”:”Join our zero2eight Substack community for more discussion about the latest news in early care and education. Sign up now. The early care and education field has experienced an eventful u2014 sometimes tu”,”copyrightYear”:”2025″,”articleSection”:”Education”,”articleBody”:”nnn n Join our zero2eight Substack community for more discussion about the latest news in early care and education. Sign up now.n n n n nThe early care and education field has experienced an eventful u2014 sometimes tumultuous u2014u00a0 year, placing it repeatedly in the spotlight. While some states such as New Mexico forged bold solutions to child careu2019s rising unaffordability, others responded to federal budget pressures by cutting or freezing their child care programs, or walking back the very regulations meant to keep kids safe. When Head Startu2019s federal grant disbursements were slowed or frozen, the 60-year-old early education program for low-income families suffered a severe, existential threat. Meanwhile, as the sector continues to reel from the staffing shortages and high turnover rates that have haunted child care since the pandemic, heightened immigration enforcement activity is sending chills through the fieldu2019s workforce, which is nearly 20% foreign born. Through these challenges, some child care providers have found themselves becoming involved with advocacy efforts to bring about change, with some even running for office.nnnnAmid these developments u2014 some amazing research and resources have emerged for the field. As the year comes to a close, zero2eight asked early care and education experts to share what they consider to be the sectoru2019s must-read research of 2025. What emerged from their responses were a collection of reports, studies and data tools relevant to a number of urgent themes. These include the sectoru2019s ability to respond to current events, new ways of thinking about preschool gains and economic analysis of some of the ongoing challenges facing the early care and education workforce. nnnnHere are some of the themes, studies and resources identified by the fieldu2019s insiders as essential to moving the sector forward.nnnn1. Timely Research and Resources for Challenging TimesnnnnSteeply rising costs, dwindling federal child care funds, and an aggressive federal immigration crackdown have all contributed to a challenging, fast-changing landscape for families and early educators, many of whom are immigrants and reliant on public benefits. The following new research and tools offer timely insights into how such pressures are reshaping familiesu2019 lives and the early care and education sector, with some offering inspiration for how to respond. nnnnWorking Paper: Recent Immigration Raids Increased Student Absences nnnnAuthors: Thomas S. Dee, economist and the Barnett Family Professor at Stanford Universityu2019s Graduate School of EducationnnnnKey Takeaway: Immigration raids coincided with a 22% increase in daily student absences, with especially large increases among the youngest students. nnnnThis study highlights the fieldu2019s u201cability to innovate and be nimble to understand impacts of policy and policy enforcement,u201d said nominator Cristi Carman, director of the RAPID Survey Project at Stanford Center on Early Childhood who studies family well-being. It examines the collateral damage of unexpected immigration raids in Californiau2019s Central Valley, documenting a clear pattern in childrenu2019s school attendance, said second nominator Philip Fisher, director of the Stanford Center on Early Childhood, adding that u201cICE raids are associated with increased school absenteeism.u201d According to the working paper, young children are expected to be the most likely to miss school, with students in kindergarten through fifth grade estimated to be far more likely to miss school as a result of immigration raids than high school students. nnnnnnnnReport: State Strategies for Sustained Investment in Kids: A Landscape of Dedicated FundingnnnnAuthors: Childrenu2019s Funding Project staff, including Bruno Showers, state policy manager; Lisa Christensen Gee, director of tax policy; Olivia Allen, vice president of strategy and advocacy; Josh Weinstock, policy analyst (former); and Marina Mendoza, senior manager of early childhood impactnnnnKey Takeaway: Facing dwindling federal funds, several states have innovated ways to provide dedicated funding for early care and education and youth programs.nnnnWith pandemic-era relief funds running out, states are in desperate need of models for how to continue supporting early care and education, said Erica Phillips, executive director of the National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC), who nominated this recent report. The report u2014 from Childrenu2019s Funding Project, a nonprofit that helps secure sustainable public funding for childrenu2019s services u2014 offers exactly that by providing a crucial, u201cvery comprehensive overviewu201d of how some states are building long-term, dedicated revenue streams for child care, early education and youth programs as federal money runs dry. As the reportu2019s authors explain, stable, dedicated funding is critical to thriving programs, letting states and providers to u201cbudget more than one year at a time, allowing them to make longer-term investments in quality improvement, facilities, staff education, and other key elements of evidence-based programs and services.u201d nnnnnnnnData Tools: Mapping Diaper Need in the U.S. and The American Affordability TrackernnnnAuthors: The diaper need mapping tool was published as part of a research collaboration between the Urban Institute and the National Diaper Bank Network. The affordability tracker was published by the Urban Institute. nnnnKey takeaway: Families are facing mounting economic insecurity nnnnThe Urban Institute recently released two innovative data tools for policymakers, advocates and researchers that illuminate the increasing economic precariousness facing too many families, said Carman of the RAPID Survey Project. The interactive tool Mapping Diaper Need in the U.S., produced in partnership with the National Diaper Bank Initiative, shows how many diapers each county across the nation needs to address diaper shortages facing homes with young children that are below 300% of the federal poverty level. The American Affordability Tracker illustrates the rising cost pressures facing families across various indicators, including how the price of groceries has changed in counties and congressional districts in recent years. u201cBeing able to see and understand scale and drivers of economic insecurity nationally is very powerful,u201d wrote Carman. nnnn2. New Research Reveals Preschoolu2019s Overlooked ImpactsnnnnThe body of early education research about how preschool affects children often measures child outcomes such as kindergarten readiness, standardized test scores or later graduation rates. While those are all important, Christina Weiland, professor at the Marsal School of Education at the University of Michigan and the Ford School of Public Policy, wrote in an email, u201cweu2019ve long suspected they arenu2019t the full picture of preschoolu2019s effects.u201d Weiland nominated the following working paper as part of what she considers to be a new wave of research that explores a broader set of outcomes than the field has typically examined, such as parent earnings, accelerated coursework and subsequent schooling environments. u201cTogether, these studies suggest benefits of preschool programs that have been largely overlooked,u201d but that are key to fully understanding the potential benefits of early learning investments for children and families, noted Weiland.nnnnWorking Paper: Parentsu2019 Earnings and the Returns to Universal Pre-KindergartennnnnAuthors: John Eric Humphries, faculty research fellow at Yale Universityu2019s Department of Economics; Christopher Neilson, research associate at Yale University; Xiaoyang Ye, Brown University; and Seth D. Zimmerman, research associate at Yale School of Management nnnnKey Takeaway: New Havenu2019s universal pre-K (UPK) program raised parentsu2019 earnings by nearly 22% during pre-kindergarten, with gains persisting for at least six years.nnnnWeiland said that this notable study, published in 2024 and updated in 2025, expands the preschool picture by looking at how UPK might impact parentsu2019 earnings,u201d and uses that to estimate the programu2019s returns on investment. It found that New Havenu2019s UPK program raised parentsu2019 earnings by nearly 22% during pre-kindergarten, with gains persisting for at least six years, concluding that the returns to UPK investment are u201chigh.u201d As one of the first studies looking at u201cearnings data in modern-day pre-K studies,u201d noted Weiland, it offers more evidence that the field is u201clikely underestimating the return on investment early education programs have.u201d nnnnRelated2024 Research Roundup: 3 Must-Read Studies About Early Care and Educationnnnn3. Spotlight on the Early Child Care WorkforcennnnBack in the spring, child care economist Chris Herbst spoke with zero2eight about how the COVID pandemic demonstrated how the child care workforce is u201clike a leaf blowing in the windu201d u2014 u201csensitive to all kinds of changes in the policy and economic environment because it is is inextricably linked to the larger labor market.u201d Because of this, a new surge of recent research by economists has focused on the workforce, with researchers seeking to understand how early care providers respond to policy and market changes. Nominators pointed toward two such studies. nnnnWorking Paper: The Effect of the Minimum Wage on Childcare EstablishmentsnnnnAuthors: Katharine C. Sadowski, assistant professor at Stanfordu2019s Graduate School of EducationnnnnKey Takeaway: An increase in minimum wage changes who provides child carennnnCombining u201crich data with sensible research designs,u201d this study examines how an increase in the minimum wage could impact child care quality and access, noted nominator Aaron Sojourner, senior economist at W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. nnnnAuthor Katharine C. Sadowskiu2019s findings suggest that an increase to the minimum wage doesnu2019t lead to a decrease in the number of child care programs or the number of people working in the sector. However, minimum wage policies can influence who provides child care: larger enterprises, such as child care centers, are more likely to open and remain in operation, while smaller, self-employed providers, such as home-based child care programs, are less likely to open or remain in business. Among the smaller establishments that do stay open, the owners are less likely to have advanced degrees, the study found, potentially impacting the quality of child care provided, according to the author. u201cUnfortunately, minimum wage policy is binding and too important for a lot of child care employers and employees due to chronic underinvestment in the sector,u201d wrote Sojourner, adding that this is the first paper heu2019s seen to leverage u201crestricted-use data available through the U.S. Census Research Data Center system to generate insights on the sector.u201dnnnnnnnnStudy: The Declining Relative Quality of the Child Care WorkforcennnnAuthors: Chris M. Herbst, foundation professor in Arizona State Universityu2019s School of Public Affairs nnnnKey Takeaway: The education of the early education workforce has dropped over time, possibly due to the sectoru2019s low wages nnnnThis study found that the education levels and cognitive test scores of the early education workforce have been declining over time, suggesting lower teacher quality, which could have implications for childrenu2019s development. The study links this dip in teacher skills to the proliferation of early education programs which might divert future child care workers away from four-year colleges. It also looks at how low wages u2014 which have remained low even as wages for other jobs for similarly-skilled workers have increased u2014 might lead highly qualified individuals to choose other occupations. nnnnu201cThis is analogous to what previous research has found in the K-12 workforce,u201d wrote Jessica Brown, assistant professor of economics at University of South Carolina, who nominated the study. It u201cunderscores the importance of the discussion of compensation in early childhood education.u201d Brown notes that itu2019s a difficult topic for the field to discuss, because u201cno one wants to imply that the current workforce is not high quality. But the reality is that compensation challenges mean that child care is not a very attractive job, and that has implications for the quality of the workforce.u201dnn n n n Did you use this article in your work?
nWeu2019d love to hear how The 74u2019s reporting is helping educators, researchers, and policymakers. Tell us hown n nnn !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?n n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;n.queue=();t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;n t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)(0);s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,n document,’script’,’https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);n fbq(‘init’, ‘626037510879173’); // 626037510879173n fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);n nnnnnDisclaimer: This news article has been republished exactly as it appeared on its original source, without any modification. nWe do not take any responsibility for its content, which remains solely the responsibility of the original publisher.nnnnnnAuthor: Kendra HurleynPublished on: 2025-12-29 21:30:00nSource: www.the74million.orgn”,”publisher”:{“@id”:”#Publisher”,”@type”:”Organization”,”name”:”uaetodaynews”,”logo”:{“@type”:”ImageObject”,”url”:”https://uaetodaynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/images-e1759081190269.png”},”sameAs”:[“https://www.facebook.com/uaetodaynewscom”,”https://www.pinterest.com/uaetodaynews/”,”https://www.instagram.com/uaetoday_news_com/”]},”sourceOrganization”:{“@id”:”#Publisher”},”copyrightHolder”:{“@id”:”#Publisher”},”mainEntityOfPage”:{“@type”:”WebPage”,”@id”:”https://uaetodaynews.com/3-pressing-themes-shaping-early-care-and-education-the-74/”,”breadcrumb”:{“@id”:”#Breadcrumb”}},”author”:{“@type”:”Person”,”name”:”uaetodaynews”,”url”:”https://uaetodaynews.com/author/arabsongmedia-net/”},”image”:{“@type”:”ImageObject”,”url”:”https://uaetodaynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/research-early-child-care-2-825×495.jpg”,”width”:1200,”height”:495}}
Disclaimer: This news article has been republished exactly as it appeared on its original source, without any modification.
We do not take any responsibility for its content, which remains solely the responsibility of the original publisher.
Author: uaetodaynews
Published on: 2025-12-29 20:50:00
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