Last week, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and the New Mexico Early Childhood Education and Care Department announced that New Mexico will become the to offer universal child care to families as of Nov. 1. 

Over the past six years, New Mexico has become a trailblazer in child care infrastructure. In 2019, the state created its first Early Childhood Education and Care Department with a Cabinet-level secretary, showing a commitment to improving care and support for young children. In 2022, New Mexico became the first state to enshrine a right to early education for children 0 to 5 years old, by passing a constitutional amendment and directing dedicated funding to child care and early childhood education. The state pulled dollars from its Land, which collects and invests profits from oil and gas revenues, and created a steady stream of money for early childhood programs. This has led to increased pay for teachers, higher reimbursements for providers that accept subsidies, more families qualifying for free or reduced price child care, and more child care slots.

Since 2019, the state has made progress on improving access and affordability of child care, expanding free child care to families with an income at or below 400% of the federal poverty level, which for a family of four is an annual household income of $128,600. But without a sliding scale model, families with an income over that threshold were left responsible for covering the cost of care. Starting in November, all residents of New Mexico will be able access child care for free, regardless of income. 

In a touting the change, the state estimates that families will save an average of $12,000 per year. The state is also implementing an incentive rate for child care providers that commit to paying entry-level staff a minimum of $18 per hour and offer 10 hours of care per day, five days a week, with the goal of creating an additional 5,000 early childhood professionals to staff a universal system.

Here’s a look back at some of the key actions and policy changes that have led New Mexico to arrive at universal free child care.

2019

New Mexico creates the Early Childhood Education and Care Department

In 2019, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed into law Senate Bill 22, creating the New Mexico Early Childhood Education and Care Department — an agency that would coordinate the work of three previous departments under a single entity to administer all state programs for children from prenatal to 5 years old. Though several states had Cabinets devoted to the interests of children, this move led New Mexico to become one of four with a department entirely dedicated to early childhood.

2021

Grassroots advocates in New Mexico target money from the state’s Land Grant Permanent Fund to pay for early childhood education

After a decade of organizing, early childhood education advocates in New Mexico home in on creating a change to their state constitution to guarantee a right to early education, eyeing the Land Grant Permanent Fund as a path toward developing a funding stream to support the vision.

2022

A Win for Early Childhood Education with a Ballot Initiative

On Nov. 8, 2022, New Mexico voters a constitutional amendment making their state the first to guarantee a right to early childhood education with funding to support it. 

Grassroots activists mobilized to bring a change in early childhood education to New Mexico, and after a ten year battle they found success through a constitutional amendment which received more than 70% of the vote. 

Hailey Heiz, deputy director of the University of New Mexico Cradle to Career Policy Institute, explores how New Mexico’s child care landscape has changed and what advocates across the country should keep their eyes on in this Q&A.

2024

After COVID disruptions, report shows New Mexico among states making top gains in pre-K enrollment

Two years after voters in New Mexico demanded more access to early childhood education by , the state’s investment has begun to show success. According to the From the National Institute for Early Education Research, it’s one of the top states to make gains in preschool enrollment, with 70% of 4-year-olds now attending public preschool, making the state one of just a handful that serves at least two-thirds of eligible students.

2025

A glimpse into New Mexico’s progress over the years

New Mexico’s early care and education system has undergone dramatic changes over the past five years as a result of a significant investment the state made in 2019. Increased wages for early educators, higher reimbursement rates for providers who accept subsidies, increased capacity and an increase in the number of families eligible for free or reduced price child care are among the advancements

There are tribes living on in New Mexico, a state where Native American citizens represent about of the population. Half of the Head Start and Early Head Start programs in New Mexico are on tribal lands. 

In addition to investing in early care and education by expanding funding, creating a dedicated department for early childhood and becoming the first state to guarantee a right to early childhood education, New Mexico has also explored ways to support its tribal communities. This includes supporting programs that preserve tribal languages and culture. 

With federal funds from the American Rescue Plan gone, some states have established trust funds dedicated to early care and education — and some say they’ve drawn inspiration from New Mexico, which was ahead of the curve. From voters approving the ballot measure to devote funding to early care and education in 2022, to efforts to decrease costs for families and increase pay for providers, and more recently, doubling the minimum amount the fund will spend on early education each year — the state has been a leader.

New Mexico becomes the first state to offer universal child care

On Monday, Sept. 8, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and the New Mexico Early Childhood Education and Care Department that New Mexico will become the first state in the nation to guarantee no-cost universal child care to families starting on Nov. 1, making child care free for families, regardless of income. 

Some states in the U.S., and some countries abroad, are starting to test various funding reforms. The stories collected below spotlight different funding models, which collectively point toward the idea that if the status quo isn’t tenable and marginal improvements prove inadequate, there are alternative paths to a stronger, more sustainable system.

Massachusetts is building up a robust and comprehensive early learning system piece by piece, perhaps most notably marked by a $475 million annual fund that sends monthly operational grants to most child care providers in the state. These advances were started during the pandemic and have now been made permanent, heavily fueled by a portion of the state’s “Fair Share” constitutional amendment which raised taxes on millionaires.

For decades, Ireland had a market-based child care system similar to the U.S., and it has been making major reforms since 2019. This article examines the new policy regime including a novel “core funding” model intended to shore up child care operations and increase provider pay.

In 2021, the Canadian government committed to what is called the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) system, with the goal of average parent fees falling to $10 a day while increasing the supply and quality of programs. This piece gives a glimpse into the early days of Canada’s rollout of the CWELCC system, which was backed by historic outlays by the federal government. Since it launched, this effort has resulted in ; and 8 provinces and territories have hit the $10 a day target.

In 2020, community organizers in Multnomah County in Oregon campaigned for universal preschool. The campaign, conducted amid the COVID-19 pandemic, reinforced the potential power of local funding measures. Multnomah voters handily passed the measure, which now generates well over $100 million a year from a tax on high net-worth households. 

In 2022, New Mexico passed a constitutional amendment that dedicated a portion of the state’s natural resources trust fund for early childhood education. This permanent funding source has since to extend free child care to many families and had a substantial impact on the state’s poverty rate. Bryce Covert’s story dives into the state’s efforts.

Vermont’s major child care reform bill, Act 76, became law in 2023. Act 76 uses the nation’s first payroll tax dedicated to child care. Like New Mexico, Vermont has used this sustainable funding source to power an expansion of child care aid for families and an increase in the state’s child care supply, including among family child care providers. Rebecca Gale’s story unpacks the details.

Vermont’s landmark bill, Act 76, designed to bring near-universal child care to the state, passed in 2023 — and it’s already offering a notable financial boost for many child care providers. It brought changes to various areas of child care and early childhood education, including significant updates to the , which distributes subsidy payments to providers for children from eligible families. Under CCFAP, providers now get a significantly higher rate per child than what they typically charge. For Chelsea Chase, a family child care provider who is featured in the story, this change nearly doubled the amount of money she brings in weekly for each child. That increase led her to expand her program to serve more children. The additional subsidies have made a substantive difference in the lives of many family child care providers across the state, though only those serving qualified families can access it.

An apprenticeship program for early childhood educators is boosting the number of qualified professionals in the space. Neighborhood Villages, a nonprofit based in Massachusetts, sought ways to increase the pipeline of early child educators in a field that’s notoriously underpaid and struggling to retain staff. In 2024, the first cohort graduated with a in Early Childhood Administrator/Director (ECAD) through the state Department of Labor, as part of the Neighborhood Villages’ Early Childhood Emerging Leaders program. 

are lauded for combining on-the-job training with classroom instruction, so that workers gain skills needed for the job while still having the requisite experience many employers require before hiring. Many of these programs are also paid, allowing people from different socioeconomic backgrounds to take part. Upon completion, the certification, license or degree can lead to future earnings opportunities. For a field like child care which is experiencing a — particularly in leadership fields — these programs can boost the pipeline of qualified staff. 

When Neighborhood Villages graduated 68 apprentices in February 2024, this made it the largest early childhood Registered Apprenticeship program in Massachusetts. Over half of the graduates (37 participants) received their Child Development Associate Certificate (CDA)  and the remaining 31 received their Lead Teacher certificate, which qualifies them to be the director of a child care or preschool program. The model has since scaled to other states, with Kentucky and New Hampshire implementing apprenticeship programs in early childhood.  

In Texas, support for child care providers comes from a break in property taxes, though it is up to each locality to decide to implement it. Once Texas spent down the funds from the American Rescue Plan, child care programs were stretched thin without any additional support. Enter Proposition 2: Texas’ plan to help child care providers by waiving property taxes. Though Proposition 2 has a number of hurdles to clear in order to qualify and receive payment, the savings can add up. One provider estimated that she will save $5,000-$7,000 per year when the proposal goes into effect in her locality. Property taxes play an outsized role in Texas as compared to other states, since it does not have a state income tax. As a result, property and sales taxes are higher than in other states to make up for that shortfall.

“We were reading the political tea leaves, and the money was being given back to Texas citizens in the form of property tax relief,” said Kim Kofron, senior director of education at Children at Risk, which advocates on behalf of early childhood education in Texas. “So that’s when we decided to see if property taxes might be a way for child care providers to get a break.”

There has been a construction boom in Oregon,  yet 90% of construction companies say they don’t have enough qualified workers to meet demand. To boost the worker pipeline, the state offers apprenticeship programs, which can help participants land a more lucrative construction job. But without reliable child care options, too many working parents couldn’t find a way to make the apprenticeship work.

Then Oregon found a solution. Since 2011, three state agencies in Oregon have come together to create one of the country’s most generous and comprehensive child care subsidies to support worker training and development through the state program: Apprentice-Related Child Care (ARCC). To support apprentices, Oregon offers robust subsidy reimbursement rates — up to $2,500 per child per month, and in some cases, without any co-pay from the families. Maura Kelly, a Portland State University sociology professor, examined the effectiveness of the ARCC supports and found that the child care subsidies had a positive impact on completion rates for the state’s apprenticeship programs.

In New Mexico, grassroots and advocacy communities have been pushing for significant investments in early childhood education for a decade. Now, they are seeing results. New Mexico has consistently been for school attendance, economic stability, child poverty, education proficiency and . But it does have access to a Land Grant Trust Fund from its oil and gas profits, worth , which grassroots child care activists have been trying to tap into for years. Beginning in 2009, they . Political pressure and local organizing led to a Democratic primary challenge to one of its key opponents, and the state voted to open up the trust fund and allow for more early care and education funding. 

Already, across the state, child care providers who serve children from families receiving state subsidies have seen their reimbursement rates rise. The subsidies are now tax-exempt, saving families and providers even more money. With this new investment, more families are eligible to receive child care subsidies. Other states may not have the robust external funding source to utilize for early childhood funding, but some advocates believe New Mexico’s efforts are replicable elsewhere, especially combined with political might.

A long history of systemic inequities has led to low compensation and a lack of respect for the profession — and the voices of early educators have been largely excluded from policy decisions that shape the sector. Including the perspectives of these professionals in coverage about the developing minds of young children represents one step toward rectifying persistent injustices. Moreover, their stories can inform efforts to retain talent and to improve systems serving families with young children. The stories highlighted below feature the perspectives of center- and home-based teachers and leaders on issues that matter to them.

Tiffany Jones of Rockville, Maryland, describes the training she underwent before opening Precious Moments Family Childcare — and the administrative hoops she had to jump through in order to secure federal funding during the pandemic.

Tiffany Gale, proprietor of Miss Tiffany’s Early Childhood Education House in Weirton, West Virginia, shares why she’s become an active advocate for paid leave. “It makes sense for the workers, for the employers and for businesses like mine because, after all, I’m a business, too,” she explains, emphasizing how paid leave proposals might make her child care business financially viable. 

In this feature about how the nonprofit supports child care entrepreneurs, Shanette Linton, who runs Little Leaders Group Family Daycare in the Bronx, contemplates the dearth of public investment in early education, saying, “You have to love what you do, but then, at some point, you have to think about, ‘Does this make sense?’ ” 

A look at faith-based child care activism in Minnesota spotlighted the perspective of Celeste Finn, director of Big Wonder Child Care in St. Paul: “If you want to make an impact on children’s lives, you need to work with them when they’re younger. That’s when the prefrontal cortex is developing and when their values and biases are developing — which is why child care deserves funding,” she says, adding: “It’s an essential public service.”

A 2024 documentary, “Make a Circle,” set out to raise awareness of the child care crisis. The film includes voices from a half dozen early learning professionals including San Jose provider Patricia Moran who declares, “We all come from different backgrounds. That’s how children start learning about different cultures, different languages. It gives them healthy emotional development that is so important. Empathy is what the world needs right now.”  

The reality of such a high poverty rate among the youngest and most vulnerable Americans is the result of policy choices. Research that it’s not because the U.S. has higher rates of single parenthood or because low-income Americans don’t work hard enough for a decent income. Instead, where other countries make robust investments in government programs, particularly those that benefit parents and children, the U.S. . And yet poverty has been found to have on children’s development and well-being. The stories below expose the result of this disinclination to invest in families with babies and young children — as well as what happens when efforts to do things differently are abruptly abandoned.

Various data sources all illuminate the same trend: homelessness among children under age 6 has been climbing in recent years, driven by a mix of systemic factors, with disturbing consequences for the country’s children.

During the pandemic, universal, free school meals were a lifesaver for parents like Lynnea Hawkins, who no longer had to pull together complicated paperwork and send it in with her son, making him a target for torment. But then Congress ended the program, forcing parents to once again face shame and stigma to participate — or forego free meals for their children altogether. 

Even when Congress passes a new program aimed at helping families afford the basics for their children, it doesn’t always reach them. Erika Marquez’s family was eligible for the new Summer EBT benefits rolled out in 2024 to help parents get through the lean summer months, but her husband couldn’t figure out how to sign up, so they missed out. “It’s just hard when you hear your child say, ‘Mom, my stomach is rumbling,’” she said.

Even long-established programs with solid track records aren’t always safe. At the end of 2023, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC, needed more money to stay available to all low-income pregnant people and new parents, but Republicans threatened to break a 25-year track record of fully funding it. 

The often threadbare American safety net leads to some disturbing outcomes, such as the fact that nearly half of our nation’s families are struggling to afford diapers. Some change their children less often than they should to make the diapers they do have last, while others go without diapers at all. 

Some states have taken bold steps to do more to address child poverty. In 2021, Connecticut became the first state to create “baby bonds,” depositing $3,200 in an account for every baby whose birth is covered by Medicaid so that it can accrue interest and create wealth for them later in life.

As never before, scientists have access to experimental methods and machines that enable them to understand the neural mechanisms occurring as babies become children and learn to navigate their environment. With every scientific discovery, wonder deepens. The following stories offer a glimpse into some of the extraordinary research at the heart of these discoveries.  

When you see a baby gazing on the world, you might imagine a little sponge passively soaking up information, but what’s actually going on is sophisticated computational wizardry that outpaces any known machine. Millisecond by millisecond, the baby is sorting multiple data feeds and running statistics to analyze the environment. “No computer, no matter how sophisticated, can do what a baby can do in listening to language input and deriving the words, grammar and the sound contrasts that create language,” says language expert Patricia Kuhl, co-director of the Institute for Brain and Learning Sciences at the University of Washington. 

After babies grasp the basics of “mama,” “dada” and â€baba,” and understand that they can summon important people and items with a word or two, they soon move on to two key words in human development: â€What’s that?” Babies occupy a world of wonder, and their senses are bombarded with new information at every turn. From their first moments, human infants are driven by the desire to find out. Their investigations are fueled by the same mechanisms that scientists use to develop theories. Babies are exploring their world in ways that are exquisitely intelligent, sensitive and scientific.

Adults are encouraged to get sufficient exercise to support their brain health. As it turns out, cardiovascular health appears to equate to better cognitive function for children as well, with benefits observable as early as 4 years old. Scientists found that preschool children with higher cardiorespiratory fitness scored higher on tasks related to general intellectual ability as well as in their use of expressive language. They performed better on computerized tasks requiring attention and multitasking and showed the potential for faster processing speeds and greater resource allocation in their brains as they performed the tasks.

Fascinating research tells us that the baby isn’t the only one growing and changing when an infant is born. The intense caregiving required for newborns causes observable changes in the brain of the caregiver: They develop “parenting brain.” Those changes aren’t limited to the biological parents, they occur in the brains of everyone intimately involved in caring for the baby. It’s not just that some people are hardwired to be a parent, people become parents by how — and the degree to which — they respond to the child they’re caring for: The act of caregiving, not simply the act of giving birth, calibrates the brain.

Babies are born with brain connections for functions such as hearing, sight and movement. The white-matter pathways associated with language are also present at birth but continue to develop over the years. Scientists have found that these neural connections don’t simply grow, they are cultivated by their environments, and research shows that early interactive language experiences uniquely contribute to the brain development associated with long-term language and cognitive ability. The more back and forth between babies and parents, the greater the growth of the brain in areas critical to the child’s ability to learn language and build vocabulary — effects that carry through early childhood and predict cognitive and linguistic ability into adolescence.