Orchestrating Access to Affordable, High-Quality Early Care and Education for All Young Children

This report presents data from 4 State teams (Ohio, South Carolina, Illinois, and Mississippi) to explore financing plans that achieve high-quality early education that is affordable for parents. A computerized Policy Simulation Model was developed to estimate the costs and impacts of customized solutions that reflect each State’s unique quality and financing choices. State policy teams identified three promising financial assistance mechanisms: (1) income-related assistance in the form of a voucher to parents, (2) non-income-related subsidies to providers (similar to Head Start and public kindergarten), and (3) a hybrid Parent Provider Assistance Package (PPAP). Although each State’s priorities differed, all chose customized variants of the hybrid PPAP, combining fixed subsidies to providers with a sliding-scale, income-related voucher to help parents afford the costs of improved quality. Data demonstrate that States can design voluntary, partially subsidized, early learning systems that provide high quality at prices parents can afford. Investments in quality promotion and assurance are necessary to assure that substantial increases in funding for subsidies actually lead to: improvements in early childhood education (ECE) quality, and (2) maintenance of public support for the system. Working with the Policy Simulation Model, several State teams have designed policies that produce a balancing of objectives to make the benefits of early learning financially accessible to all young children.