Category: Early Education

  • Infants and toddlers are a growing group among homeless children

    Infants and toddlers are a growing group among homeless children

    by Jackie Mader, The Hechinger Report
    January 17, 2026

    BOSTON, Mass. — For months, Karian had tried to make it on her own in New York.

    After the birth of her second daughter, she was diagnosed with postpartum depression, major depressive disorder and anxiety. A single mother who had moved from Boston to New York about 13 years ago, she often spent days at a time on the couch, unable to do more than handle the basics for her daughters.

    “I wasn’t taking care of myself,” she said softly on a recent afternoon. “I was not really present.” The Hechinger Report is not publishing her last name to protect her privacy.

    Karian’s mother urged her to move back home to the Boston area and offered to house her and her daughters temporarily. She started working the night shift at a fast food restaurant to save up for her own place while her mother and sister watched her children. 

    But in a city where fast food wages aren’t enough to pay the rent, her efforts felt futile. And then, a month after moving in with her family, her mother’s landlord told her the apartment was overcrowded and she had to leave. Karian and her girls, then 7 years old and 8 months old, moved into a homeless shelter, where her depression and anxiety worsened. 

    “I tried my best, but it’s not their home,” said Karian, now 31.

    Karian’s children had joined the growing ranks of very young children experiencing homelessness. Between 2021 and 2023, the number of homeless infants and toddlers increased in 48 states and the District of Columbia. The most recent estimates found that in 2023 nearly 450,000 infants and toddlers in the United States were in families that lacked a stable place to live. That was a 23 percent increase compared to 2021, according to a report released last year by the nonprofit SchoolHouse Connection in partnership with Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan.  

    The numbers could be even higher, experts worry, because “hidden homeless” children — those who are doubled up in homes with family or friends or living in a hotel — may not be captured in tallies until they start school.

    High prices for diapers and formula, the exorbitant cost of child care, the rising cost of living, and rising maternal mental health challenges all contribute to the growing rate of homelessness among very young children, experts say. In 2024, one-third of infants and toddlers were in families that struggled to make ends meet, according to the nonprofit infant and toddler advocacy organization Zero to Three. 

    “We’re talking about families who have generationally been disadvantaged by circumstance,” said Kate Barrand, president and CEO of Horizons for Homeless Children, a nonprofit that supports homeless families with young children in Massachusetts. “The cost of housing has escalated dramatically. The cost of any kind of program to put a child in, should you have a job, is escalating,” she added. “There are a lot of things that make it really hard for families.”

    Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues.

    Housing instability is dire for anyone, but particularly for young children, whose brains are rapidly growing and developing. Studies show that young children who are homeless often lag behind their peers in language development and literacy and struggle to learn self-regulation skills, like being able to calm themselves when feeling angry or sad or transition calmly to new activities. They also may experience long-term health and learning challenges.

    Early childhood programs could provide a critical source of stability and developmental support for these children. But SchoolHouse Connection found only a fraction of homeless children are enrolled in early learning programs, and the percentage who are has decreased over the past few years.

    “It’s not just incredibly tragic and sad that infants and toddlers are experiencing homelessness,” said Rahil Briggs, national director of the nonprofit Zero to Three’s HealthySteps program, which works with pediatricians to support the health of babies and toddlers. The first few years are also a “disproportionately important” time in a child’s life, she added, because of the brain development that’s happening.

    Karian and her daughters faced new difficulties after they moved into a shelter.

    They shared an apartment with another family. If the other family was using the shared common space, Karian tried to give them privacy, which meant keeping her children in the bedroom the three of them shared.

    Her older daughter had to change schools, and left without getting to say goodbye to many of her friends. At her new school, her grades dropped. The baby developed a skin condition and there was a bedbug infestation at the shelter. Karian didn’t want to put her on the floor for tummy time. She was desperate to find a home.

    “We were in a place where we couldn’t really make noise. I couldn’t really let them be kids,” she said.

    The rise in housing insecurity among young children has created more demand for programs created specifically to meet the unique needs of children who are experiencing instability and trauma. Many of these programs offer support to parents as well, through what is called a “two-generation” approach to support and services.

    Related: A school created a homeless shelter in the gym and it paid off in the classroom

    In 2021, in response to ballooning child homelessness rates, Horizons opened the Edgerley Family Horizons Center, an early learning program that serves children from 2 months to 5 years old. While some families find Horizons on their own, many are referred by shelters around the Boston area. The need is great: Edgerley serves more than 250 children, with a waitlist of 200 more. Karian’s younger child was one of those who got a spot soon after the program opened.

    Inside Horizons’ large, light-filled building on the corner of a busy street in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood, every detail is tailored to the needs of children who have experienced instability. Walls are painted in soothing blues and greens. Each classroom has three teachers to maintain a low child-to-staff ratio. Many of the teachers are bilingual. All educators are trained in how to build relationships with families and gently support children who have experienced trauma. 

    The starting salary for teachers is $54,200 a year, far more than the national median for childcare workers of $32,050 and the Massachusetts median of about $39,000. That has encouraged more teachers to stay on at the center and provide a sense of security to the children there, said Horizons CEO Barrand.

    In the infant room, teacher Herb Hickey, who has worked at Horizons for 13 years, frequently sees infants who are hyperaware, struggle to fall asleep, can’t be soothed easily or cling desperately to whichever adult they attach to first. The goal for the infant teachers, he said, is to be a trusted, responsive adult who can be relied on.

    Every day, the teachers in the infant room sing the same songs to the babies. “When they hear our voices constantly, they know they’re in a safe space,” Hickey said. “This is calm.” 

    Teachers also follow the same familiar routines. The rooms are decorated simply, organized and filled with natural light. Teachers constantly scan the infants for signs of distress.

    “We have to be even more responsive,” Hickey said. “When the child starts crying, we don’t have the convenience to say, ‘I know you’re hungry, I’ll get to you.’” He said teachers want even the tiniest babies to learn that “we’re not going to leave you crying.’”

    Related: A federal definition of ‘homeless’ leaves some kids out in the cold. One state is trying to help

    Other needs arise with Horizons’ youngest children: Infants and toddlers living in homeless shelters often lag in gross motor skills. Many spend time on beds rather than on playmats on the floor, or they are kept in car seats or in strollers to keep them safe or from wandering off. That means they’re missing out on all the skills that come from active movement.  

    Even the arrangement of toys at the center has a purpose. Staff want children to know they can depend on toys being in the same location every day. For many children, those are some of the only items they can play with. Families entering a shelter environment can usually only bring a few bags, with no room for toys or books. A toddler who recently entered a shelter where Horizons runs a playroom came in holding a small empty chip bag, recalled Tara Spalding, Horizons’ chief of advancement and playspace. When a shelter staff member threw it away, the boy was inconsolable. “This is the only toy my child has,” staff recalled the mother saying.

    “This just shows the sheer poverty,” said Spalding. 

    As infant and toddler homelessness has increased, other cities and states have tried to provide more support to affected families and get a better sense of their needs. In Oklahoma, experts say, low wages, a lack of housing and eviction laws that favor landlords have led to rising homelessness rates. State officials are trying to gather better data about homeless families to determine the best use of resources, said Susan Agel, chair of Oklahoma’s Homeless Children and Youth Steering Committee. Their efforts are hampered, however, by the fact that many homeless families fear that their children will be taken away by child protective services because they are homeless. 

    In 2024, to fill that gap in data, the state launched a residency questionnaire given to every K-12 student that includes new questions about homelessness, including if there are younger children in the home who are not students and may not otherwise be counted in homeless populations. Officials say it isn’t a perfect solution, but it’s a start to get a sense of the severity of family homelessness. “We can’t devise a system for dealing with a problem if we don’t know what the problem is,” said Agel.

    In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, city officials have ramped up efforts to coordinate city agencies to respond to an increase in homelessness among infants and toddlers.

    “In general, the families we see more often have younger children. The school offers so much support, and there’s limited daycare access” to get similar support for infants and toddlers, said Tommy Fuston, Community Services and Housing Navigator at Minnehaha County’s Department of Human Services. “If a family has younger children, they’re going to struggle more.” 

    Each week, officials from the city, the Sioux Falls School District, local early childhood programs and shelters hold a “care meeting” to make sure any homeless families, or families at risk of homelessness, are quickly connected to the right resources and receive follow-up. “We don’t have unlimited resources, but I think it maximizes the resources that we do have,” Fuston said. “We’ve tried to create a village of supportive services to wrap around these folks.” The city relies extensively on private and faith-based donations to help. All shelters in town are privately funded, for example. 

    Related: Shelter offers rare support for homeless families: a child care center

    Karian heard about the child care center run by Horizons from a social worker soon after she and her daughters moved into their Boston-area shelter. In the infant room, her youngest daughter quickly settled into a routine, something Karian said didn’t happen when the baby was watched at night by family members. When staff identified speech and developmental delays, they helped connect Karian to an early intervention program where her daughter could receive therapy. Now 4 years old and in pre-K at Horizons, “she’s thriving,” Karian said. “She’s getting that nourishment.” 

    Karian also received support. Each family at Horizons is assigned a coach to help parents set personal goals and connect with resources. The organization offers classes in computing, financial management and English, all within the early learning building.

    Two months after setting goals with a family coach, Karian earned her GED, with the help of  the child care assistance. A few months later, she graduated from a culinary training program. She now works a steady job as a cafeteria manager for a local school district, where she earns a salary with benefits. 

    After a year in the shelter, her family was approved for subsidized housing and moved into their own apartment. Horizons allows families to stay in its programs for at least two years after they secure housing to make sure they are stable. 

    Now, Karian has her sights set on eventually opening a restaurant. She also has big dreams for her daughters, something that once seemed out of reach. She wants them to have ambition to “work towards something big,” she said. “I want them to have a dream and be able to achieve it.” 

    Experts say there are larger policy changes that could help families like Karian’s: increasing the minimum wage, expanding child care options like Head Start, which saves a portion of seats for homeless children, and offering more affordable housing to low-income families, to start.

    Providing more federal money to the programs that help poor families pay for child care could also help. Those programs require states to prioritize homeless children and give them the first opportunity to access that money. 

    While important, experts argue, these solutions shouldn’t need to exist in the first place.

    “We should be able to come to an agreement as a society that we should prioritize keeping families with infants and toddlers in their homes,” said Melissa Boteach, chief policy officer at Zero to Three. “Babies shouldn’t be homeless.”

    Contact staff writer Jackie Mader at 212-678-3562 or [email protected].

    This story about homeless children was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter. 

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  • The schools where even young children change classes 

    The schools where even young children change classes 

    by Ariel Gilreath, The Hechinger Report
    January 13, 2026

    BATON ROUGE, La. — About two dozen second graders sat on the carpet at the front of Jacquelyn Anthony’s classroom, reviewing how to make tens. “Two needs eight!” the students yelled out together. “Six needs four!” 

    “The numbers may get a little trickier,” Anthony told them next. “But remember, the numbers we need to make 10 are still there.” The students then turned confidently to bigger calculations: Forty-six needs four ones to make a new number divisible by 10; 128 needs two to make 13 tens. 

    At the end of the hour, the second graders slung on their backpacks, gathered their Chromebooks and lined up at the door before heading to English and social studies class across the hall. While most schools wait until middle school to transition students from one class to another, kids at Louisiana’s Baton Rouge Center for Visual and Performing Arts do so starting at age 6 or 7. It’s part of a strategy known as departmentalizing, or platooning. 

    Anthony, rather than teaching all four core subjects, specializes in math. The school’s new facility, built in 2025, was designed with departmentalizing in mind: The classrooms have huge glass windows, so teachers can see their next class preparing to line up in the hallway.

    “Teaching today is so different than it was a long time ago, and there are so many demands on them. And the demand to be an expert in your content area is very high,” said Sydney Hebert, magnet site coordinator for the art-focused public school in the East Baton Rouge Parish school district. “We want to make sure that our teachers are experts in what they’re teaching so that they can do a good job of teaching it to the kids.”

    As schools contend with a decades-long slump in math scores — exacerbated by the pandemic — some are turning to this classroom strategy even for very young students. In recent years, more elementary schools have opted to departmentalize some grade levels in an attempt to boost academic achievement. The share of fourth and fifth grade classrooms operating on this schedule has doubled since the year 2000, from 15 percent to 30 percent in 2021. Often, that means educators will specialize in one or two subjects at most, such as fourth grade English language arts and social studies, or fifth grade math and science. The theory is that teachers who specialize will be more familiar with the content and better able to teach it. 

    That may be particularly important for math: Studies have shown that some early elementary school teachers experience anxiety about the subject and question their ability to teach it. Educators also say that the curriculum and standards for math and English in the early grades are changing rapidly in some districts and have become more complicated over time. In a departmentalized setup, it’s also far less likely that math instruction will get shortchanged by an educator who prefers spending time on other subjects.  

    Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education. 

    But while some schools swear by this model, the research on it is mixed.

    One prominent 2018 study on the practice in Houston public schools found it had a negative effect on test scores, behavior and attendance. The study doesn’t explain why that was the case, but the researcher said it could be because teachers on this schedule spend less time with individual students.

    Another study published in 2024 analyzing Massachusetts schools had different outcomes: Researchers found moderate gains in academic achievement for ELA and a significant boost to science scores for students in departmentalized classes. The results in math, however, showed few gains. 

    Generally, teachers specialize in the subject they are most comfortable teaching. When a school departmentalizes for the first time, principals typically look at each educator’s test score data over time to determine whether they should specialize in math or reading.

    “There are some arguments that, at least if it’s someone who likes the subject, who is passionate about the subject, you have a greater chance of them doing a better job of delivering instruction,” said Latrenda Knighten, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. “But you’ll find mixed reviews.”

    Yet there are a few reasons why the strategy is typically reserved for students in older grades, according to school leaders: Spending all day with one teacher increases the bond between the teacher and student, which is important for younger children. In Baton Rouge, Anthony teaches 50 students throughout the day instead of the same 25 students all day.

    “Teachers want to get to know their students,” said Dennis Willingham, superintendent of Walker County Schools in Alabama. The district departmentalized some fifth grade classrooms decades ago, but recently added third and fourth grade classes on this schedule. “You tend to see less departmentalization below third grade because of the nurturing element.” 

    It’s also generally more challenging for young students to quickly change classrooms, even for electives, which means lost instructional time. Smaller elementary schools may also struggle to hire enough teachers to schedule all of them on a departmentalized setup. 

    Related: These school districts are bucking the national math slump

    But increasingly, schools that are satisfied with this approach for older grade levels are trying it out with their younger grades, too. 

    After the pandemic, the San Tan Heights Elementary School in Arizona changed its curriculum to one that was more rigorous, and it became harder for the third grade educators to master the standards of all four subject areas, said Henry Saylor-Scheetz, principal at the time.

    He proposed that third graders be taught by separate math, English language arts and reading teachers. “I told them, let’s try it for a semester. If it doesn’t work at the end of the year, we’ll go back,” Saylor-Scheetz said.

    Ten days into the experiment, teachers told him they never wanted to return to the old schedule. In the subsequent years, the school added more classrooms on this model until, by 2023, all K-8 students were departmentalized. For the last few years, teacher retention at the school was 95 percent, according to Saylor-Scheetz.

    Saylor-Scheetz, who last year became principal of a nearby middle school, credited the change for helping the school improve from a C rating on its state report card — a rating it had stagnated at every year since 2018 — to a B rating as of 2022. Since then, more schools in his Arizona school district have shifted to this schedule. 

    “I’d love to see this become something we do as a nation, but it is a paradigm shift,” Saylor-Scheetz said. “There’s merit in doing it, but there has to be a commitment to it.”

    At Baton Rouge Center for Visual and Performing Arts, students in first through third grades have two partner teachers, one for math and science and another for ELA and social studies. The school has been operating on this schedule for third through fifth grade students for more than a decade. Eight years ago, its leaders decided to try it for first and second grade students, too, and were pleased with the results. 

    On a December morning at the school, young students talked quietly with each other in the hall as they lined up to go from math class to English language arts. All told, the switch took less than five minutes. “We’re at the end of the second nine weeks, so we’ve had a lot of practice,” said GiGi Boudreaux, the assistant principal. 

    The strategy has not always been successful, though.

    During the pandemic, administrators also attempted to departmentalize its kindergarten classes. It didn’t work as they’d hoped: It was a challenge to get the 5-year-olds to quickly change classes and focus on classwork again once they did. Parents also didn’t like it. The school then tried moving teachers from classroom to classroom instead of moving students, but the educators hated it. 

    “It was too much, so we didn’t do it after that,” said Hebert.

    The Baton Rouge school doesn’t have comparison data to show that students perform better in a departmentalized setup, but most educators in the school prefer it, Hebert said. Third grade test scores from 2015 — before the school departmentalized its younger grade levels — showed 73 percent scored “advanced” and “mastery” level on the state ELA test, and 56 percent scored advanced or mastery on the math test. In 2025, 80 percent of third grade students scored advanced or mastery in ELA and 55 percent in math.

    “I know that the teachers like it better, and the kids have adapted to it,” Hebert said. 

    Teachers meet weekly with their partner teachers and grade-level counterparts to discuss their classes and progress on the state standards. Once a quarter, all of the math teachers across the grades meet to talk about strategies and student performance. 

    Related: Teachers conquering their math anxiety 

    At Deer Valley Unified School District in Arizona, departmentalizing some classrooms has helped reduce teacher turnover, said Superintendent Curtis Finch, particularly for early career educators, who can find it challenging to master the content and standards of all four subjects.

    “If you’re not confident in your subject, then you don’t have good examples off the top of your head. You can’t control the room, can’t pull the students in,” Finch said. 

    There are drawbacks though, Finch acknowledged. In a self-contained classroom, teachers can more easily integrate their different lessons, so that a math lesson might refer back to a topic covered in reading.

    And even though Anthony, the second grade math and science teacher in Baton Rouge, loves teaching math, she also misses the extra time she could spend with each student when she had the same 25 children in her class all day for the entire school year. 

    “It was a joy for me to be self-contained and to build that little family,” Anthony said. “I think the social emotional needs of students are best met in that type of environment. But being solely a math teacher, I do get to just dig in and focus on the nuance of the content.” 

    For Anthony’s partner teacher across the hall, Holley McArthur, teaching 50 students ELA and social studies is easier than having to teach 25 students math. 

    “This is my thing: reading books, comprehending and finding answers, meeting their goals,” said McArthur, who has taught in both kinds of classrooms over three decades in education.  

    While McArthur’s kids were at recess this mid-December day, the veteran teacher was grading their reading worksheets. A new student had transferred in from out of state midyear, and she was still evaluating his reading skills. 

    “I think you still get to know the kids, even if you just have them for three hours a day, because I’m not doing the hard math with them.” 

    Contact staff writer Ariel Gilreath on Signal at arielgilreath.46 or at [email protected].

    This story about departmentalizing was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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  • Early childhood educator apprenticeships offer an answer to child care shortages

    Early childhood educator apprenticeships offer an answer to child care shortages

    by Nirvi Shah, The Hechinger Report
    January 7, 2026

    About six years ago, an apprentice training to be a machinist in Washington state told her supervisor she would probably have to drop out of the training program after having her baby: She couldn’t find child care that accommodated her shift.

    It was one of the first challenges Shana Peschek was tasked with solving when she became executive director of the Machinists Institute, which trains workers for jobs in the aerospace, manufacturing and automotive industries all over the state. 

    Peschek knew it was essential to do something for workers with young children.

    “That worst shift, the new hires are going to get it. The new hires are generally younger people. They have little kids or they are going to want a little kid,” Peschek said.

    “It’s beyond the cost of child care,” she said. “If they can’t find anywhere, we’re going to lose them.” 

    As Peschek worked on a way to address the situation, she also wondered how she could include apprenticeship in the solution. The answer: incorporating early educator apprenticeships into a custom-built child care center tailored to the trade union’s needs. Last month, The Hechinger Report wrote about San Francisco’s child care apprenticeship program. 

    “Apprenticeship is my jam,” said Peschek, who emphasized that apprenticeship is a mode of education, not limited to any specific profession. While the word apprentice is often associated with roles like machinists, it is just the term for an educational path that includes paid, on-the-job training. Early educator apprenticeships do just that, providing classes and training alongside paid work experience to help hopeful teachers earn required credentials and get full-time jobs. “I want that pathway available for our teachers and assistant teachers,” she said.

    With a combination of institute money, grants and donations, the Machinists Institute bought land and is constructing Little Wings Early Learning Academy in Everett, Washington. Its name is inspired by the local economy, which is powered in part by a nearby Boeing factory. The center will serve workers in the trade union, who will be able to send their young children for care starting as early as 4 a.m. through as late as midnight. Care will also be available on weekends, to accommodate a range of shifts. It is scheduled to open this spring.

    Machinists, maritime industry workers and other local tradespeople and apprentices will pay a discounted rate for child care, which will also be available to area residents to enroll their kids. 

    Peschek’s hopes are high, for all of the apprentices the center will involve. 

    That’s in part because of the experience some early educator apprentices have had. Apprenticeships have been a part of the trades for centuries, but they are relatively novel in education. 

    The option changed the course of Carlota Hernández de Cruz’s life. For years, with only an elementary school education from when she grew up in Mexico, she was the primary caregiver for her three children while her husband was the breadwinner. When her youngest child was still in child care, at a California Head Start program run by an area YMCA, she began working a few hours a day as a parent intern at the center. 

    She eventually encountered Pamm Shaw, who created one of the first early educator apprenticeship programs in the country for the YMCA of the East Bay, in California’s Alameda County. Shaw encouraged Hernández de Cruz to take classes and work toward becoming an early childhood teacher. 

    “I’m originally from Mexico,” Hernández de Cruz said, remembering her apprehension. “I came with zero English.” But Shaw was convincing. 

    Hernández de Cruz took classes, one or two at a time, balancing them with motherhood and homekeeping duties. Then her husband got sick and could no longer work. It took years, but she completed the courses for her associate degree. Just a few months before graduation, her husband died. 

    Hernández de Cruz, now 53, knew that although what she had accomplished was monumental, it wasn’t enough. Thanks to her apprenticeship, however, her bachelor’s degree coursework was paid for, even though it was sometimes a struggle to keep up with the requirements of online courses and lectures in English, while solo parenting and working. 

    In 2019, Hernández de Cruz earned that bachelor’s degree but turned down a job running a child care center. She wasn’t ready. When she was approached again in 2021 about a director role, at the center where she was working, she agreed. There have been ups and downs: That center closed and she was back to teaching for a while. But now she runs the Vera Casey Center, a Head Start site for infants and toddlers in Berkeley that is part of the YMCA of the East Bay.

    “I feel I can say financially I’m stable,” Hernández de Cruz said, and she said she is proud of herself and her children. Her kids grew up watching their mother work and study hard and have had opportunities she didn’t when she was younger, even though she said they all faltered, and flunked a few classes, when their father died. Her younger daughter just graduated from a nursing program and her older daughter completed a bachelor’s degree in child development and is now pursuing a master’s degree. Both daughters live at home with her, as do her parents. (Her son, she said, is still taking classes and finding his way.) “I’m stable but he’s not here with us,” Hernández de Cruz said of her husband, but “being in the classroom with kids, it helped me to heal. That’s what I feel at work. I still feel happy every day.”

    Contact Executive Editor Nirvi Shah at 212-678-3445, on Signal at NirviShah.14 or [email protected]. 

    Reporting on this story was supported by the Higher Ed Media Fellowship.

    This story about child care apprenticeships was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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  • 5 early childhood education highlights of 2025

    5 early childhood education highlights of 2025

    by Jackie Mader, The Hechinger Report
    December 24, 2025

    In the nearly 13 years since I wrote my first early childhood story for The Hechinger Report, I have never experienced a year quite like 2025. From the gutting of federal early childhood offices to threats to Head Start and the deeply felt ramifications of aggressive federal immigration enforcement, news on the early ed beat felt constant — and especially urgent — this year.  

    Amid all this, there were some promising steps taken, especially at the state level, to elevate children’s issues and pay for programs that support the earliest years of life. Here are five highlights, including a few you may have missed: 

    New Mexico introduced universal child care. New Mexico was the first state in the country to roll out universal child care to every family, regardless of income. Experts are cautiously optimistic, and acknowledge the state likely has some kinks to work out. One New Mexico source I spoke to said she’s especially worried that wealthier families will snatch up spots if guardrails aren’t put in place to prioritize certain populations, including children with disabilities. Another advocate told me she is worried that the wages for early childhood educators are still too low. This is a story that will continue to play out over the next few years, and will be watched carefully. Still, in a country that has long underfunded early learning, experts are hopeful that other states will follow suit and invest more in the child care industry in ways that support the child care staff and families.

    New Jersey, which leads the nation in excluding young children with disabilities, committed to investigate how to improve inclusive practices: Earlier this year, a Hechinger Report investigation found New Jersey is the worst in the nation at making sure young students with disabilities are learning alongside their peers for at least 80 percent of the day, which is a federal metric for inclusion. After our series was published, a council that advises New Jersey education officials on special education issues announced it will investigate inclusion rates for young children and look at how state educators and administrators are trained.

    States and municipalities invested in early childhood: Cincinnati, Montana and California’s Alameda County increased their support for early learning this year, said Emmy Liss, a researcher and policy consultant for the think tank New America’s New Practice Lab. In San Antonio, the city’s pre-K program expanded this year to serve infants and toddlers. In Colorado, voters approved new “taxing districts” that will raise sales tax for early childhood programs. “We see this consistent pattern of mayors, would-be mayors, county officials, saying, ‘Our families can’t withstand this anymore, and we have the power and the mandate from our community to invest in early childhood,’” Liss said. “I feel optimistic because of that.”

    Some states expanded family-friendly policies: After reporting by Hechinger contributor Sarah Carr this year found few parents are made aware of their infant’s rights to early intervention services, Illinois passed a law requiring that families with infants who stay in the NICU are connected to those early therapies. In Colorado, state officials added NICU leave to the state’s paid family medical leave program. Minnesota policymakers are on the cusp of launching their state’s paid family leave program.

    Pittsburgh embraced a citywide play-based initiative: After decades of research that shows the importance of play for healthy development, a new initiative in Pittsburgh is putting research into action. After funding several years of play-based projects around the city, the Let’s Play, PGH program, funded by the nonprofit Remake Learning and the Grable and Henry L. Hillman foundations, rolled out permanent play-based experiences this year. Those include a “Clayground,” where families can try hands-on clay sculpting, and a “Discovery Tree,” an indoor structure with various play and learning features. “I think society, especially in education, we’re moving away from valuing play in a way that it’s often spoken of more in a pejorative sense, like there’s more serious things we have to do,” said Tyler Samstag, executive director of Remake Learning. “But there’s this rich research around the importance of play,” he added. And, “there’s a kind of reeling back from the pandemic era of always being in front of a screen.” 

    I also asked a few early childhood experts what they plan to watch for in 2026:

    • I’m watching the dual trends of state momentum for universal child care proposals against the budgetary headwinds states are facing as a result of economic policies and H.R. 1 [the “big, beautiful bill”]. 

    — Elliot Haspel, senior fellow at Capita

    • The early care and education community will have the opportunity to stake out bold policy positions, like those we saw in New Mexico, New York, Connecticut, Montana and Vermont this past year, while facing the challenge of protecting children, families and educators from federal policies that will wreak havoc on safety net programs and state budgets. 

    — Albert Wat, deputy director of advocacy and impact at the Alliance for Early Success

    • I am paying attention to whether there are signs of even a minor shift away from this dominant narrative — that something close to universal child care is the ‘true goal,’ which we now seem to be accepting without question. My concern is that the needs of young children will once again get blotted out by the needs of grown-ups, the needs of the economy, the needs of business. 

    — Katharine B. Stevens, founder and president of the Center on Child and Family Policy

    • Differences between the House and Senate funding bills, which will be settled in January, which could affect funding for various early childhood programs.

    — Sarah Gilliland, senior policy manager, New America’s New Practice Lab

    • With New York City’s cost of living driving families away in droves, the time is ripe for universal child care — and it can happen! We look forward to working with Mayor-elect Mamdani and his team as they develop plans that lift up home-based child care as a vital support. 

    — Jessica Sager, CEO, All Our Kin

    Thank you so much to all of you for your support and readership this year, and please don’t hesitate to reach out with any story ideas, questions or comments. Happy holidays!

    This story about early childhood education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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  • The Trump administration’s biggest impact on education in 2025 

    The Trump administration’s biggest impact on education in 2025 

    by Nirvi Shah, The Hechinger Report
    December 18, 2025

    Even with a conservative think tank’s blueprint detailing how the second Trump administration should reimagine the federal government’s role in education, few might have predicted what actually materialized this year for America’s schools and colleges. 

    Or what might be yet to come. 

    “2025 will go down as a banner year for education: the year we restored merit in higher education, rooted out waste, fraud and abuse, and began in earnest returning education to the states,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon told The Hechinger Report. She listed canceling K-12 grants she called wasteful, investing more in charter schools, ending college admissions that consider race or anything beyond academic achievement and making college more affordable as some of the year’s accomplishments. 

    “Best of all,” she said, “we’ve begun breaking up the federal education bureaucracy and returning education control to parents and local communities. These are reforms conservatives have championed for decades — and in just 12 months, we’ve made them a reality.” 

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education. 

    McMahon’s characterization of the year is hardly universal. Earlier this month, Senate Democrats, led by independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, called out some of the administration’s actions this year. They labeled federal changes, especially plans to divide the Education Department’s duties across the federal government, dangerous and likely to cause chaos for schools and colleges. 

    “Already, this administration has cancelled billions of dollars in education programs, illegally withheld nearly $7 billion in formula funds, and proposed to fully eliminate many of the programs included in the latest transfer,” the senators wrote in a letter to Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, chair of the committee that oversees education. “In our minds, that is unacceptable.” 

    So, what really happened to education this year? It was almost impossible for the average observer to keep track of the array of changes across colleges and universities, K-12 schools, early education and education research — and what it has all meant. This is a look back at how the education world was transformed. 

    Related: Tracking Trump: How he’s dismantling the Education Department and more 

    Higher education

    The administration was especially forceful in the higher education arena. It used measures including antidiscrimination law to quickly freeze billions of dollars in higher education research funding, interrupting years-long medical studies and coercing Columbia, Brown, Northwestern and other institutions into handing over multimillion-dollar payments and agreeing to policy changes demanded by the administration.

    A more widespread “compact” promising preference for federal funding to universities that agreed to largely ideological principles had almost no takers. But in the face of government threats, universities and colleges scrapped diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs that provided support based on race and other characteristics, and banned transgender athletes from competing on teams corresponding to genders other than the ones they were assigned at birth.

    As the administration unleashed its set of edicts, Republicans in Congress also expanded taxes on college and university endowments. And the One Big Beautiful Bill Act made other big changes to higher education, such as limiting graduate student borrowing and eliminating certain loan forgiveness programs. That includes public service loan forgiveness for graduates who take jobs with organizations the administration designated as having a “substantial illegal purpose” because they help refugees or transgender youth. In response, states, cities, labor unions and nonprofits immediately filed suit, arguing that the rule violated the First Amendment. 

    The administration has criticized universities, colleges and liberal students for curbing the speech of conservatives by shouting them down or blocking their appearances on campuses. However, it proceeded to revoke the visas of and begin deportation proceedings against international students who joined protests or wrote opinions criticizing Israeli actions in Gaza and U.S. government policy there.  

    Meanwhile, emboldened legislatures and governors in red states pushed back on what faculty could say in classrooms. College presidents including James Ryan at the University of Virginia and Mark Welsh III at Texas A&M were forced out in the aftermath of controversies over these issues. — Jon Marcus

    Related: How Trump 2.0 upended education research and statistics in one year  

    K-12 education

    Since Donald Trump returned to office earlier this year, K-12 schools have lost millions of dollars in sweeping cuts to federal grants, including money that helped schools serve students who are deaf or blind, grants that bolstered the dwindling rural teacher workforce and funding for Wi-Fi hotspots. 

    Last summer, the Trump administration briefly froze billions of dollars in federal funding for schools on June 30, one day before districts would typically apply to receive it. Although the money was restored in late July, some school leaders said they no longer felt confident they’ll receive all expected federal funds next year. And they are braced for more cuts to federal budgets as the U.S. Department of Education is dismembered.

    That process, as well as the end goal of returning the department’s responsibilities to the states, has raised uncertainty about whether federal money will continue to be earmarked for the same purposes. If the state of Illinois is in charge of federal funding for every school in the state, said Todd Dugan, superintendent of a rural Illinois district, will rural schools still get money to boost student achievement or will the state decide there are more pressing needs?  

    As part of layoffs at the Education Department during the government shutdown in the fall, the Trump administration cut loose almost everyone who works in the Office of Special Education Programs, alarming many parents and advocates. About 7.5 million children ages 3 to 21 are served under federal law protecting students with disabilities, and the office had already lost staffers after the Trump administration dismissed nearly half the Education Department’s staff in March. Some worry this additional round of layoffs is a big step toward moving oversight of how states treat students with disabilities to the Department of Health and Human Services.

    Even as the Trump administration attempts to push more control over education to the states, it has aggressively expanded federal power over school choice and transgender student rights in public schools. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act will create a federal school voucher program, allowing taxpayers to donate up to $1,700 for scholarships that families can use to pay for private school. The program won’t start until 2027, and states can choose whether to participate — setting up potentially divisive fights over new money for education in Democratic-controlled states. 

    Already, some Democratic-led states have come to the defense of schools in funding and legal fights with the federal government over transgender athletes participating in sports. The U.S. departments of Education and Justice launched a special investigations team to look into complaints of Title IX violations, targeting school districts and states that don’t restrict accommodations or civil rights protections for transgender students. Legal experts expect the U.S. Supreme Court to ultimately decide how Title IX — a federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education — applies to public schools.

    The federal government directly runs just two systems of schools — one for military families and the other for children of tribal nations. In an executive order signed in January, the president directed both systems to offer parents a portion of federal funding allocated to their children to attend private, religious or charter schools. 

    And as part of the dismantling of the federal Education Department, the Interior Department — which oversees 183 tribal schools across nearly two dozen states — will assume greater control of Indian education programs. In addition to rolling out school choice at its campuses, the department will take over Indian education grants to public schools across the country, Native language programs, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian programs, tribally controlled colleges and universities, and many other institutions. — Ariel Gilreath and Neal Morton

    Related: Trump administration makes good on many Project 2025 education goals

    Early education

    Early education was not at the top of Trump’s agenda when he returned to office. On the campaign trail, when asked if he would support legislation to make child care affordable, he gave an unfocused answer, suggesting tariff revenue could be tapped to bring down costs. Asked a similar question, Vice President JD Vance suggested that care by family members was one potential solution to child care shortages. 

    However, many of the administration’s actions, including cuts to the government workforce and grants, have affected children who depend on federal support. In April, the administration abruptly closed five of 10 regional offices supporting Head Start, the free, federally funded early childhood program for children from low-income families. Head Start program managers worried they would be caught up in a freeze on grant funding that affected all agencies. Even though administration officials said funds would keep flowing to Head Start, some centers reported having problems drawing down their money. The prolonged government shutdown, which ended Nov. 12 after 43 days, also forced some Head Start programs to temporarily close. 

    Though the shutdown is over, Head Start advocates are still worried. Many of the administration’s actions have been guided by the Project 2025 policy document created by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Project 2025 calls for eliminating Head Start, which serves about 715,000 children from birth to age 5, for a savings of about $12 billion a year. 

    The One Big Beautiful Bill Act contained some perks for parents, including an increase in the child tax credit from $2,000 to $2,200. The bill also created a new program called Trump accounts: Families can contribute up to $5,000 each year until a child turns 18, at which point the Trump account will turn into an individual retirement account. For children born between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028, the government will provide a $1,000 bonus. Billionaires Michael and Susan Dell have also promised to contribute $250 to the account of each child ages 10 and under who lives in a ZIP code with a median household income of $150,000 or less. 

    That program will launch in summer 2026. — Christina A. Samuels

    Contact staff writer Nirvi Shah at 212-678-3445, on Signal at NirviShah.14 or [email protected].   

    This story about the Trump administration’s impact on education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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  • What parents, teachers say about Trump’s policies on education

    What parents, teachers say about Trump’s policies on education

    by Caroline Preston, The Hechinger Report
    December 18, 2025

    Child care workers, students and teachers shared dismay over Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that are disrupting learning. School superintendents and college presidents described how uncertainty around federal funding is making their jobs far trickier. 

    Others — including a charter school leader and a for-profit college president — told The Hechinger Report they were grateful for recent changes to education policy, including a new emphasis on school choice and on the importance of workforce education. 

    Those were just a few of the many reactions we heard from 17 parents, students, educators and others around the country when we asked about the impact of President Donald Trump’s actions this year on their schools and communities. Several people told us that with the federal government stepping back from many of its long-standing responsibilities in education, they and their communities were taking on new roles. 

    Below are excerpts from the interviews, which have been lightly edited for clarity and length.      

    Sylvelia Pittman, math interventionist, Henry H. Nash Elementary School, Chicago Public Schools 

    Under this administration we have witnessed ICE being in our neighborhoods. ICE detained two parents of our students. The husband of one of my colleagues was detained and deported to Mexico. The husband of another colleague was questioned at work because he’s half Latino, half white. So it’s hit hard. And then with the cuts that have been made to the Education Department, those have hit my school. We have a large population of special education students. We are about 35 percent Latino and the rest of our students are Black. Many of our families receive SNAP benefits and they were affected. Trump withheld $8 million from our schools because of the mayor’s Black Student Success Plan, for students to continue to learn their history and bring more Black teachers into schools. It’s almost like we’ve taken hit after hit. It’s just as stressful as when we had Covid. We have had to come to grips with the idea that we must take care of our own. It’s going to be up to us, to city officials. Homelessness, health care, mental health — all of these things have to be addressed at the state and local level, because we can’t wait for the federal government to get it right. 

    — Caroline Preston

    TJ Katz, sophomore at Columbia University in New York, which reached a deal with the Trump administration restoring $400 million in federal funding frozen due to allegations of discriminatory conduct, including a failure to protect Jewish students during protests over the Israel-Hamas war

    Campus feels completely different than two years ago. All of the protests have stopped. The Trump administration effectively eliminated them. Whether you want to say Columbia cares about antisemitism, they definitely fear what it would mean to have $400 million stripped away from their budget. As a Jewish student on campus, I would absolutely say I’m glad that the change happened. As someone who’s a massive proponent of democracy and free speech, I have qualms about it. What if there was an administration that didn’t align with what I think is just? We now have a precedent set where the administration could snap their fingers and say this is what has to happen on campuses now. It is slightly scary the precedent that’s been set and the power a president now has over higher education in America. 

    — Meredith Kolodner 

    Ian Rowe, founder of Vertex Partnership Academies, a charter school in New York City, which Linda McMahon toured earlier this year in her first public school visit as education secretary 

    In the Trump administration, there’s a greater affinity for the concept of school choice. That alone is a huge breath of fresh air. There are other things, too — for example, the federal tax credit scholarship. On the surface, it may not seem like that would benefit charter schools, but it does. The money could pay for tuition for a student to attend a private religious school or it could cover SAT prep, tutoring — and that goes to any kind of parent. You could have parents in a public charter school who now have the additional resources to be able to pay for the kinds of things that a lot of middle- and upper-class families are doing to supplement education for their kids. 

    With the Department of Education already heavily gutted, it’s had zero impact on us — literally zero impact. But even if there’s not a formal federal Department of Education, there are a couple of different functions that are important. One is as the scorekeeper: There absolutely needs to be an assessment, annual or biannual, where you can consistently compare 2026 to 2024 to 2022 to 2020. That’s crucial because we do need, every couple years, a sense of what percent of our kids are reading against a common standard. I also think there is value in having kind of a best practices reservoir so that the federal government can be the place to show, ‘Here’s some innovative work going on in Indiana vs. New York.’ But in general, there’s a very limited number of things that I think could really add value in education at the federal level. 

    — Nirvi Shah

    Meka Mo, millennial comedian and nonprofit worker in New York City who took out student loans for undergraduate and graduate school  

    I’m one of the people who should be receiving public service loan forgiveness, but that’s in limbo and tied up in court right now. We don’t know what’s going to happen. So honestly, it’s kind of a mess, and no one’s paying attention to it, because everyone has, like, one thousand other things going on. Basically all our financial futures are being fought out in the courts right now. It’s like they’re not trying to have social upward mobility in the country. 

    — Marina Villeneuve 

    Leticia Wiggins, librarian at the Center for Ethnic Studies at Ohio State University, which closed its Office of Diversity and Inclusion and Center for Belonging and Social Change in response to the Trump administration’s threats to withhold funding from schools that use race-conscious practices in programs, scholarships and other areas of campus life 

    Those were places where people could go and feel a sense of community and that they belonged somewhere, and now those spaces no longer exist. Some of the student communities have been sort of dissolved — students feel at a loss for where to go. We’re still trying to conduct business as usual and make up for what’s lacking, but everything is just getting more threatened in terms of what we’re even able to talk about. 

    — Meredith Kolodner 

    Todd Dugan, superintendent of Bunker Hill Community Unit School District 8 in Illinois, which saw roughly $22,000 in Title II federal funds frozen for services to recruit, retain and train teachers

    I’ve been a superintendent for 14 years. It’s definitely getting harder. It’s taking a job that’s already hard and getting harder, and making it harder still. And it appears that it’s being done needlessly. The freezing and clawing back of Title II was announced on June 30, when usually we apply for it on July 1. And then they finally released it the second week of August. It was a lot of extra work making things difficult for a job that is already difficult. I don’t know what the game was, because Title II funding didn’t get clawed back. It just made everybody anxious. 

    — Ariel Gilreath

    Michael A. Elliott, president of Amherst College, in Massachusetts 

    I see an impact in the growing anxiety of our international students, faculty and staff members. Many are questioning whether there is a safe and stable place for them on our campus or in this country. These uncertainties touch every part of their lives — academic, personal and professional. They influence decisions about research, travel and connections with family, and they undermine the sense of belonging and security that is essential to a place like Amherst. When members of our community carry this kind of persistent fear, the effects are felt by all of us who care about them and want to support them as extraordinary classmates and colleagues. 

    — Lawrie Mifflin 

    Kyshanna Patman, a North Carolina mother of four children who works from home

    It’s been a crazy year, especially since he’s been in office, with the food stamp benefits being delayed, Medicaid — it’s crazy. And then the things they’re saying about autism. My 4-year-old is autistic and it’s really, really crazy how they’re making the assumption about women taking Tylenol and causing autism. It has not been a good experience since he’s been in office.

    When SNAP benefits were delayed, I was struggling trying to come up with the money to keep food in the house. I have four kids in the house and they need to eat. I mainly made sure they had enough before I tried to eat anything myself.

    And with the Medicaid work requirements, I just don’t understand. It shouldn’t have to be a requirement for people to have Medicaid. People have preexisting conditions. You’re talking about a work requirement just for people to be seen. It doesn’t make any sense. 

    There’s too many changes he’s trying to do. They’re not trying to listen to what people have to say. People put you in [office]. He’s supposed to be listening to us and working for us instead of being stricter. You’re supposed to be helping and he’s not doing that. He’s doing the complete opposite. 

    — Jackie Mader 

    Leslie Cornick, provost and vice president of academic affairs at California State University, Chico, which lost funding for teacher training after the Trump administration canceled two grant programs of roughly $600 million, citing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives

    One of the challenges we are still continuing to follow up on is the loss of the Teacher Quality Partnership and SEED grants that support stipends for students who are going into teacher education programs and becoming teachers in rural counties and communities. Many of those students are Latinx and are coming to Chico State to become teachers so they can go back into their rural communities that desperately need teachers.

    We lost $700,000 or so. We couldn’t run the entire fall cohort of that program this year because access to those grants is still being litigated. We’re making the case for why these grants are so important and why they should not be discontinued. But in the meantime, we don’t have the money and so we can’t support the students. That means we are losing students that we will never get back. And there’s an impact not only on that individual student, but on that student’s family, generationally, and on our economy in the state of California because we’re not getting those teachers out into those rural communities that need them.

    From my perspective, it’s critically important that we continue to engage the administration in dialogue and help them understand especially the value of the regional public institutions. 

    — Olivia Sanchez

    Nicole Greene, a special education teacher at Scarsdale Middle School, in New York

    The landscape of special education has changed dramatically in the 13 years that I’ve been teaching, and that’s thanks to the ample research and the amount of effort that can go into advancing the field, advancing the profession. Without that, how do teachers get better? How do we learn more about how students learn best? Maybe we can agree that grants are good for furthering the field.

    A child should be able to go to any state in the country and their needs should be supported based on federal law in equal measure. At the end of the day, the argument that we are going to leave it up to the states just means that they can interpret IDEA however they see fit, without anyone ensuring that that’s in compliance with what was written. That’s a dangerous place to leave kids. 

    — Christina A. Samuels

    Daniel Cordova, junior at Edmonds-Woodway High School in the Edmonds School District in Washington state, which enrolls many children of migrant parents who work on nearby farms

    It’s scary times right now. You leave school, and you don’t know if you’re going to see your friends the next day because they might have some orders from the government to go back to their country. One of my friends is an immigrant. He’s worried like crazy about being deported. My friend’s mother has a deportation order. They’re struggling a lot right now. We feel it across the whole school. 

    It kind of changes the atmosphere. There’s less trust. It doesn’t feel safe, I would say. 

    — Neal Morton

    Brad Kuykendall, CEO of the for-profit Western Technical College, in El Paso, Texas 

    I point back to the executive order issued in April that dealt with preparing Americans for high-paying skilled trade jobs for the future. For far too long, there’s been a lack of acknowledgement of the importance of career, technical and trade schools. We were looked at as a lesser option for students, and to a degree, that’s still the case. But I think we’re starting to see that change a bit. The refocus and reemphasis — not as the only option, but as one of the many options — is very healthy for our economy as a whole and for our nation to continue to grow.

    Under the Biden administration, we did feel like there was definitely not as friendly of an environment [for for-profit colleges] to operate in. I did feel that we were underrepresented in many of the negotiated rulemaking sessions in the previous administration on regulations that impacted us far more than any other institution. We were one or two out of 15 seats at the table, so trying to come to consensus about a regulation in that environment was just very difficult. Going into negotiated rulemaking [to develop regulations under the ’big, beautiful bill’], I think there’s more fair representation at the table, and it’s a more balanced approach. 

    — Meredith Kolodner 

    Mike Shaver, president and CEO at Brightpoint, an Illinois nonprofit that operates child-focused programs, including free, federally funded Head Start centers and home-based Early Head Start services 

    It’s impossible to escape that this administration has not exactly done a great job at supporting poor families when you look at what happened with the struggle over SNAP benefits. And in our state, the increased ICE enforcement activities have had a profound impact. We have seen attendance levels drop.

    In November, an early learning employee — not someone in our program — got out of her vehicle, was walking into the facility where she was an instructor, and ICE agents followed her in, removed her from the building and detained her. It’s really hard to overstate what that kind of image does, not only for the staff who show up every day to meet the needs of these families, but also the families themselves. This is just a lot of added stressors for families, in addition to the challenges that already brought them to our Head Start programs. 

    — Jackie Mader

    Tiffany Tangel, a disability advocate and parent of three — including two children with dyslexia and other learning differences — in western New York 

    I’m closely watching what’s happening with IDEA. Trump said he was going to move it to Health and Human Services. A lot of people are worried about that. There’s a lot of disabilities that have nothing to do with health in that way. My kids have dyslexia. When it was newly diagnosed for my oldest, I went to our pediatrician and asked for resources on dyslexia, for places I could go for help, and they said we don’t know and the school should be helping you.

    I’m also working to restart our school’s special education PTA. Our school had one, but it closed in 2020. With so much unknown in terms of what’s next for our kids, a group of us just felt like now it was needed more than ever. Our hope is to be a place for the parents, because when you have kids in special education, it can be very lonely, and you feel very isolated. And then we really do want to focus on the teachers, because we know as soon as resources are cut, the teachers are feeling it.

    You’ve got to keep advocating at a federal level, at a state level, but it’s going to come down to your individual level, too. 

    — Christina A. Samuels

    Aiden Sirk, high school senior, Lawrenceburg, Indiana

    Conservatives, they’re not about, ‘We don’t want kids to have an education,’ — it’s that we want to make sure that we’re doing it in the most efficient way possible. And with the Department of Education cut, what they’re making sure they’re doing is that we are still going to have Pell Grants, we’re still going to have FAFSA, I can see that’s OK. There is a lot of bureaucracy at the Department of Education.

    A lot of these workers, they’re getting paid and they’re not even coming into the office like they were pre-pandemic. So we didn’t really need all that workforce. But then again, there is a proper way to do things. You can’t just dictate: ‘We’re shutting it down.’ You have to go through Congress. You have to go through the courts. And you have to do it the right way. So yes, I see it’s reasonable, but the way they’re doing it is not reasonable. 

    — Christina A. Samuels

    Heather Shotton, new president of Fort Lewis College, in rural Durango, Colorado, where nearly 40 percent of students are Native American. The college is a Native American-Serving, Nontribal Institution. Shotton is an enrolled citizen of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes 

    Fort Lewis lost $2.27 million in Title III money for Native American-serving institutions. The money paid for academic success initiatives: summer bridge programs, peer educators, various academic supports. That impacts our entire campus. Yes, it helped Indigenous students, but it also helped all of our students. It’s part of the federal government trust responsibility to support Native students. The majority of our Native students are not at tribal colleges and universities. And the majority of tribal colleges are two-year colleges. The shifting of money from Native-serving institutions to tribal colleges — itʼs one-time money, spread across 36 institutions. 

    — Nirvi Shah

    Sevan Minassian-Godner, third-year student at the University of California, Irvine and president of Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi and Jewish campus organization Hillel 

    Oct. 7 was a really big event on our campuses, and there was a lot of antisemitism floating around. But that kind of petered off after the first year, and we’re now at a point where it’s much less than it was my first year. But I wouldn’t necessarily attribute that to the Trump administration. I just think we’re further from the incident and from the encampments. I will say that we have experienced an uptick in right-leaning antisemitism recently; there are more groups on campus now that are participating in right-leaning antisemitism. I think that’s become more OK with the Trump administration in office. And I actually do attribute it a lot to Charlie Kirk’s death, too. I think that that ignited a lot of people early on in the year. People are more openly antisemitic, and especially on the right, and this kind of far-right white supremacist ideology, I think, has found its way into a lot more people’s hearts recently. 

    — Meredith Kolodner 

    Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at [email protected].

    This story about education policies and the Trump administration was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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  • Trump administration checks off many Project 2025 education goals

    Trump administration checks off many Project 2025 education goals

    by Christina A. Samuels, The Hechinger Report
    December 18, 2025

    Last year, Project 2025 was a conservative wish list: a grab bag of proposals large and small that would transform the federal government, including in education.

    Months later, many of those wishes have become reality. That includes, at least in part, Project 2025’s ultimate goal of doing away with the Education Department.

    The department still exists — getting rid of it completely would require congressional action— but it is greatly diminished: Much of the department’s work is being farmed out to other federal agencies. Half of its workforce of about 4,100 people have left or been fired. And Education Secretary Linda McMahon wrote after her confirmation that she was leading the department’s “final mission.”

    Eliminating the Education Department was just one of many goals, however. While the administration did not meet all the other tasks in this “to-do” list below, compiled by The Hechinger Report and taken directly from Project 2025, there’s still three more years to go.

    Early childhood

    Eliminate Head Start: NO. Head Start, which provides free preschool for low-income children, still exists, though some individual centers had problems accessing their money because of temporary freezes from the Department of Government Efficiency and the prolonged government shutdown. The federal government also closed five of 10 Head Start regional offices, which collectively served 22 states.

    Pay for in-home child care instead of universal (center-based) daycare: NO. Project 2025 states that “funding should go to parents either to offset the cost of staying home with a child or to pay for familial, in-home childcare.” There have been no moves to fulfill this goal, but the budget reconciliation bill the president signed in July increased the child tax credit and introduced “Trump Accounts” for children under age 18.

    Expand child care for military families: YES. The National Defense Authorization Act, passed on Dec. 17 and sent to the president for his signature, authorizes over $491 million to design and build new child care centers for these families, among other provisions. The Department of Defense provides child care to military families on a sliding scale based on income. However, about 20 percent of military families who need child care can’t get it because there is not enough space.  

    Give businesses an incentive to provide “on-site” child care: NO. Project 2025 states that “across the spectrum of professionalized child care options, on-site care puts the least stress on the parent-child bond.” 

    K-12 education

    Move the National Center for Education Statistics to the Census Bureau; transfer higher education statistics to the Labor Department: NO. Education data collection remains at the Education Department. However, the agency’s capacity has been sharply reduced following mass firings and the termination of key contracts — a development not envisioned in Project 2025. At the same time, Donald Trump directed the center to launch a major new data collection on college admissions to verify that colleges are no longer giving preferences based on race, ethnicity or gender.

    Expand choice for families by making federal funding portable to many school options: PARTIAL. In January, the president signed an executive order encouraging “educational freedom.” One of the order’s provisions requires the departments of Defense and Interior — which run K-12 schools for military families and tribal communities, respectively — to allow parents to use some federal funding meant for their children’s education at private, religious and charter schools. However, that initiative for Indian schools ended up being scaled back after tribes protested. The “big, beautiful” spending bill signed in July created a national voucher program, but states have to opt in to participate.  

    Send money now controlled by the federal government, such as Title I and special education funding, to the states as block grants: NO. In the current fiscal year, about $18.5 billion in Title I money flowed to districts to support low-income students. States received about $14 billion to support educating children with disabilities. Project 2025 envisions giving states that money with no strings attached, which it says would allow more flexibility. While the administration has not lifted requirements for all states, it is considering requests from Indiana, Iowa and Oklahoma that would allow those states to spend their federal money with less government oversight. Also, in his fiscal 2026 budget proposal, Trump floated the idea of consolidating several smaller education programs, such as those supporting rural students, homeless students and after-school activities, into one $2 billion block grant. That would be far less than the combined $6.5 billion set aside for these programs in the current budget. 

    Reject “radical gender ideology” and “critical race theory,” and eliminate requirements to accept such ideology as a condition of receiving federal funds: YES. Immediately after Trump was sworn into office, he reversed a Biden administration rule that included protection of LGBTQ+ students under Title IX, which bans sex-based discrimination in education programs and activities that receive federal money. Trump also signed an executive order threatening to withhold federal dollars from schools over what the order called “gender ideology extremism” and “critical race theory.” In the months since, the administration launched Title IX investigations in school districts where transgender students are allowed to participate on sports teams and use bathrooms that align with their gender identity. It sent letters to schools across the country threatening to pull funding unless they agree to its interpretation of civil rights laws, to include banning diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies and initiatives. The Education Department also pulled federal research grants and investigated schools and colleges over DEI policies it calls discriminatory. 

    Pass a federal “parents’ bill of rights,” modeled after similar bills passed at the state level: NO. House Republicans passed a Parents’ Bill of Rights Act two years ago, which would have required districts to post all curricula and reading materials, require schools receiving Title I money to notify parents of any speakers visiting a school, and mandate at least two teacher-parent conferences each year, among other provisions. The Senate did not take it up, and lawmakers have not reintroduced the bill in this session of Congress. About half of the states have their own version of a parentsʼ bill of rights.

    Shrink the pool of students eligible for free school meals by ending the “community eligibility provision” and reject universal school meal efforts: NO. Under current rules, schools are allowed to provide free lunch to all students, regardless of their family’s income, if the school or district is in a low-income area. That provision remains in place. The Trump administration has not changed income eligibility requirements for free and reduced-price lunch at schools: Families that earn within 185 percent of the federal poverty line still qualify for reduced lunch and those within 130 percent of the poverty line qualify for free lunch.

    Higher education

    Roll back student loan forgiveness and income-driven repayment plans: PARTIAL. Three income-driven repayment plans will be phased out next year and a new one — the Repayment Assistance Plan — will be added. RAP requires borrowers to make payments for 30 years before they qualify for loan forgiveness. The administration also reached a proposed agreement to end even earlier the most controversial repayment plan known as SAVE (Saving on a Valuable Education). Trump officials have referred to the SAVE plan as illegal loan forgiveness. Under the plan, some borrowers were eligible to have their loans cleared after only 10 years, while making minimal payments.

    End Parent PLUS loans: PARTIAL. These loans, which parents take out to help their children, had no limit. They still exist, but as of July 2026, there will be an annual cap of $20,000 and a lifetime limit of $65,000 per child. Grad PLUS loans, which allow graduate students to borrow directly on behalf of themselves, are being phased out. Under the Repayment Assistance Plan, graduates in certain fields, such as medicine, can borrow no more than $50,000 a year, or $200,000 over four years.

    Privatize the federal student loan portfolio: NO. The Trump administration reportedly has been shopping a portion of the federal student loan portfolio to private buyers, but no bids have been made public. Project 2025 also called for eliminating the Federal Student Aid office, which is now housed in the Education Department and oversees student loan programs. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the Treasury Department would be a better home for the office, but no plans for a move have been announced. 

    End public service loan forgiveness: NO. PSLF allows borrowers to have part of their debt erased if they work for the government or in nonprofit public service jobs and make at least 120 monthly payments. The structure remains, but a new rule could narrow the definition of the kinds of jobs that qualify for loan forgiveness. The proposed rule raises concerns that borrowers working for groups that assist immigrants, transgender youth or provide humanitarian aid to Palestinians, for example, could be disqualified from loan forgiveness. The new rule would go into effect in July.

    Rescind Biden-era rules around sexual assault and discrimination: YES. The Department of Education almost immediately jettisoned changes that the Biden administration had made in 2024 to Title IX, which governs how universities and colleges handle cases of sexual assault and discrimination. Under the Biden rules, blocked by a federal judge days before Trump’s inauguration, accused students were no longer guaranteed the right to in-person hearings or to cross-examine their accusers. The Trump Education Department then returned to a policy from the president’s first term, under which students accused of sexual assault will be entitled to confront their accusers, through a designee, which the administration says restores due process but advocates say will discourage alleged victims from coming forward.

    Reform higher education accreditation: YES. In an executive order, Trump made it easier for accreditors to be stripped of their authority and new ones to be approved, saying the existing bodies — which, under federal law, oversee the quality of colleges and universities — have ignored poor student outcomes while pushing diversity, equity and inclusion. Florida and Texas have started setting up their own accreditors and said the administration has agreed to expedite the typically yearslong approval process. The Department of Education has earmarked $7 million to support this work and help colleges and universities switch accreditors. 

    Dismantle DEI programs and efforts: PARTIAL. Though the administration called for eliminating college DEI programs and efforts, most of the colleges that have shut down their DEI offices have done so in response to state-level legislation. Around 400 books removed from the Naval Academy library because of concerns that they contained messages of diversity or inclusion, but most of the books were ultimately returned. The National Science Foundation canceled more than 400 grants related to several topics, including DEI. 

    Jill Barshay, Ariel Gilreath, Meredith Kolodner, Jon Marcus, Neal Morton and Olivia Sanchez contributed to this report. 

    This story about Project 2025 and education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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  • 11 numbers that capture the Trump effect on education

    11 numbers that capture the Trump effect on education

    by Sarah Butrymowicz, The Hechinger Report
    December 18, 2025

    About 1.5 million people teach on college campuses in the United States, and nearly 4 million teachers work in its public elementary and secondary schools. More than 15 million undergraduates attend U.S. colleges and universities. There are more than 50 million school-age children across the country.   

    They all have one thing in common: Federal education policy affects their lives. 

    President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon say they want to close the Department of Education and return control of education to the states. At the same time, however, they have aggressively, and rapidly, wielded federal power over schools. 

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education. 

    Here’s a look at some key data points from the first year of Trump’s second term that represent the outsized effect this presidency has had on the nation’s educational institutions and the people within them.

    — 15 —

    Number of executive orders Trump signed that exclusively address colleges or schools 

    In 2017, the first year of his first term, Trump signed two executive orders related to education. This year, he signed three times that number on just a single day in April.

    Among his most notable executive orders was one early in his term requiring the Department of Education to begin dismantling itself. He also established an Artificial Intelligence Education Task Force and asked cabinet members to provide him with a plan to end “radical indoctrination” in schools. Other executive orders have addressed school discipline, transgender athletes, registered apprenticeships and foreign influence on college campuses. 

    Another set of executive orders indirectly affected schools. For instance, the Department of Education interpreted an order about undocumented immigrants to require limiting access to some adult and career and technical education programs. And separately, in a presidential memorandum, Trump ordered universities to begin reporting the race of their applicants and admitted students, not just those who enroll in the fall. 

    — 26 —

    Number of investigations into K-12 transgender policies announced by the Education Department

    At the K-12 level, the administration has given no issue more attention than policies that govern which bathrooms, locker rooms and sports teams transgender students can access. In all, the department has announced at least 26 such investigations, including into six state education agencies and three statewide athletic associations. 

    By comparison, the Trump administration announced eight investigations into antisemitism at elementary and secondary schools and four cases of alleged racial discrimination that hurts white teachers or students. 

    In higher education, it’s the inverse: Just five investigations into transgender issues have been announced, while dozens of cases of antisemitism and racial discrimination are being investigated. 

    — 50+ —

    Number of education-specific lawsuits filed against the Trump administration

    It’s not unusual for presidential administrations to be sued: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton brags about suing the Biden administration 100 times. But the first year of Trump’s second term has been marked by unprecedented legal activity related to his administration’s education actions, according to a review of court documents and other lawsuit trackers. Trump, McMahon and the Department of Education have been sued over efforts to fire employees and dismantle the department, freeze funding and cancel grants, and end diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

    The administration’s track record defending itself in court has been mixed, but it scored a major victory when the Supreme Court allowed its March layoffs of hundreds of Education Department staffers. However, courts have blocked some efforts to ban diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, forced the federal government to pay out some once-frozen grants and allowed Harvard to continue enrolling foreign students. 

    — 1,950 —

    Number of employees who left the Department of Education in the spring

    When Trump took office, the Education Department had more than 4,100 employees. Soon after, those numbers started dropping. In the first seven weeks of the new administration, 572 staffers voluntarily resigned. In March, 1,378 more employees were let go. Many offices were decimated without a clear plan for how or if their work would continue. 

    The National Center for Education Statistics, for example, went from about 100 staffers to three. That office is responsible for collecting data on the nation’s schools and colleges and administering the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Or take the Office for Civil Rights, which is in charge of investigating complaints about civil rights violations, including sexual harassment, racial discrimination and failure to provide an adequate education to students with disabilities. Seven of its 11 regional offices were shuttered and, in all, it lost nearly half its staff. (In December, some of those staffers were temporarily called back to help reduce a backlog of cases.) 

    The administration notified another 466 employees they were being let go during the government shutdown in October. Those positions were reinstated, however, as part of a congressional deal to reopen the government. The department also launched a plan to move large swathes of its work to other agencies, including the departments of Labor, State and Health and Human Services. 

    The Education Department did not respond to several requests for information about how many people are working at the agency now.

    — 5 — 

    Number of regional Head Start offices closed

    As part of the administration’s sweeping reductions in force, five out of 10 regional Head Start offices were abruptly closed and all employees fired in April. The offices, all in blue states, help oversee the free child care services provided by local early education programs for low-income children. In all, the five offices had been responsible for oversight of 318,000 — or 44 percent — of Head Start slots. 

    That wasn’t the only upheaval Head Start programs faced this year. At the end of January, the Trump administration directed agencies to temporarily freeze federal funding for thousands of financial assistance programs, including Head Start. Soon after, the White House said the program was exempt, and later it withdrew the order altogether. (A federal judge eventually ruled the entire directive was illegal.) But dozens of centers serving more than 20,000 children reported weeks-long delays in accessing federal money, with some forced to close temporarily. Then, during the government shutdown in the fall, centers serving 9,000 kids had to close their doors, some for several weeks, according to tracking by the First Five Years Fund.

    — 17% — 

    Decline in new international student enrollment in fall 2025

    The Trump administration’s attacks on foreign students with political views it disliked made international headlines this spring, as it targeted students protesting the Israel-Hamas war for deportation and announced plans to scour the social media accounts of new visa applicants. It also imposed travel restrictions and delayed some processing of student visas. The result is a slower pipeline of new foreign students coming to the United States, according to data from the Institute of International Education.

    The decrease in new international students was driven by graduate students, whose enrollment declined most sharply. But because most returning students stuck with their U.S. education plans, the overall number of foreign students (including those engaged in jobs related to future or past higher education enrollment) ticked down just 1 percent. Still, that’s a big deal for colleges and universities: Graduate students make up the lionʼs share of international enrollment and are a major source of revenue for many colleges. International students typically do not get financial aid, paying full price to attend. 

    — $1,700 —

    Maximum tax break an individual can get for donating to school choice scholarships

    Trump’s signature legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, was a major win for school choice advocates: It created a new federal school voucher program. The law sets up tax credit scholarships — vouchers — families can use to pay for private school tuition, tutoring or other educational expenses. Parents will also be able to use the money to cover homeschooling costs. Starting in 2027, individuals can get a tax credit of up to $1,700 for donations to nonprofits that provide the scholarships. Those nonprofits, in turn, will be in charge of handing out the money. 

    States must opt in if they want schools within their respective borders to be able to participate. At least three states so far have said they will decline, but more than 20 others have already established their own tax credit scholarship programs and are expected to sign up when the federal option becomes available. 

    — 6,353 —

    Number of complaints the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights dismissed between mid-March and mid-September

    In one six-month stretch, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights dismissed more than 6,000 complaints without an investigation, according to a September court filing. By contrast, the Biden administration did the same with 2,527 cases in its final three months. 

    The Trump administration has said in court filings it is following longstanding policies for dismissing cases. Former employees and advocates counter that the jump in dismissals suggests student and parent complaints are not being adequately probed, and that layoffs are affecting an agency that has long struggled to keep up with its caseload. 

    The rate at which the Trump administration reaches a final resolution in the cases it does investigate has significantly slowed. Between mid-March and mid-September, OCR resolved 581 complaints through mediated settlements, voluntary agreements or technical assistance. Another 138 were resolved after an investigation did not find evidence of violations. Those numbers are roughly the same as the last three months of the Biden administration (595 and 119 respectively).

    — $153 million —

    Amount of grant money the administration is spending to promote civics education 

    The Education Department said in September it gave more than $153 million to 85 grantees to work on civics education. That’s a major increase: Since this grant program launched in 2017, just 38 grants worth about $75 million had been awarded in all. 

    Promoting patriotic education is one of McMahon’s goals. “Patriotic education presents American history in a way that is accurate, honest, and inspiring,” her agency said in a September announcement prioritizing discretionary spending on this issue. “It emphasizes a unifying and uplifting portrayal of the nation’s founding ideals.” 

    McMahon also started the America 250 Civics Education Coalition, in preparation for next year’s anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The coalition is made up largely of conservative organizations including Turning Point USA, Moms for Liberty, Hillsdale College and Priests for Life. 

    — $5.8 billion —

    Minimum amount of federal research funding cut or frozen

    Federal research dollars, many of which flow to colleges and universities, were cut way back this year. It’s difficult to calculate exactly how much was lost; this money comes from many agencies and some remains mired in legal battles. The website Grant Witness, run by a group of researchers, tracks canceled or frozen grants. Its data shows that more than $5.1 billion in National Institutes of Health money that had yet to be spent was earmarked for colleges or universities, as was nearly $700 million from the National Science Foundation. (Some of that funding may have been restored.)

    Those agencies were two of the largest sources of federal grants to higher education, but not the only ones. More than $425 million in National Endowment for the Humanities grants, many of which are awarded to colleges, were canceled. (Those cuts were later found to be unlawful.) The Department of Agriculture canceled tens of millions of dollars in higher education research funding, and the Environmental Protection Agency also terminated such grants. 

    The picture doesn’t look better for year two of Trump’s term: The White House has proposed cutting all federal research funding by a third — a decrease of more than $33 billion from 2025. 

    — 0 —

    Number of colleges that have signed the Trump ‘Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education’

    The Trump administration has been aggressive in trying to bend higher education to its will. In October, officials reached out to nine universities, including some of the country’s most selective institutions, with a deal. The schools could be first in line for federal money if they agreed to a litany of demands including: 

    • Publishing standardized test scores for admitted students by race, sex and ethnicity
    • Capping foreign student enrollment at 15 percent
    • Prohibiting transgender females from using women’s locker rooms and bathrooms 
    • Freezing tuition for five years

    So far, none have accepted the offer, with seven universities rejecting it outright. The University of Texas at Austin and Vanderbilt University did not publicly rebuke the compact, but did not sign it. New College of Florida, which was not one of the nine, said it would sign if given the chance. Other universities signed separate agreements with the administration to unfreeze federal money. Columbia University, for example, paid $221 million and accepted a host of conditions to regain access to billions of federal dollars. 

    Contact investigations editor Sarah Butrymowicz at [email protected] or on Signal: @sbutry.04.

    This story about Trump’s effect on education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.  

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  • What the US can teach other countries about home-based child care

    What the US can teach other countries about home-based child care

    by Jackie Mader, The Hechinger Report
    December 17, 2025

    Each day, nearly 70 percent of the world’s children are cared for and educated by adults other than their parents in home-based settings, many of which are informal and run by women. (In the United States, it’s about 30 percent.) In many countries, these home-based settings receive little financial or training support from their governments. 

    This summer, I moderated a panel made up of global child care experts at the National Association for Family Child Care’s (NAFCC) global learning convening. The event marked the first time that the association brought together child care leaders from across the globe to share their expertise in how family child care works in their countries. About 1,000 people attended, including representatives from Bangladesh, Ecuador, South Africa and the United States, to discuss how early learning programs face similar challenges around the world, including low pay and a lack of respect. Attendees also discussed progress securing funding and more awareness and recognition for the sector.  

    The session I moderated, on home-based child care policy and advocacy, featured Grace Matlhape as one of the panelists. Matlhape is the chief executive director of SmartStart, a nonprofit that supports high-quality home-based early learning programs in South Africa.

    The organization’s model, which trains community members to teach a play-based curriculum and run their own early learning programs, has been found to decrease achievement gaps between higher- and lower-income children. 

    In early 2025, after advocacy from Matlhape and other early childhood organizations, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced he would prioritize the early years in his education agenda, acknowledging the country is decades behind in the field. The government also dedicated $500 million to expand early childhood development programs to some of the country’s 1.3 million young children not already enrolled in early care. That number represents about 18 percent of the country’s 0-5 population.

    I recently caught up with Matlhape to hear more about progress she is seeing in South Africa, stereotypes of home-based care and which countries she’s looking to for guidance as the sector continues to grow. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

    What is the landscape of early childhood in South Africa?

    Up to now, South Africa’s main approach is center-based child care. There’s still a gap in access, it’s not equitably accessible, but the main seen, acknowledged, recognized and regulated mode of child care is center-based care. 

    SmartStart is the first organization to look at home-based care as a model to build. Having said that, South Africa is very similar to the U.S. in that the early childhood care education is market-driven. The government does not run programs directly. From time to time, they may have a school here and a preschool there, but in the early years, government is not the main provider of programs. SmartStart is the first organization that decided to build [home-based care] into a national model that becomes acceptable even to policy makers.

    Why are you focusing on home-based care? 

    It enables rapid setup, because it avoids all of the lead times in buildings and so on. It lowers the cost when you take away all of the infrastructure investments required. It’s community-based. People have very strong local relationships, for example, a shopkeeper down the road delivers bread every day. It builds on this very strong local culture of looking after children and just investing in their care and their stimulation.

    We recruit our providers within close proximity to one another so that they can form into communities of practice to support one another. It’s a very powerful vehicle of building belonging and identity. It creates cultural acceptability very quickly. 

    Finally, we’ve seen fantastic child outcomes compared to the national average in South Africa. Many of [the programs] are in informal housing in very, very poor environments, but their child outcomes outperform the national average. We think it is a matter of good child ratios. You can’t have a massive class of children at a home. You have children in smaller groups, and we think that’s the answer.

    What challenges have you encountered? 

    It is really hard for people to let go of this overreliance on quality associated with physical structures. People expect to see quality with their eyes, whereas what we are seeing in home-based child care is the experience and the love and attention, and the power of practicing good pedagogy between one loving practitioner and a handful of children. That’s the secret sauce. And so it’s been a challenge just to change mindsets, for people to see child care, home-based child care, in that way. 

    This summer you came to Dallas and met with other home-based child care experts from around the world. Did anything stick out to you regarding how South Africa’s home-based landscape compares to other countries?

    What was very different in the U.S. is just how mature the sector is. It’s significantly more mature. It has matured to a practitioner-led advocacy level, with a platform like NAFCC and people who are leading the organization! [In South Africa], it is very strongly practitioner led. We are still on that journey of the practitioner representing themselves and driving advocacy in their own provinces or states. It gave me a sense of what the future might look like, the power in the practitioner-led alliance or coalition. 

    What are your goals moving forward?

    We’ve actually moved into the zone now of regulation and funding by the government. We co-founded an advocacy organization about three to four years ago with other early childhood development organizations in South Africa. We’ve invested in policy research on what’s going on around the world [in early childhood]. My colleagues really invested in understanding what home-based child care looks like, particularly in Latin America — we drew a lot from that. And we are partnering with the government, with the Department of Education. As insights emerge, we partner with them to say, ‘This is what the research says. These are the trends.’ We are very effectively influencing policy in South Africa by getting the president to announce early childhood as one of the apex priorities for our government. We are trying to make early childhood development in general, and promoting home-based child care as a first tier approach, a societal priority. 

    This story about home-based child care was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/what-the-us-can-teach-other-countries-about-home-based-child-care/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>

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  • Immigration enforcement is driving away early childhood educators

    Immigration enforcement is driving away early childhood educators

    by Jackie Mader, The Hechinger Report
    December 10, 2025

    Close to 40,000 foreign-born child care workers have been driven out of the profession in the wake of the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation and detainment efforts, according to a new study by the Better Life Lab at the think tank New America. That represents about 12 percent of the foreign-born child care workforce.

    Child care workers with at least a two-year college degree are most likely to be leaving the workforce, as well as workers who are from Mexico, a demographic targeted by ICE, or those who work in center-based care, the left-leaning think tank found. The disruption has worsened an already deep shortage of child care staffers, threatening the stability of the industry and in turn is contributing to tens of thousands of U.S.-born mothers dropping out of the labor market because they don’t have reliable child care.

    In addition to workers facing detainment or deportation, many people are staying home to avoid situations where they may encounter Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the report found. Agents are detaining people who have not traditionally been the focus of ICE actions, including those following legal pathways like asylum seekers and green card applicants. Child care centers were once considered “sensitive locations” exempt from ICE enforcement, but the White House rescinded that in January. In at least one example, a child care worker was detained while arriving for work at a child care program. 

    “What’s different now is the ferocity of the enforcement,” said Chris Herbst, a professor at Arizona State University’s School of Public Affairs and one of the authors of the report, in an interview with The Hechinger Report. “ICE is arresting far more people, the number of deportations has risen dramatically,” he added. “People are scared out of their minds.”

    Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues. 

    America has long relied on immigrants to fill hard-to-staff caregiving positions and enable parents to work. Across the country, around 1 in 5 child care workers is an immigrant. In Florida and New York, immigrants account for nearly 40 percent of the child care workforce. One study that compared native-born and immigrant child care workers found that nearly 64 percent of immigrants had a two- or four-year college degree, compared to 53 percent of native-born workers. The study also noted that immigrant workers are more likely than native-born workers to have child development associate credentials and to invest in professional development activities.

    Overall, the child care industry supports more than $152 billion in economic activity.

    In Wisconsin, Elaine, the director of a child care center, said her program has benefited greatly from a Ukrainian immigrant who has been teaching there for two years, ever since arriving in the United States as part of a humanitarian parole program. (The Hechinger Report is not using Elaine’s last name or the city where her child care center is located because she fears action by immigration enforcement.) Elaine’s center has experienced a teacher shortage for the past 13 years, and the immigrant, who has a college degree and past experience in social services, has been a steady presence for the children there.

    “She’s their consistent person. She spends more time than a lot of the parents do with the children during their waking hours,” Elaine said. “She’s there for them, she’s loving, she provides that support, that connection, that security that young children need.”

    In January, the Trump administration suspended the Uniting for Ukraine program, which allowed Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion to live and work in the United States for two years. While the program later opened up a process to apply for an extension, Elaine’s employee has encountered delays, like many others.

    The teacher’s parole expired this month. Under the law, she is now supposed to return to Ukraine, where her home city in southeast Ukraine is still under attack by Russian forces. 

    Elaine fears what will happen if the center loses her. “As a business, we need her. We need a teacher we can count on,” Elaine said. “For our teachers’ mental health, to have her leave and knowing where she would go would be really difficult.” 

    Elaine has decided to allow the employee to keep working, and is appealing to state lawmakers to help extend her stay. Several parents have also joined in the effort, writing letters to Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin telling her how much their children love the teacher — and how important she is to the local economy. One factor in granting an extension is that the person offers a “significant public benefit” to the country. 

    The authors of the new report found immigrants are not the only caregivers affected by ICE enforcement this year. There has also been a drop in U.S.-born child care workers in the industry, especially among Hispanic and less-educated caregivers. This could be the result of a “climate of fear and confusion” surrounding enforcement activity, according to the report, as well as a “perceived pattern of profiling or discriminatory enforcement practices.”

    “These deportations have been sold under the theory that they are going to be a boon for U.S.-born workers once we sort of unclog the labor market by removing large numbers of undocumented immigrants,” Herbst said. “We’re finding at least in the child care industry, and at least in the short run, that appears not to be the case.” Some foreign-born and U.S.-born workers have different skills and do not seem to be competing for the same caregiving jobs, he added. 

    Not all workers are leaving the caregiving industry altogether. Some immigrants are shifting to work as nannies or au pairs, Herbst said, “finding refuge” in private homes where they are less likely to come into contact with state child care regulators or be part of formal wage systems. (Already, an estimated 142,000 undocumented immigrants work as nannies and personal care or home health aides nationwide.) That contact with regulators and other authorities may be a reason why center-based early childhood educators are leaving the field in greater proportions now, Herbst said. 

    These findings come at the end of a difficult year for the child care workforce, which has long been in crisis due to dismally low pay and challenging work conditions. More than half of child care providers surveyed this year by the RAPID Survey Project at Stanford University reported experiencing difficulty affording food, the highest rate since the survey started collecting data on provider hunger in 2021. Other recent reports have found child care providers are at a higher risk for clinical depression, and in some cities an increasing number are taking on part-time jobs to make ends meet.

    Across the country this year, early childhood providers have seen drops in enrollment as families pull their children out of schools and programs to avoid ICE. Child care centers are losing money and finding that some staff members are too scared to come to work or have lost work authorization after the administration ended certain refugee programs. Many child care workers have taken on additional roles driving children to and from care, collecting emergency numbers and plans for children in their care in case parents are detained and dropping off food for families too scared to leave their homes.

    This story about immigration enforcement was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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