The benefits go well beyond cost savings.
Zohran Mamdani aims to make New York the first major American city to implement universal child care. Perhaps more than any leading U.S. candidate for city or statewide office this year, the mayoral frontrunner has made the cause a centerpiece of his campaign, proposing free care for all children aged six weeks to five years old. “The best way to keep families in New York City is to make it cheaper to raise one here,” he states in a campaign video.
The case for universal child care as an affordability measure is real. Free child care would put money back in parents’ pockets and expand the city’s workforce. The plan carries an estimated cost of $6 billion, a figure that underscores both its scale and ambition. But treating child care primarily as a pocketbook policy misses what matters most. When done well, it is an education reform with benefits that echo through high school and into adult life.
The science is straightforward. From birth to three, the brain wires itself at a breathtaking pace. Experiences during those years set the architecture for language, reasoning and self-regulation. High-quality early education takes that natural surge and organizes it. Research tells us that the best programs do not drill toddlers on letters or numbers. They are built on warm, responsive relationships — back-and-forth talk and consistent routines — paired with hands-on exploration in blocks, art, storytelling, music, science and outdoor play. Teachers notice what children are trying to do and gently extend it: the measured pour that becomes early math; the rhyming song that becomes early language; the turn-taking game that builds self-control. Families are woven into the work — engaged handoffs at drop-off, regular two-way conversations, shared goals for growth. And behind it all is leadership that treats classrooms as places of practice, with coaching that helps caregivers get better at their craft.
This is not a luxury for a few neighborhoods. New York cannot wish away the stress many young children carry — housing instability, food insecurity, family crises. Over one-quarter of children in New York — nearly 420,000 youth — live below the poverty line, according to a recent report by Columbia University and Robin Hood. Chronic stress frays the very capacities learning depends on. The countermeasure is not a worksheet; it is an engaged adult whom a child trusts and can count on. When children experience that kind of reliability, schools see the downstream effects: large public studies — from Boston and Tulsa to New Jersey’s Abbott districts — find that high-quality programs help students avoid being held back and put in special education placements, improve attendance and behavior, and raise the odds of graduating high school and enrolling in college.
Access to this kind of care is grossly unequal. Typical annual costs run well into the tens of thousands of dollars. For many families — especially those with infants and toddlers — enrollment is simply out of reach. This means children are often left with friends or relatives who themselves are overstretched and unable to provide quality care, or parents are forced to stop working to care for children. The market isn’t failing because parents don’t want care. It’s failing because the economics of quality are upside down. The adults who do the work — the largely female Black and Latina educators who diaper, comfort, plan lessons, assess progress and partner with families — are paid wages that would be scandalous in any other sector entrusted with children’s development. Programs then churn staff and ask toddlers to form new attachments again and again, undermining the core relationships that support healthy development.
Fixing this begins with pay. New York will not deliver quality at scale until early-childhood educators — many of whom are employed by community-based organizations or run daycare centers out of their homes — can afford to stay in the field. That means setting salary standards that move toward parity with public school teachers. Washington, D.C., offers a model: its early-childhood educator program supplements salaries to bring them in line with public school pay, strengthening retention and program quality. It also means creating real pathways — coaching and paid apprenticeships — for aides to grow into lead teachers without leaving the classroom. Stability in the workforce is stability for children.
Space is the other bottleneck. The city depends on both nonprofit centers and smaller, home-based programs, especially in neighborhoods outside Manhattan. To ensure children's health and safety, the City licenses all centers and sets strict standards that all providers must meet. Centers need capital to retrofit infant-toddler rooms with sinks, ventilation, bathrooms and safe exits. Home-based providers — often anchors of care in their communities — need help meeting safety and licensing requirements without being buried in red tape or forced into debt. A universal plan must pair operating funds with grants and low-interest loans for facilities, along with technical assistance that helps providers open seats quickly and safely where families actually live.
Quality is not a mystery, and it is not a luxury. It looks like low adult-child ratios that let teachers respond, not just supervise; play-rich curricula grounded in evidence; ongoing observation of children’s growth; and regular, two-way communication with families. Most of all, it looks like instructional support with coaching, feedback and time for teachers to plan together. The City should set these expectations clearly and then support programs to meet them. The current approaches to ensuring quality, rooted in compliance checklists have minimal impact. Structured professional learning and steady staffing will.
The conversation to date has too often treated “universal” as the finish line — as if a seat alone were the point. That is too small for New York. A universal system worthy of this city would guarantee not only a place for every child, but a level of teaching and care that closes the opportunity gaps that persist across our schools. It would pay the educators who make that possible, build out the infant-toddler rooms we lack, and knit together centers and home-based programs into a coherent, dignified system that families can trust.
If a future Mayor Mamdani wants to lead boldly, he should aim to do more than provide affordable child care slots. Emphasizing universality without quality risks missing the chance to build a truly equitable birth-to-12 system in New York City. Promise parents relief, yes — but promise their children something far greater: the steady relationships and playful learning that turn toddlers into readers, problem solvers, artists and citizens who love to learn and contribute to their communities. New York can be the first city in the nation to guarantee universal quality child care from birth — quality that shows up not in the next political cycle, but in the commencement photos of the next generation.