Quality and access matter especially for the lower-income families whose kids benefit most.
Central to the rise of democratic socialists from New York to Seattle is the promise of free childcare and pre-K for all families. It’s the seductive Scandinavian dream that feels so urgent, such a no-brainer when set aside President Trump’s effort to decimate Head Start.
The impulse is understandable. Breathtaking pre-K bills shatter household budgets, forcing middle-class parents to flee cities and erode birth rates nationwide. In New York City, the average annual childcare bill can be upwards of $18,000.
The question is whether to attack the problem by creating a new universal entitlement for all kids under 5 — what Mayor Zohran Mamdani promised during the campaign and now seeks to deliver for an estimated $9 billion a year — or to work hard first to lift up poor and working-class kids who fall behind even before kindergarten.
The first approach risks spending billions while failing to narrow gaping disparities in children’s early learning. Indeed, by dodging the question of how he will lift the fortunes of working-class children, Mamdani may ironically reinforce inequities before kids start school, not reduce disparities.
It is to Mamdani’s great credit that he cares about this issue. Yet by focusing solely on economics, he defines fairness as the offer of a cost-free entitlement to as many families as possible. Others — myself included — see fairness as the provision of policies that yield more equal results for children, narrowing gaping inequities in early health and learning.
Children’s early mental and social skills have climbed in recent decades, thanks to rising maternal education levels and wider access to pre-K nationwide. Still, most of the achievement gap suffered by elementary students is observed before youngsters enter school.
Just over half of all children under 5 thrive in kindergarten. The remaining share, most raised in poverty, fails to recognize letters, struggles to cooperate with peers and suffers from chronic health afflictions like tooth decay — some 120,000 young children in the city. In contrast, three-fourths of preschoolers from upper middle-class homes — now winning pre-K entitlements — already surpass these gauges of school readiness.
We know that gaps in oral language and preliteracy skills are well in place by 2 years of age, which is why Mamdani’s attention to toddlers is so welcome. But progressives will not achieve equal results for poor children until slots expand steadily for their families and pre-K or caregiver quality matches quality found in better-off parts of the city.
In New York City, for example, a bare majority of children under 5 already benefit from publicly financed childcare or preschool. Since Bill de Blasio’s initiative in 2013, kids from comfortable families have enrolled in pre-K at higher rates than blue-collar peers. Well-heeled parents reap the greatest savings. My research group finds the same regressive distribution of benefits in Los Angeles as free preschool reaches more 4-year-olds.
Mamdani should be careful not to make the same regressive mistake. He clearly grasps the trade-off between elevating poor children and rewarding his many young professional fans. The first 2,000 slots for additional 2-year-olds will be located largely, not exclusively, in working-class neighborhoods.
But as he moves toward 55,000 new spaces, watch out for regressive distribution to families in Dumbo and Brooklyn Heights.
The pursuit of universal entitlements also risks thinning out classroom and caregiver quality. My team has tracked pre-K quality in the Big Apple over the past decade, revealing stronger teachers and richer learning activities in centers serving mostly white or Asian-heritage children.
Little is known about the quality of licensed homes in the city — who will serve many of the new 2-year-olds under Mamdani’s program — and whether quality varies between low-income and well-off communities. The national evidence that licensed homes advance early learning remains discouraging, while offering safe and culturally familiar places for many kids.
New Mexico, awash in oil revenues, now entitles families with children under 5 to free childcare and pre-K. But rapid expansion has pulled in pre-K's and home caregivers with low-quality ratings. The state’s doubling of per-child allocations over the past two years may raise teacher quality and invigorate classroom activities, but time will tell.
In 1997, Quebec began a quasi-entitlement to serve all children under age 5 for just $5 per day. The count of publicly financed slots nearly tripled, accompanied by little training of teachers. Scholars tracking a large sample of Quebec’s home-based providers, many serving toddlers, rated 71% below “good” quality. These licensed homes lacked well-trained staff, relied on TV to occupy kids and rarely organized learning activities to lift their young charges.
Back in New York, the cost of serving infants and toddlers in formal centers remains prohibitive. So government must pump dollars into parental vouchers, which help cover the cost of babysitters or licensed home care. But without higher per-child allocations — costing another $5 billion — families can expect uneven quality, researchers at the New School detailed earlier this month. That’s assuming the policy pursued is an entitlement to all.
Policy designers in other states appear more serious in making early education affordable and narrowing gaps in children's early learning. That means making strategic decisions about which families to invest in and when. This progressive model resembles how health insurance socializes the cost of aiding the stricken or those in pain, not those enjoying the beach.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers established free pre-K for all 4-year-olds last year. California then focuses another $8 billion each year on toddlers and 3-year-olds raised in poor and true middle-class families earning below $130,000 annually.
This so-called fair entitlement is closing disparities in children’s learning. Berkeley economists recently discovered that kids raised in homes with limited English who attended pre-K at age 3, then universal preschool at age 4, surge one half-year ahead in reading and math by the third grade, relative to non-pre-K graduates. These findings are consistent with a half-century of research detailing how quality pre-K — replete with embracing teachers, rich language and playful learning — best elevates children from lower-income homes.
Beyond California, Boston and Tulsa have rigorously assessed how local entitlements shape children’s early vitality. Both programs have centered on 4-year-olds over the past quarter-century. Each initiative shows lasting gains for children well into elementary school, most enjoyed by youngsters raised in lower-income and blue-collar families.
Kudos to the democratic socialists and their eagerness to make childcare and pre-K more affordable for all. But accenting the price of early education, including for the well-off, should not distract from the question of how, and which, children reap gains in early learning.
Nor should government squander scarce resources on families who can afford to pay. Even the mother of all entitlements — Social Security — taxes better-off retirees to help pay for Medicare.
The young socialists must not dampen their idealism. They might also learn about the institutions they wish to fix and not forget America’s rather old commitment to fairness, to lifting the children that benefit most from quality childcare.
