The Urban Institute engaged in a year-long project to document perspectives on how state leaders decide to access and strategically use federal funds to support early care and education (ECE) programs and systems. With support from the Foundation for Child Development (Foundation), Urban Institute researchers collected information from national and state leaders and reviewed documents on this topic.

Findings

States face multiple challenges in accessing and strategically using federal funds to support ECE systems and programs. National and state experts shared perspectives on the challenges and recommended solutions to address them.

• Experts shared perspectives on the challenges states are experiencing in accessing and strategically using federal funds for ECE programs and systems.

  • Fragmentation and multiple actors create complexity in oversight, in aligning decisionmaking within and across state organizations responsible for different funds and in navigating different policy priorities.
  • Lack of capacity, with a limited number of publicly funded staff responsible for overseeing federal funds, means some states do not have staff with the knowledge and experience to successfully fully draw down typical funds, as well as one-time, education, and atypical funds.
  • Difficulty ensuring equitable access and allocation of federal funds challenges many state leaders seeking to access one-time and atypical funds to support ECE systems and programs.
  • Other challenges include competing priorities for funding, some ideological reluctance to support child care, and institutional challenges.

• Experts recommended several promising approaches to address these challenges.

  • To address fragmentation, we found no “one-size-fits-all” approach; the solutions are tailored to the state context. The approaches need to account for the state constitution, state funding levels, political will, and the structure of the state’s agencies, legislature, and governor’s office.
  • To build state agency capacity, informants suggested several strategies and approaches so states can better access and use federal funds to support ECE programs and systems. These include organizing new offices to manage federal funds, braiding state and federal dollars to build the capacity of state agencies, creating and using tools to manage federal funds, accessing consultation or technical assistance to identify federal funding sources and access the funds, and increasing administrative caps on federal awards to sufficiently support the state staff need to manage funds.

  • To more equitably distribute federal funds, informants recommended a range of strategies including providing supports to help states that have not historically accessed the range of federal funds, offering models and approaches for state leaders to more equitably distribute funds, using cost-of-quality tools to determine actual costs of equitably compensating ECE, and supporting data systems to track equitable distribution of funds.

  • To address other challenges, informants recommended appointing a cabinet-level ECE leader who reports to the governor, providing states with proactive supports to build capacity to pivot in response to federal funding opportunities, and taking steps so the federal guidance to states is proactive and clear.