Child Care Reform Is All the Rage: Here’s Your Cheat Sheet on the Recent Legislation Coming out of DC and Massachusetts
By: Lauren Kennedy
Our elected leaders have (finally!) gotten to work on expanding access to high-quality, affordable early education and care, proposing a flurry of legislation to reform our child care system and begin to address some of the long-standing inequities that families, providers, and educators alike have been experiencing for too long.
The fact that child care is finally front and center for policymakers reflects the priority that families are placing on fixing the child care crisis and is a long overdue acknowledgement of the critical role that child care plays in a healthy, functioning economy. This new momentum is encouraging and it’s exciting – but we’ve got a long way to go to turning these plans into law, and that’s where we need your help. We need you to join the movement to finally make universal, affordable early education and care a reality for all families – in Massachusetts and across the country.
So, let’s start at the beginning: what’s actually in these plans and pieces of legislation?
Here’s what you need to know.
The American Families Plan
President Biden’s American Families Plan, if it became law, would represent a watershed moment for child care and early childhood education, providing critical investments in our economy and benefits to our children, families, and communities. The President’s plan:
Commits $200 billion to make free, universal preschool for three- and four-year olds available to all families.
Commits $225 billion to make child care more affordable and to raise the pay of early childhood educators – a critical profession that is overwhelmingly women. For lowest income families, child care will be free; for families earning up to 150% of their state’s median income, child care will cost them no more than 7 percent of their household income.
Extends the expanded Child Tax Credit (up to $3,600 for children younger than 6 and up to $3,000 for children 6 and older) to 2025 and makes it permanently refundable.
Makes permanent the expanded Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC), so that families get back as a tax credit up to $4,000 for one child or $8,000 for two or more children.
Creates a national comprehensive paid family and medical leave program.
Universal Child Care and Early Learning Act (H.R.2886 / S.1398)
This bill, proposed in Congress by Massachusetts’ Senator Elizabeth Warren, would invest $700 billion in our country’s child care and early education system. It includes guaranteed free access to child care for families making up to two times the federal poverty line and it requires a dramatic increase in pay for child care workers. Senator Warren’s Plan:
Makes all child care from birth to 5 years old free for families living below 200% of the federal poverty line (about $53,000 for a family of four).
Incorporates a sliding tuition fee scale so that no family pays more than 7% of their household income on child care.
Invests in building child care systems and providing these systems with resources they need to deliver not just early education and care, but also full-scope family services. (Neighborhood Villages models this kind of thinking: to build the strength of early education and care systems, we provide centralized supports to early childhood centers and to families.)
Requires that wages and benefits for early educators be comparable to those of local public school teachers with similar credentials.
Child Care is Infrastructure Act (H.R.1911)
This bill, introduced by Representative Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, recognizes the need for capital investment in early childhood facilities – a need that is felt deeply in our communities. It establishes grants for child care facilities, as well as higher education loan repayment and scholarship programs for child care educators, investing in the people who provide education and care to our children.
Notably, President Biden has also prioritized investment in child care facilities: in his American Jobs Plan, he calls for $25 billion to help upgrade child care facilities and increase the supply of child care.
Child Care for Working Families Act (H.R.2817/S.1360)
The Child Care for Working Families Act was introduced in April by Senator Patty Murray of Washington and Representative Bobby Scott of Virginia. This plan, like other proposals, would cap costs for working families, expand access to high-quality preschool programs, and support higher wages for child care workers. More specifically:
No working family earning below 150% of state median income would pay more than 7% of their income on child care, regardless of the number of children they have.
Families earning below 75% of the state median income would not pay anything at all and those above 75% would pay on a sliding scale.
Includes support for training and professional development for the early childhood workforce.
Offers subsidies to cover the true cost of providing high quality care, including paying a living wage to early educators.
Massachusetts’ Common Start Legislation (H.605/S.362)
Here in Massachusetts, the recently filed Common Start legislation outlines a path to securing universal, affordable early childhood education and care for all families in the Commonwealth. It would dramatically increase the affordability and quality of early education and child care through a combination of direct-to-provider funding and increased family financial assistance. The Common Start bill:
Ensures that, once fully implemented, families below 50% of statewide median income ($62,668 for a family of four or $42,614 for a single parent with one child) would be able to access early education and child care options for free.
Guarantees that families with incomes above that threshold would pay no more than 7% of their total household income.
Requires higher salaries and increased benefits for early educators and provides support for professional development and career opportunities.
Offers early education providers the opportunity to receive direct-to-program funding that reflects the true cost of delivering high-quality early education and care to children and families.
What Happens Next
Each of these proposals represents unprecedented investments in universal early education and care, higher pay for educators, and upgrades to facilities. They all would help give far more children a fair shot at achieving their potential and ensure that our early childhood teachers – the vast majority of whom are women of color – actually earn the wages that they deserve. These aren’t all the bills in the hopper right now – but these are some key ones to watch.
This is the moment to transform our early childhood system in our state and our country. We’re closer to the finish line than we have been in 50 years. While we need to push Congress to move quickly, we also need to make change happen here in Massachusetts, right now. And the opportunity to do so has arrived: passing the Massachusetts’ Common Start legislation means finally making child care and early childhood education universal in our state and providing a first-in-the-nation blueprint for others to follow.
The moment to act is now. Join us. Join our movement.