What gets discussed far less often is that this pattern rarely begins in third or fifth grade, when participation gaps become easier to see. It begins in children’s first classroom experiences, where they learn whether speaking feels safe, whether mistakes are survivable and whether the classroom has room for the way they enter language.

The problem is not simply that some children talk more than others. It is that schools often mistake fast, public participation for understanding and then build opportunity around that mistake. A child who speaks quickly and often is usually read as engaged, confident and capable. A child who hesitates, watches or offers little is more likely to be read as uncertain, underprepared or less able.

Yet speaking in front of others is not a simple measure of understanding. It requires children to process a question, organize language quickly, tolerate public attention and respond while everyone is listening. For multilingual learners, it may also mean searching across languages while monitoring pronunciation and trying not to make a visible mistake.

What can look like “just talking” is often thinking under pressure.

When schools confuse reduced public response with reduced competence, they begin shaping a trajectory. That trajectory is rarely built through cruelty or obvious exclusion. More often, it emerges through small instructional decisions that seem reasonable on the surface. When participation in whole-group discussion decreases, teachers—often out of care—may call on certain students less, simplify questions or stop asking for elaboration. Meanwhile, other students are invited to explain, justify, extend and defend their thinking.

Each decision appears minor, but over time they accumulate. Opportunities to demonstrate complexity expand for some students and quietly contract for others. This is how underestimation takes root in schools — not through overt exclusion, but through a subtle redistribution of opportunity.

The problem deepens when educators collapse many different experiences into the single category of “quiet.” From the outside, quiet students can look similar, but the reasons beneath the silence are not. Some are fluent and expressive in low-pressure settings but constricted in public ones. Others understand directions in two languages and still shut down the moment speaking becomes public.

In everyday classroom moments — during snack, in play, or beside one trusted peer — these same children often become animated and engaged. Expression can expand quickly when pressure is lowered, home language is welcomed, or an adult creates space for response.

In one kindergarten classroom, a child who rarely spoke during group instruction began, almost invisibly, by moving his chair a few inches closer to the circle each day. The teacher noticed and named the shift without demanding more than he was ready to offer. “You came closer today,” she told him, and later, “I see you’re staying with us.”

Within days, he began whispering answers to a partner, and within weeks he was participating in small-group discussion. His language had not suddenly changed. The environment had. That is the point schools too often miss: Participation begins before speech.

In early classrooms, many children participate long before they do so in polished verbal form. They move closer to the group, track the teacher’s face, point instead of answering, imitate actions, sort materials, whisper to peers or respond through gesture and gaze. These are not lesser forms of participation. They are participation in its earliest form.

Yet schools often reward only the most visible and verbally fluent version of engagement, while everything that comes before it is treated as secondary. For multilingual learners and other cautious children, this creates a profound mismatch: their bodies are already engaged while the classroom waits for a kind of public speech they are not yet ready to produce.

If schools want to turn this around, they do not need an expensive new program. They need to stop treating the fastest and most exposed form of response as the clearest proof of understanding.

That shift begins with classroom routines. Before asking for a public answer, teachers can build in real “think time” —10 or 15 seconds that give students a chance to process before the quickest voices take over. They can let students rehearse with a partner before whole-group discussion, so the first public response is not also the first act of language formation.

They can ask students to point to evidence, sketch an idea, jot a sentence or sort materials before speaking aloud. They can return to a child after another voice has entered the conversation, instead of treating one missed moment as closure. And they can widen what counts as participation so that gesture, writing, peer explanation, and home-language processing are recognized as evidence of thought.

Teachers can also lower the social risk built into participation by slowing the pace when questions become more demanding, avoiding rapid-fire questioning that rewards only the quickest responders, and making hesitation less punishing. “Take a second and think” invites participation differently than “Come on, you know this.” “Show me first” opens a door that “Use your words” can close.

Just as important, teachers can look for patterns instead of drawing conclusions from isolated moments. A student who is silent in whole-group discussion but expressive in play, writing, small groups or in another language is not showing an absence of understanding. That variability is information: It shows that expression is conditional, not fixed, and that classroom conditions shape what becomes visible.

These moves do not lower rigor — they make it more accurate. Rigor is not how fast a child can speak in front of others. It is whether a classroom can recognize thought before it arrives in its most polished, public form.

When silence is misinterpreted early, the consequences extend far beyond one discussion. Expectations drift downward. Opportunities narrow. Referrals increase. Children acquire identities they did not choose: hesitant, low, disengaged, behind. What begins as a participation gap becomes an opportunity gap, and over time the system names what it helped create.

The student who lowers her hand is not always unsure, unmotivated or disengaged. She may be calculating whether the room is safe enough for the way she speaks, whether there is time to find language without being rushed, and whether what she is about to say will be met with patience or correction. If schools want more students to participate, they should stop treating voice as something children either have or do not.

Participation is not a trait — it is a condition. Quiet students do not need louder prompts. They need safer entry points. If schools understood that earlier, they might stop asking why some students do not raise their hands and start asking the more important question: What have we taught them participation will cost?

The ruling came about nine months after the American Academy of Pediatrics and other groups filed a lawsuit against longtime vaccine skeptic, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.,  and the department he leads, which includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  In it, the plaintiffs argued that Kennedy Jr.’s advisory committee appointments — and the panel’s subsequent votes to roll back childhood vaccine recommendations — were unlawful.

David Hill, a pediatrician who has been practicing for over 30 years, serves as a spokesperson for the AAP. He recently told The 74 that while he and his colleagues are “very happy” with this latest development, “we’re also all still holding our breaths.”

“This is one moment in a lengthy process,” he added. “It is an encouraging moment, but I don’t think any of us are under the impression that this is over yet.”

Most of Hill’s work centers around hospitalized children and newborn care, which means he is often the first pediatrician a family meets and the one parents talk to about vaccinating their kids. He recently started practicing in Seattle after spending years working in North Carolina, where he served a widely diverse group of patients.

The families he works with, he said, have “vastly different socioeconomic backgrounds and value systems and understandings of health,” which has given him a unique perspective into on-the-ground impacts of shifting vaccine policies.

While not new to public discourse, vaccine skepticism has significantly swelled and gained greater footing since Kennedy Jr. took the helm of the nation’s health care system last February. Following his appointment, he swiftly fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, also known as ACIP, replacing them with hastily hand-picked advisors who largely shared his views on vaccines. 

The committee has since voted to overturn a recommendation that all newborns receive the hepatitis B vaccine; change policies surrounding the measles, mumps, rubella and varicella (chickenpox) combination vaccine; and roll back recommendations around 2025’s COVID- 19 booster. Then, this January, officials announced a plan to overhaul the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule, significantly reducing the number of shots routinely recommended for all kids — all amid already falling vaccine rates, measles outbreaks and The AAP and other groups were also cut off from their long-standing liaison roles. 

It was in response to all of these decisions that the AAP, a trusted source of information for pediatricians and families for nearly a century, began boycotting ACIP meetings, released a competing vaccination schedule, filed their lawsuit and effectively severed ties with the committee.

March’s preliminary injunction halts the changes to the pediatric immunization schedule, and stays Kennedy Jr. ‘s 13 appointments to the committee, essentially rendering it unable to meet. All votes made by the now-stayed ACIP appointments are also overturned — at least temporarily. 

When asked to comment, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said this week that the department looked forward to the judge’s decision being overturned, but would not say whether it had filed an appeal.

The 74’s Amanda Geduld recently spoke with Hill about his organization’s lawsuit and how childhood vaccine sentiments have shifted over the past three decades. The impacts he’s seen in his own practice are particularly illuminating.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

What is the most common question that parents ask you about vaccinating their newborns? Is there one vaccine they’re particularly concerned about?

I have the most experience in my current role with the first hepatitis B vaccine, but I think it is a fantastic model for the questions that we get about other vaccines. For example, I recently admitted a child at the hospital with an infection and breathing difficulty at age 2 who had not yet been vaccinated against Haemophilus influenza B (Hib) and pneumococcal pneumonia. 

And we had to think about this child very differently, because these are complications of viral illnesses that used to be absolutely horrendous — with meningitis, aggressive pneumonia, severe ear infections, infections of the bone around the ear or behind the ear. And really, because of the effectiveness of the vaccines against these illnesses, we have been lulled into not worrying about them very much anymore. And so we had to make sure that the team was aware that this was a possibility — these complications with this baby. 

But most often I’m talking about hepatitis B, and usually I’m the one who begins with the questions, and I say, “Hey, I noticed that your child has not had the hepatitis B vaccine we usually give. Do you mind sharing with me your thoughts about that?”

How have those conversations shifted, if at all, over the past three decades that you’ve been practicing medicine?

Well, they used to be vanishingly rare. And not a “never” event, but a rare enough event that if it occurred, it was remarkable. It might be the first thing I would tell my wife when I came home that evening, or something I would comment to my colleagues about when I went into the office. “You’ll never believe this, but we had a patient turn down [the] hepatitis B vaccine today.”

And that is because there was a widely shared understanding that this was an important intervention to keep children healthy for the rest of their lives, and that it was an extraordinarily low-risk intervention with a very high degree of reward. 

And it wasn’t a never event. It’s always been there, but it was remarkable. It was unusual, and the script has flipped to the extent now that when I’m first reviewing a newborn’s chart before I go into the room, I actually breathe a sigh of relief when I see that they have gotten their vaccine, because a really significant proportion of my patients — especially just in the last five or six months — have decided that they are going to delay it or maybe not get it at all.

How much of that do you attribute to this current administration and to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s leadership of HHS?

I think that there’s a very apropos chicken-and-egg question here. The wellness industry has put an enormous amount of money and effort into undermining confidence in traditional medicine, and that, of course, allows them to expand their market. It’s a market which is extraordinarily profitable. 

But if patients have trust in traditional medicine, then they’re less likely to purchase those products or to go to those providers. So there has been a decades-long effort — in terms of marketing, in terms of influence — that has been well funded and extraordinarily successful. 

It certainly did not start with the election of Donald J. Trump, either the first time or the second time. It definitely was accelerated by the success of a number of proponents of these efforts to achieve power within the United States government, to achieve federal power. 

And as much as people distrust the government, they really do listen to what the government says. So when the message coming from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or from the Department of Health and Human Services, are messages undermining confidence in traditional medicine — whether we like it or not — that really does have a bearing on the decisions that people make.

Last July, the AAP sued HHS and Kennedy Jr. over vaccine policies. Then, in March, a judge issued a stay, which essentially means that a lot of the votes that ACIP made are overturned — at least for now. One of those involves the Hep B vaccine birth dose. Can you talk a little bit about the initial decision that was made by ACIP to delay that birth dose, and how you saw that impacting patients on the ground?

I think the really good news for those of us in public health and those of us striving for child health is that the initial decisions made by the ACIP — the ones that were recently stayed by the court — had not yet come to affect what vaccines were available to children. And so the stay has also not changed that, because payers were still paying for the vaccines, suppliers were still supplying them, manufacturers were still making them, hospitals and offices were still stocking them. 

So I think it’s very good news that we had not yet seen our worst case scenario of some of these vaccines becoming unavailable or unaffordable. We, on the ground, are very happy to see a court agreeing with our professional opinion that there was no scientific basis for making these changes, and yet I think we’re also all still holding our breaths, because this is not done. There will be appeals. This is one moment in a lengthy process. It is an encouraging moment, but I don’t think any of us are under the impression that this is over yet.

You mentioned that the judge’s ruling luckily came before some of the worst case scenarios were able to play out. But are you aware of any pediatricians on the ground who had started shifting any of their practices based on ACIP votes?

I am not. I am quite involved in the American Academy of Pediatrics, and listen to a lot of lines of communication. And I think we were all trained to follow the best evidence. And the American Academy of Pediatrics, and scores of other medical organizations, endorsed an evidence-based vaccine schedule that was very similar to the prior vaccine schedule, and that is, as far as I know, what all of my colleagues were referring to.

If the judge had not issued this preliminary injunction, do you think providers on the ground ultimately would have shifted their practices to match the new ACIP guidelines? Or would they have stuck to the evidence-based practices regardless?

You know, I have great confidence that my colleagues would have continued to follow the evidence wherever it leads. I think the fear would have been that some other barriers to following that evidence might have arisen — in terms of reimbursement, manufacturing, liability — that would have made it more difficult for us to do what we know is right for children.

I would imagine that the majority of parents across the country are not keeping super close tabs on this lawsuit or tuning into ACIP meetings, but they are reading the headlines, and they’re seeing these rulings go back and forth and practices being implemented and then rolled back. I’m wondering what impact that back-and-forth messaging is having on parents. Is that leading to confusion?

Oh, I know that it is leading to massive confusion. When you look at a marketing campaign, as this has been, people don’t have to be convinced that a message like this is correct, they just have to have some doubt. And so the fact that these conflicting announcements or decisions are sowing doubt is really enough to dramatically change the landscape that we are looking at at this point in terms of communicating with parents, in terms of following the best practices for public health and in terms of protecting children.

So what is your big takeaway of the judge’s latest ruling then? What impact will this stay have for parents and providers on the ground?

I think the most important shift that I’ve seen — and as a professional medical communicator, it is a shift that I welcome — is that pediatricians and health care providers as a whole, and scientists and public health officials are coming to terms with a new understanding of how critical our communication is. And it is across the board revolutionizing the way that we communicate, both individually and in public.

Can you talk a little bit about how that communication is revolutionizing, specifically when you’re talking to patients and parents of patients?

Yeah, absolutely. My dad is still a practicing pediatrician at age 84, and throughout his career he could count on the fact that he was the doctor being enough for most people. He walks in the room in a white coat with years of experience and an absolutely spectacular education at the best institutions the country has to offer, and has a wall of diplomas behind him, and people will be like, “OK, you know a thing.” It’s just like when I walk onto my airplane and I see the pilot with all the gold bars on his epaulet. I’m like, “Oh, this guy probably knows how to fly an airplane. I’m going to take my seat.”

The relationship between doctors and patients and doctors and the public has changed in a way that I don’t think is going to change back. No matter what happens, we can’t just sit down in the chair and say, “Hey, I’m the doctor. Here’s what you need to do. Trust me, I studied, I know some stuff.” Patients are really demanding — and appropriately so — that we show first that we care and that we can listen and that their value system, their understanding, their goals for their child’s health are the most important thing in that room — that we are servants who can bring our knowledge to bear to further this family’s goals for their child. … 

My mentor for many years, Dr. Tom Blackstone in Wilmington, North Carolina, used to sit me down early in my career and say, “Davey, they don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” And those are the very wise words of someone who’s been doing this for a long time, and I think those are words we all have to live by.

I love that — that’s a beautiful sentiment. Well you talked about how there have been shifts in medicine you don’t necessarily foresee going back. I’m going to ask you to look into a crystal ball here, if you will, and tell me if you foresee this moment as a shift in policy moving forward. 

In other words, might this be a time the administration moves away from the attacks on vaccine policy and perhaps more towards other elements of the MAHA movement, like nutrition? Or is this stay merely a brief pause before the vaccine battle continues?

I would tend more toward the brief pause, and I would be thrilled if MAHA acted aggressively on some of their (other) priorities. There is more common ground between the stated priorities of the MAHA movement and the priorities of pediatricians. We would love to see kids get more fresh, healthy food in their diets. We would love to see aggressive measures taken to reduce pollutants in the water, in the air, in farming practices. We would love to see efforts toward increasing family activity and generating safe green spaces for exercise and play really put at the forefront of policy.��

I think, in a very sincere way, there are a ton of common goals that pediatricians and the MAHA movement share. I am disappointed that on many of these fronts, it appears that this administration is actually taking steps backwards rather than forwards. Taking steps to allow greater degrees of pollution that we know harm children; taking steps to allow greater use of chemicals in farming; taking steps to decrease the availability of fresh, healthy food in schools, for example. 

And people have done this — there are forums where pediatricians and MAHA advocates sit down and find that they agree on a lot. So I think we would love to see any of those priorities move to the forefront of the movement. … The attack on vaccines, unfortunately, is very much an attack on public health, and so I think we are still waiting to see what the next steps are going to be before we relax.

The AAP has always been a highly trusted organization and leading authority on children’s health, but I would imagine that role has been pretty seriously magnified over the past year or so with this shift in leadership. Can you talk a little bit about what that feels like from inside the organization and how that’s impacted some of your public-facing actions?

Past administrations have certainly cooperated in more concert with the American Academy of Pediatrics, regardless of whether the leadership was Republican or Democratic. We are a nonpartisan organization, and we have enjoyed close working relationships with pretty much every administration. I believe it is unprecedented since we began working with the ACIP to terminate that relationship. So that certainly would appear to be a flash point. 

However, as a pediatrician of a certain age, I also recall that this is very much in continuity with the American Academy of Pediatrics taking positions in favor of child health that were at times quite unpopular with the public. We were out there early talking about tobacco-free spaces and tobacco-free homes. Those of us who are old enough to remember when people smoked in restaurants and airports and pretty much anywhere they wanted to also recall that there was a tremendous backlash on that. 

When the American Academy of Pediatrics came out in favor of taking lead out of gasoline and paint that was dramatically unpopular. The fuel industry and the paint industry, the builders, really protested quite loudly against that. Even car seats, bike helmets, things that we all take for granted as public safety measures — like who would not have their baby in a car seat right now? — were incredibly controversial when they began, and the American Academy of Pediatrics always stood up for child health and safety first and understood that if children’s health was benefited, eventually the public would understand. …

So to some extent, we are just following in the footsteps of those who came before us, and I certainly hope that when I’m not working anymore, there will be another generation to continue in that path, because it’s the right path.

Is there anything I haven’t asked about — having to do with this current administration and vaccine policy — that you think is important for readers to understand, given the news of the past couple of weeks?

I think first of all, that the public is wise enough to see where these attacks on vaccines could lead, and to make good decisions regarding child health moving forward. I don’t think we’re going to be having the same conversation in 10 years, or even five years, because as we see measles sweep through certain states, we’re also seeing people in those states recognize what a danger it is. And part of what we’re seeing is parents asking if they can have their babies vaccinated against measles at six months of age, which they can, it just doesn’t keep them from needing the next two vaccines. 

I think that the public is really very intelligent, and that people are already waking up to what these changes mean for public health, and I think for the most part, they don’t like it. One truism that I’ve witnessed as a pediatrician throughout my career is that parents love their children. They want the best for their children. Everybody holds their baby, imagining what that little being is going to turn into, how they’re going to grow, what they’re going to accomplish, and knowing that, I know that societally, we are going to ultimately make good choices, because that’s what it means to love our children.

Two bill packages — one seeking to lower child care costs and expand options, especially in areas without significant child care options, and the other to clarify child neglect and abuse statutes — passed through the Senate Housing and Human Services committee on Tuesday morning. 

Only two of the bills in the first package, which would essentially codify the state’s and adjust reimbursements under that program, which child care benefits to families under a certain income threshold by splitting the cost of an employee’s child care between the employer, the employee and the State of Michigan, faced opposition from the Republican members of the committee, still passing on party lines. 

In a on the bills earlier in March, Sen. Rosemary Bayer (D-West Bloomfield), who sponsored one of the bills in the package, said that the child care system is “in crisis,” which is having a $2.9 billion annual economic impact on the state. 

“The system is shrinking. Families can’t afford or find accessible child care providers,” Bayer said. “Providers are losing employees, shrinking or even closing down, and families are struggling to pay for services if they can find one, with costs often over $1,100 a month.”

“The astronomical cost of child care, coupled with the hoops and hurdles providers must jump through to stay open, continues to fuel a crisis that impacts our families, workforce, and broader state economy,” said Sen. Sarah Anthony (D-Lansing), sponsor of , one of the bills which passed unanimously, in a press release following the vote. “By cutting some of the costs and red tape facing providers, we can start to address the child care deserts that exist throughout the state, especially in our rural communities.”

Prior to the vote, Sen. Sylvia Santana (D-Warrendale) emphasized that, though she supports the bills, she also hoped to see further conversations about the impacts of these bills on businesses offering child care programs — which Sen. Jonathan Lindsey (R-Coldwater) added could call into question the need for MiLEAP, the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential, more broadly. 

“If we’re serious and we’re dedicated to making sure that access to child care is available, definitely there needs to be more oversight in this area, and also maybe just a really a deep dive into how these rules in this book reflect when it comes to the actual common sense of child care and those provisions that we’ve put in place,” Santana said. “So I’m dedicated to this package of bills. I don’t mind getting it out of committee, but I do want to have a broader conversation with stakeholders, as well as those business owners who are definitely feeling the pinch of some of the rules within this book that may not make common sense at this point for them to be able to really continue as business owners.”

The other two bills in that package, which would establish a review and appeal process for certain violations of child care organization rules and set in place standards for investigations, passed unanimously.

Both bills in the second package on altering the child abuse and neglect statutes also passed unanimously. They would specify the definitions of child neglect and abuse, specifically excluding “independent activities” like walking or bicycling to school or playing outdoors from qualifying under child neglect and abuse statutes.

“The idea is to make sure that our childhood welfare laws are aligned with reasonable childhood independence and that parents child care providers, first responders, schools, day cares, everyone has the right information about what is neglect and abuse and what is not, so that we can reduce the number of false reports and unneeded investigations,” said committee chair Sen. Jeff Irwin (D-Ann Arbor), who sponsored one of the bills, in an on the legislation. 

All of the bills will now be reported to the full Senate for a vote.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jon King for questions: info@michiganadvance.com.

Just weeks after approving limits on screen time for preschoolers, Alabama lawmakers are mounting a last minute push to set screen time limits for all public school students. 

The House Education Policy Committee Thursday approved , sponsored by Rep. Jeana Ross, R-Guntersville and filed on March 5.  The bill is an extension of the signed by Gov. Kay Ivey earlier this month. 

“What I’m hoping this will accomplish is that these two acts will work together to create a continuous research based framework for developmentally appropriate technology you see from from early childhood to 12th grade,” Ross said in an interview Friday.

Among other features, ��Dz���’ bill would limit total screen time instruction in schools to two hours a day and mandate regular vision breaks after screen use.

��Dz���’ limited screen time for children from birth until kindergarten in licensed child-care facilities, public kindergarten classrooms and specific Pre-K classes. Under the law, the Department of Early Childhood Education, Alabama State Department of Education and Department of Human Resources would collaborate on creative guidelines for appropriate screen time usage.

During committee, Reps. Alan Baker, R-Brewton, and Marcus Paramore, R-Troy, brought extending the limit to 12th grade and requiring students to follow the “20-20-20 rule” during scheduled screen breaks. The 20-20-20 rule states every 20 minutes students must look at an object at least 20 feet away from them for at least 20 seconds. The method has been recommended by the to reduce and prevent eye strain.

Mark Dixon, president of A+ Education Partnership, a education nonprofit, said in an interview Friday the organization supported the bill. 

“We’ve seen the benefits of the cell phone ban that legislature and Gov. Ivey passed last year; we were already seeing the benefits in classes this year, and A+ is support of limiting screen time in an age-appropriate manner,” he said.

Messages seeking comment were left with School Superintendents of Alabama and Alabama Association of School Boards Friday.

During the meeting, Rep. Terri Collins, R-Decatur, who chairs the committee, said Rep. Chris Blackshear, R-Smiths Station, brought the idea of expanding the limit to 12th grade. Attempts to reach Blackshear were not immediately successful.

Under HB 584, a 17-member task force composed of educators; vision specialists and national experts in child development, digital media research or cognitive science will work in collaboration with the Alabama State Department of Education to develop guidelines for best practices for screen-based instruction.

“We want it to be high quality and to be used intentionally, again, just avoiding that passive use of technology, just like with the birth to age five kindergarten, but on up through 12th grade, our technology is intentional,” Ross said.

Ross said after her original bill passed she heard concerns from parents about whether or not the bill would dictate what goes on in their homes. She said both bills only relate to instructional time in classrooms.

“It has nothing to do with what parents choose to do in their homes, but all to do with what happens in public schools and in places that receive public funds,” she said.

The bill was not on Tuesday’s House agenda as of Friday afternoon. There are seven legislative days left in the 2026 regular session. 

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com.

The Iowa House passed a measure Monday to make the current pilot program providing free child care for child care workers permanent.

Iowa’s Child Care Assistance (CCA) program is available to parents with a gross monthly income below 250% the federal poverty level, if they are gone during the week days due to their job, schooling, vocational training or state activities. However, Iowans working at least 32 hours a week in the child care field have also been able to access the CCA program outside of the income restrictions through a pilot program implemented in 2023 and extended in subsequent years.

, passed 86-3, would make this program permanent. Rep. Ryan Weldon, R-Ankeny, said since July 2023, 2,105 families have received child care through the CCA pilot program, with the average family receiving support being at 302% of the federal poverty level. The funding for the program has come, and will continue to draw from the state’s Child Care Development Fund, which Weldon said had $112 million in the previous fiscal year, with a projection of carrying forward $107 million in FY 2026 and $91 million in FY 2027, alongside federal funds.

According to the , the bill would have an estimated cost of $11.7 million in FY 2027 — with the state paying $7 million — and $12.1 million in FY 2028, with the state paying $7.3 million.

The bill was amended to require an annual report on state and federal costs, the number of participating families and children and the average household income of those receiving the CCA program support.

Rep. Tracy Ehlert, D-Cedar Rapids, said she was “excited” the bill was introduced, as it was a proposal House Democrats have introduced in previous legislative sessions and Iowans working in child care have called for lawmakers to approve.

“As I have talked to different programs, this is one of the number one things that they said they needed to stay in place to help them,” Ehlert said. “It’s helping communities, it’s helping children, it’s helping our early childhood workforce.”

Another proposal — which survived the first legislative funnel as  and  — also contains language to codify the CCA pilot program. These companion bills are the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services’ larger proposal including a shift in some funding from the Early Childhood Iowa system to HHS.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com.

Everyone’s shoes are off. Each family has found a spot on the rug, forming a circle. An 8-month-old girl squeals and claps her hands — a skill she’d picked up just a few days earlier — as she bounces up and down. All eyes are on the teacher, Alyson Hayes-Myers, awaiting her notes on the piano, which will signal that class has begun.

Over the next 45 minutes, an otherwise bare room comes alive with sound and feeling. All seven babies are engrossed in Hayes-Myers’ direction and movement, in the songs, in the close interactions the program encourages between them and the adult who brought them. 

Research is clear about the myriad benefits of music in early childhood. It can support , , and . It and . It can strengthen relationships and expose students to languages and customs from other parts of the world. 

In Hayes-Myers’ class, the evidence of the links between music and early development that are found in scientific studies come to life. In the presence of children who are singing or being sung to, who are listening to instruments or playing the instruments themselves, the brain development is obvious — and the joy is infectious.

Her class is in week four of a 10-week session that invites children from birth to age 4 to participate with a caregiver — often a parent, but sometimes a grandparent or nanny. It’s located in Denver, Colorado, at Twinkle Together, a licensed center of Music Together, which is an early childhood music and movement program with locations in over 2,000 communities across 35 countries.��

The program is designed for children, but the target audience may actually be their caregivers, explained Karee Justice-Bondy, director of Denver’s five Music Together locations. “Parents are key,” she said. “They are really our students, not the children. We know children love music.”

So many parents today, Justice-Bondy added, are inundated with information about how best to raise their children, and they end up ignoring their own intuition about how to parent, love and play with their little ones. 

“This can help remind you,” she said of music. 

It can be empowering for families to engage with music, creating opportunities for them to bond and grow together. Many initiatives around the country, including Music Together, are trying to help parents and caregivers tap into that. 

Carnegie Hall’s is another program designed to leverage the power of music in early childhood. The Lullaby Project pairs new and expecting parents with professional artists to write personal lullabies for their babies. The project began almost 15 years ago in partnership with a New York hospital — music was identified as a tool to improve maternal mental health and well-being while strengthening bonds between parent and child — but has since reached families across the globe, in spaces such as refugee camps, opioid recovery centers and neonatal intensive care units, according to Tiffany Ortiz, director of early childhood programs at the Weill Music Institute, an education arm of Carnegie Hall. 

The Lullaby Project worked so well, Ortiz said, that families began asking, “What’s next?” In response, staff at Carnegie designed and built out additional for young children and their caregivers, including , a free 10-week music class for infants and toddlers up to 18 months old. 

“People think of Carnegie Hall and these very polished performances, big stages,” Ortiz said. “It’s really these micromoments and the way music can be used every day. … We really are trying to empower families to feel really confident in their music-making, to bolster that bond.”

It’s working, she said. Parents and caregivers have shared with Ortiz that, after participating in a music program, they find themselves singing and making music throughout the day with their child — often during times of transition that can be challenging, such as brushing teeth, mealtime and bedtime. Music takes those tough moments and turns them into something fun and playful, Ortiz recalled families saying. 

“Often, music and music experiences are put on a shelf as a nice-to-have,” Ortiz noted. “It can be a really powerful tool in early development, but it can also help parents and families navigate the more stressful parts of early childhood. I’ve seen it transform so many people’s lives and create a sense of meaning and connection with a child.”

Dennie Palmer Wolf, principal researcher at WolfBrown, an arts research firm that has collaborated with the Weill Music Institute to its early childhood music programs, thinks of music as one of a few “natural resources” every family has (laughing and physical closeness are among the others, she said).

“It can potentially give parents a sense of being effective or capable,” she said. “It’s a source of strength and resilience, in a world that takes that away, grinds it down.”

Of course, this only works if parents are comfortable singing, and many are not. 

Ann C. Kay, co-founder of The Rock ‘n’ Read Project, which leverages music for early literacy, believes that shows like American Idol and The Voice have convinced adults that if they can’t sing well, they should not bother to sing at all. 

“There’s all these messages in our culture now that you’re going to be embarrassed if you open your mouth and sing,” Kay said. 

Susan Darrow, CEO of Music Together Worldwide, made a similar point. Many people now feel that unless they “sound like Lady Gaga, they should sit in the audience and listen.”��

“That might be fine for our culture, but it’s a disaster for early childhood,” Darrow said. “I would love to be able to return music-making to the amateurs. … We want to raise children who are not afraid to sing.”

That starts at home, where the only judge is a benevolent one: To a baby, the most beautiful singing voice is that of their parent or caregiver, regardless of that adult’s ability to carry a tune. 

“We’re not trying to raise the next Yo-Yo Ma,” Darrow added. “We’re trying to raise children who love and participate in music.”

Beyond the benefits to parents, Palmer Wolf expounded on the way that music helps with children’s social-emotional development. When young children are singing and dancing together, they have an awareness of music stopping and starting, of taking turns, of getting quieter and louder, of imitating sound and movement, of self-regulation. 

“It’s an opportunity for kids to learn that your face, your hands, your eyes, your whole body says something to others,” Palmer Wolf said. 

And music can communicate messages far beyond the lyrics of a song, she added. Palmer Wolf has been studying the role of music in some preschools in Boston that have a growing immigrant population, she said, and she’s found that culturally-relevant songs can signal to families that they are welcome in the community. When preschools use music in that way, it helps to build a sense of trust among families who might otherwise be wary, she added. 

“We can’t underplay the signaling power of music,” she said. 

Colorado officials say money that helps 18,000 low-income families pay for child care could run out by Jan. 31 if federal officials don’t lift the freeze they’ve imposed on funding for several safety net programs in five Democrat-led states.

If that happens, some children could go without care and some parents would have to stay home from work. State lawmakers could cover such a funding gap temporarily, though Colorado is facing a significant budget crunch.

The Trump administration announced the freeze on $10 billion in child care and social services funding for Colorado, California, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York in a press release Monday.

In letters sent to the two Colorado agencies that run the affected programs, federal officials said they have “reason to believe that the State of Colorado is illicitly providing” benefits funded with federal dollars to “illegal aliens.”

The letters didn’t cite evidence for that claim and a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services didn’t respond to questions from Chalkbeat about why federal officials are concerned about fraud in Colorado.

Spokespeople from both state departments said by email on Tuesday they’re not aware of any federal fraud investigations focused on the programs affected by the funding freeze.

The five-state funding freeze follows a federal crackdown in Minnesota after a right-wing YouTuber posted a video in late December alleging that Minneapolis child care centers run by Somali residents get federal funds but serve no children. It’s not clear why the other four states have gotten the same treatment as Minnesota, but all have Democratic governors who have clashed with President Donald Trump.

In a New Year’s Eve social media post, Trump called Colorado Gov. Jared Polis “the Scumbag Governor” and said Polis and another Colorado official should “rot in hell” for mistreating Tina Peters, a Trump supporter and former Mesa County clerk who’s serving a nine-year prison sentence for orchestrating a plot to breach election systems.

The federal freeze will affect three main funding streams in Colorado that together bring in about $317 million a year. They include $138 million for the Colorado Department of Early Childhood for child care subsidies for low-income families and a few other programs.

The subsidy program, known as the Colorado Child Care Assistance program, helps cover the cost of care for more than 27,000 children so parents can work or take classes. It’s mostly funded by the federal government with smaller contributions from states and counties.

The other two frozen funding streams go to the Colorado Department of Human Services and pay for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, and other programs.

In the letter to the Colorado Department of Early Childhood, federal officials outlined new fiscal requirements the state will have to follow before the funding freeze is lifted. They include attendance documentation — without names or other personal identifiers — for children in the child care subsidy program.

A state fact sheet issued in response to the funding freeze said funding for the child care subsidy program would be depleted by Jan. 31. It also outlined several measures already in place to prevent fraud or waste, including state audits, monthly case reviews by county officials, and efforts to recover funds if improper payments are made.

The state said it is exploring “all options, including legal avenues” to keep the frozen funding flowing.

Six Democratic state lawmakers, most in leadership positions, released a statement Tuesday afternoon calling the funding freeze a callous move that will make life more expensive for working families.

“We stand ready to work with Governor Polis and partners in our federal delegation to resist this lawless effort to freeze funding, and we sincerely hope that our Republican colleagues will put politics aside, get serious about making life in Colorado more affordable, and put families first,” the statement said in part.

The statement was from Speaker of the House Julie McCluskie; Senate President James Coleman; House Majority Leader Monica Duran; Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez; Rep. Emily Sirota; and Sen. Judy Amabile.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

It is up to individual states to determine if they want to adopt the newly announced Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations that now advise universal vaccination against 11 diseases — down from 17.  

The new guidelines will lead to “more splintering of vaccine policies” and a patchwork system, warned vaccine law expert Richard Hughes, who also predicted legal challenges to the way the change was implemented.

Northe Saunders, president of the pro-vaccine advocacy organization American Families for Vaccines, said “there’s going to be a red-state, blue-state divide where blue states look to the science, and red states look to the ill-conceived recommendations of the federal government.”

“With differing vaccine schedules state by state,” he continued, “parents aren’t going to know what the right thing to do for their family is.”

The new guidelines continue to universally recommend vaccines against 11 diseases including measles, mumps, rubella, polio and tetanus. But, shots protecting against a number of other diseases will no longer be recommended and will only be available for certain high-risk groups or after a consultation with a medical professional, also known as shared clinical decision-making. 

These include meningococcal disease — which causes meningitis — hepatitis A, hepatitis B, rotavirus and respiratory syncytial virus, more commonly known as RSV, the

CDC officials said their decision will more closely align the United States with other peer nations, mirroring a policy objective voiced by President Donald Trump in December, but one that critics claim is a false equivalency meant to further the administration’s anti-vaccine agenda.

“After an exhaustive review of the evidence, we are aligning the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule with international consensus while strengthening transparency and informed consent,” Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic, said Monday. “This decision protects children, respects families, and rebuilds trust in public health.”

Sean O’Leary, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Disease, said Monday “what was announced today is part of a decades-long effort on the part of the health secretary to spread fear and falsehoods about vaccines. This is another step in the secretary’s effort to dismantle the U.S. vaccination system.”

While shared clinical decision-making for these vaccines “may sound good on its surface, it’s actually really problematic,” said O’Leary. Pediatricians are already having these conversations with parents before vaccinating their kids. Shifting the recommendation won’t strengthen those exchanges, “it just makes things more confusing for parents and clinicians,” he said.

The American Academy of Pediatrics will continue to recommend kids get vaccinated against all 17 diseases, and multiple states have already banded together to form regional health alliances and establish their own vaccine recommendations. In September, the governors of California, Oregon and Washington created the to “ensure residents remain protected by science, not politics.”

Later that month, several others announced the . While neither alliance is solely focused on immunization policy, both have stated goals of science-based vaccine recommendations and equitable access to shots.

At the same time, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis veered towards a vastly different approach, announcing the state’s intention to become the first to drop all vaccine mandates, including for schoolchildren. State officials have since taken steps towards making that goal a reality.

‘Children’s lives are at stake’

William Moss, director of the Johns Hopkins’ International Vaccine Access Center, told The 74 this week’s dramatic shift in the CDC’s recommendation “will lead to more disease and potentially some deaths in children in this country that could have been prevented.”

The process that led to the changes represents a sharp departure from past practices, which would have required extensive research, a forum for public comment, an opportunity for relevant stakeholders — such as vaccine manufacturers and pediatricians — to weigh in and a formal meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, also known as ACIP. 

Significant changes such as the one announced Monday were historically “very deliberate by design,” said O’Leary because “literally children’s health and children’s lives are at stake.”

None of those steps were followed here, said Hughes, a George Washington University law professor.

“These are not rigorous analyses,” Hughes said. “These are not people who are qualified to be making these decisions. They’re not grounded in evidence. And for that reason they are unlawful.”

Kennedy last year fired all 17 ACIP members, replacing them with hastily hand-picked advisors who largely share his views on vaccines. It has since voted to overturn a recommendation that all newborns receive the hepatitis B vaccine; change policies surrounding the measles, mumps, rubella and varicella (chickenpox) combination vaccine; and roll back recommendations around 2025’s COVID 19 booster. 

The decision to change the childhood vaccine schedule in a much more far-reaching way did not go through ACIP, and the premise it was based on — to more closely match U.S. policy with those of other wealthy nations such as Denmark — is not a sound one, according to medical experts.

“You can’t just copy and paste public health,” said O’Leary, who argued there are fundamental differences between the counties that lead to very different needs.

Moss echoed this point: “Denmark has a universal health care system where we have this very fragmented, insurance-based health care system. Denmark’s the size of Wisconsin, so [the U.S. is] just a much bigger country, a more complex country.”

And, when it comes to diseases such as hepatitis B, Denmark has much stronger screening rates.

While HHS claimed all vaccines previously recommended will remain fully covered by insurance and available to parents who want to vaccinate their kids, others are less sure. According to O’Leary, HHS leaders appear to have misunderstood how insurance companies determine coverage: Historically vaccines recommended for high-risk groups are only covered for children included in that group.

At the very least, doctors and advocates argue, the shift will put up additional barriers in an environment that is already filled with vaccine hesitancy and confusion, inevitably leading to diminished uptake and, ultimately, more sick kids. Health care providers may also start stocking fewer vaccines, making it harder for families to access them. 

There also remains uncertainty around who can actually participate in the shared clinical decision-making; in some states, this may mean that pharmacists can no longer administer vaccines, such as RSV, independently.��

And even if the shots remain available, this week’s action by the CDC will likely further undermine confidence in vaccines, as immunization rates are already falling and diseases are on the uptick. 

In 2025, there were 2,065 confirmed measles cases — the most recorded since the U.S. deemed the virus eliminated a quarter-century ago. The vast majority of cases were in unvaccinated kids, died. 

Flu cases this season are also rising at a faster rate than in previous years, There have been 7.5 million cases so far, leading to 81,000 hospitalizations, and 3,100 deaths — including eight children. Despite this week’s updated guidance, the still recommends everyone 6 months and older receive a flu shot. 

Colorado parents will soon be able to get partial refunds on certain upfront fees they’ve paid to child care centers if their children don’t land a seat there within six months.

A that takes effect on Jan 1. aims to ease the cost burden on families who pay waitlist, application, or deposit fees to child care programs that their children don’t end up attending. It requires child care providers to provide the refunds if a child has not been offered a spot within six months and the parent requests the refund in writing, such as by email.

Democratic lawmakers pushed for the proposal during the 2025 legislative session, citing instances where families sometimes pay fees of $100 or more to a dozen or more child care centers as they search for a slot.

The law applies to fees paid on or after Jan. 1, 2026, so families won’t be able to obtain refunds until they hit the end of the six-month window in July 2026 or after. Families who are offered a spot at a child care center but decline it aren’t eligible to recoup any of the fees they paid.

Under the law, providers are allowed to keep a “reasonable” portion of the waitlist, application, or deposit fee to cover administrative costs. , according to a Colorado Department of Early Childhood document released Thursday.

Besides the refund provision, the new law requires child care programs to disclose their tuition and fees when a prospective family requests pricing information, joins the waitlist, enrolls in the program, or when the provider changes the fee schedule. It doesn’t require that tuition and fees be posted publicly.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

Half of Americans think we should be at least somewhat worried about the impact of falling birth rates on society, according to the fielded in September.

Mary Aured, a 65-year-old based in Florida, indicated in the poll that she was “very worried” about the country’s falling birth rate and told The 19th: “I’m desperately afraid that there will not be a generation that can support the generation above it.”

Aured, a member of the Baby Boomer generation who identified as Republican or Republican-leaning, said she thinks people still want to have kids but simply can’t afford it. She pointed to her 28-year-old daughter and 30-year-old son.

“My son wants to get married, but he’s questioning having children because of the economic cost of it,” Aured said. “And my daughter just moved in with us because she lost her job.”

Joe Stock, 65, also said he was “very worried” about the falling birth rate and “strongly agreed” that society should return to traditional gender roles. For Stock, an Independent voter in Connecticut who supports President Donald Trump, it is more of a cultural issue: Young people’s life trajectories and mindsets are “night and day” compared with his youth.

“The idea of family now is basically nonexistent or in some circles, it exists but with a twisted, abnormal and counter-growth kind of an approach,” said Stock. For him, the traditional nuclear family — consisting of a man, woman and children — is the “very foundation and the bedrock of society.”

The 19th News/SurveyMonkey Poll was conducted online from September 8-15, 2025, among a national sample of 20,807 U.S. adults 18 and older. It has an error estimate of ±1.0 percent.

The 19th spoke with survey respondents, academics and experts about why so many people are concerned about falling birth rates, historical echoes and how the Trump administration’s policies further the message.

First: Are birth rates falling in the United States?

Yes. In 2024, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the nation’s fertility rate hit a record low of 1.6. That’s about what it was in the 1970s, after rates rose to 3.7 during the baby boom. Experts generally agree that a total fertility rate, or average number of births over the birthing population’s lifetime, should hover around 2.1 for a population to replace itself solely through reproduction.

The changes are part of a long-running international trend.

Experts say a have impacted the birth rate, which has dropped significantly from the first half of the 20th century. Women’s — the pill was approved in 1960, and abortion availability rose after Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973 — as well as rising participation in the workforce and pursuit of higher education meant people were choosing to have kids later. The costs of child care, insurance coverage and all impact decisions on whether to have kids, and at what age.

Still, according to the World Bank, the United States has one of the higher fertility rates . Low fertility rates in countries such as and have caused international panic about aging populations. Economists worry about the impact falling birth rates will have on the future job market, or whether there will be enough caretakers for the older generation. Tax revenue , as well as gross domestic product.

Who is most worried about the country’s birth rate?��

Nearly every demographic group expresses anxiety about falling birth rates. Breaking the 19th News/SurveyMonkey poll down across racial and ethnic lines shows little variance — about half of all groups are worried.

There is a strong gender divide. Men are more concerned than women, 58 percent versus 48 percent. Fifty-eight percent of White men are concerned, compared with 45 percent of White women, who are the least concerned of all race and gender breakdowns.

Republicans tend to be more concerned than Democrats or Independents, but significant portions of people across parties say they are worried about birth rates.

What is motivating the fear of falling birth rates?

The partisan differences, paired with , hint at deeper concerns expressed through the fear of falling birth rates.

Joshua Wilson, a political science professor at the University of Denver, said national identity is a “real obsession” with the rise of conservatism across the world.

“Fear of birth rates is a way of feeding into this anxiety of national identity, who we are and how we are being threatened,” Wilson said. “Just look at the words of MAGA itself: Make America Great Again. It’s a very conservative view because it’s saying that in the past, there was a kind of ideal America and we’ve been knocked off track. We need to reestablish that old identity — even if it’s a myth.”

The anxiety is closely tied to anti-immigration policies as well. Immigration could be seen as a solution to the falling birth rate —��but opponents connect migration with a loss of culture, loss of control in democratic institutions and loss of status.

For the right, Wilson said, “the question becomes, how do we win back the culture through majorities? How do we win elections and guarantee future elections? We make majorities through procreation — it is a kind of really basic arithmetic.”

What is pronatalism?

Pronatalism is the promotion of reproduction in a population, and today more commonly refers to the belief that a steady birth rate is essential to a stable society. Historically, it’s often a result of the fear of falling birth rates and a loss of national identity.

As women fought for suffrage and expanded social rights in the United States, pronatalism was a reactive force.

“There’s this linkage between women’s educational and aspirational futures and the declining birth rate,” Laura Lovett, author of “Conceiving the Future: Pronatalism, Reproduction, and the Family in the United States, 1890-1930,” earlier this year. She said President Theodore Roosevelt blamed young White women going to college for

How else have pronatalist ideas been linked to nationalism and extremism?

Pronatalism is often entwined with eugenics, and authoritarian regimes have often capitalized on this. In the leadup to World War II, the Nazi party discouraged single “Aryan” women from having abortions and tasked German women with birthing enough “pure” children to take over the continent. Officials to honor women based on the number of children they had.

These attitudes can rear their head in any nationalist movement. The Black Panthers and Nation of Islam were “staunchly opposed to abortion or any other form of reproductive control, even if voluntarily chosen,” wrote historian Jennifer A. Nelson in an article about .

“These nationalists insisted that by increasing their numbers, people of color would gain political power,” she wrote. “They called upon women to bear children as their contribution to the Black Power movement.”

Wombs are essential to ethnic nationalist movements, and pronatalist messaging can emphasize traditional gender roles as a way to contribute to a larger project. Historically, a lot of pronatalist messaging was anti-feminist. Seyward Darby, journalist and author of “Sisters In Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism,” said pronatalism was wielded in the service of subjugating women by keeping them constrained to the home.

At the same time that White women won suffrage in the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was recruiting them into the white supremacist movement. The KKK was founded on the idea that White women needed protection from Black men, Darby said, and that was very tied to the idea that “their purpose, politically, socially, was to have babies.” Klan messaging focused on the importance of White mothers as keepers of history and tradition for the White race, she said.

Concerns over White birth rates have been used to justify extremist, racist violence in recent years too. That includes a 2019 attack in New Zealand in which 51 people were killed by a White Australian man who expressed concern over a shrinking White population and a 2022 shooting in Buffalo, New York, in which the shooter killed 14 and cited the that foments fear about the extinction of the White race due to rising populations of people of color.

How partisan is the discussion about declining birth rates?

Democrats and Republican platforms differ greatly in their proposals to address falling birth rates. In general, progressives tend to talk about family planning in more economic terms as an affordability issue, while conservatives see it as a need for a certain cultural identity, typically with religious undertones.

Sixty-five percent of Trump voters are worried about falling birth rates, compared with 45 percent of Kamala Harris voters, and the numbers are similar for Republicans and Democrats.

Wilson pointed to — a 920-page conservative presidential policy blueprint authored by the Heritage Foundation — as a key in understanding the modern American pronatalism movement. Its first and foremost recommendation is to “restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.” The second is to “dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people” — an approach that rejects policies like universal day care.

“This movement captures the classic conservative tension between the family ideal and the intervening dangerous state,” said Wilson, whose research focus includes abortion politics and modern American conservatism. “But when you cut out all the social supports, then what’s the subtext there? Who do you want to be producing?”

Still, a significant portion of progressive Americans, including LGBTQ+ people (43 percent) and Gen Z women (51 percent), are concerned about the nation’s fertility rate. The left tends to address the problem through the lens of affordability and strengthening the social safety net.

Is the Trump administration pushing pronatalist policies?��

Yes. Pronatalist rhetoric creeps into the policy and talking points from members of the Trump administration. President Trump called himself the “fertilization president” on the campaign trail, promising free in vitro fertilization for all, and Vice President JD Vance The secretary of transportation, who is a father of nine, to prioritize projects that “give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average.”

Tech billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk, the , decried the country’s fertility rate, , “a collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.” There is a specific strain of pronatalism among tech elites that advocates for the use of assistive reproductive technologies to engineer the smartest kids possible.

In a recent report,“,” the National Women’s Law Center expressed caution about policies like $1,000 baby bonds and that are coming from the administration. (The IVF proposal of Trump campaign-trail promise to make insurance companies cover the procedure.)

Amy K. Matsui, the vice president for child care & income security at the center, said there’s strong evidence that these policies are meant to benefit certain people, particularly the White and more affluent.

“We’re seeing the confluence of a purported concern about birth rates being used to advance an agenda, which is really about exercising control over women’s bodies, over gender roles, over women’s role in public life,” Matsui said.

Matsui said she sees the Trump administration’s pronatalist policies as part of “a shrinking government that literally makes it harder for people to make ends meet.” She added there are “flaws and dangers” to encouraging a “traditional family structure where women are not in the workforce but are staying home and primarily responsible for caregiving.”

Matsui pointed to the , which is disproportionately women and people of color; the during the ; and and women’s health.

At the same time that the administration is encouraging more births, Matsui said it is also dismantling structures that support families and make it harder for certain women to have choices around family planning.

“There’s a really strong kind of racial thread going through this as well because these policies are paired with opposition to immigration, an underlying concern about the wrong kind of people having children — which includes non-White people, non-heterosexual people, people who are not in traditional marriage structures,” Matsui said.

How do religion and traditional gender roles play a role in pushing pronatalist messaging?��

Anxiety over birth rates is more present among religions that emphasize traditional gender roles, the importance of families and a lack of effective contraception. Mormons (69 percent), evangelical Christians (65 percent), Orthodox Christians (63 percent), Catholics (59 percent) and Muslims (59 percent) are most likely to worry about the impact of low fertility.

Wilson said it’s impossible to discuss the modern conservative movement without acknowledging the prominence of white Evangelicals and now conservative Catholics in the Republican Party. The party is reflecting those values, he said, referencing the high value that the Christian right places on traditional and growing families and pointing specifically to the .

“Once that happened, it created this void,” Wilson said. “The big defining issue of decades fundamentally changed, and it disrupted boundaries and created this space that needed to be filled. So that’s why we get that and why we’re talking about natalism, gender roles and reproduction.”

According to those who are concerned, what are potential solutions?

It’s something people in many countries are considering. Christina Scott, a professor of psychological sciences at Whittier College who taught in Japan as a Fulbright Scholar for five months, said she asked young women in Japan about their feelings around having children. The country’s birth rate is lower than that in the United States, and for many, financial circumstances caused hesitation. That’s despite the fact that Japan offers incentives including a , , cash payments per childbirth, parenting classes and monthly subsidies to parents with children younger than 15.

“There’s so many things that would help level the playing field, but so much of the responsibility of children falls primarily to mothers,” Scott said. “Many women are trying to make the determination between child care, education and careers. And different parties will call this selfish, but we don’t call it selfish when men have these determinations.”

Many Americans pointed to child care as a key issue.

Rafael, a 45-year-old father of two who asked to be identified by only his first name due to his job, is concerned about falling birth rates. He said he and his wife originally weren’t going to have kids because of the cost, but with some careful budgeting realized they could afford it. His family lives nearby and frequently helps with child care, but primary care for his eldest still costs $15,000 a year.

That cost plus little parental leave from work were major concerns; Rafael took three weeks of vacation and his wife had six weeks of leave when their child was born. He thinks at least six months of fully paid parental leave would ease the transition between work and parenting. He thinks the United States should invest in families stateside, instead of sending money to Israel or spending money on “LGBT or whatever.”

Rafael, along with other survey responders, praised pro-family policies in European countries. “The Scandinavian countries have it really figured out,” said Catherine Campbell, an 85-year-old retiree in Santa Monica, California. “They have wonderful care for kids.”

Campbell said on the survey she was worried about falling birth rates, but in an interview clarified that the population size does not concern her. She said it was expensive for governments to subsidize child care, but it is worth it.

was originally reported by Mariel Padilla and Jasmine Mithani of . Meet and and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

For some programs, the promise of incoming funding will be enough to restart operations. But many won’t be able to open their doors until they receive their federal dollars, which could take up to two weeks, said Tommy Sheridan, deputy director at the NHSA. 

Sheridan said the Trump administration understands the urgency and is “moving as fast as they possibly can.”

That said, this interruption had an opportunity cost, and it’s led to instability for families and providers, he said, adding that the shutdown caused staff to focus on issues they “should not be worried about,” such as fundraising and contingency planning.

Some providers fear greater delays since the Trump administration shuttered half of the Head Start regional offices earlier this year. 

“They’re going to be working as hard as they can, but they’re going to be doing it with half the capacity,” said Katie Hamm, former deputy assistant secretary for early childhood development under President Joe Biden.

And even once the funding comes through, closed centers will need to go through a series of logistical hurdles, including reaching out to families who may have found alternative child care arrangements and calling back furloughed staff, some of whom have found employment elsewhere. 

“Head Start is not a light switch,” Hamm said. “You can’t just turn it back on.”

This interruption has also further eroded trust between grantees and the federal government that was already shaky, she added.

The Administration for Children and Families did not respond to a request for comment on when programs can anticipate communication from the office or their funding.

Since Nov. 1, approximately 65,000 kids and their families — close to 10% of all of those served by Head Start — have been at risk of losing their seats because their programs had not received their awarded funding during the longest government shutdown in history. The early care and education program delivers a range of resources to low-income families including medical screenings, parenting courses and connections to community resources for job, food and housing assistance. 

At the peak of the Head Start closures, roughly 10,000 kids across 22 programs lost access to services, according to Sheridan. A number of the remaining programs were able to stay open through private donations, loans, alternative funding streams and staff’s willingness to go without pay.

Valerie Williams, who runs a Head Start program with two facilities in Appalachian Ohio, was excited to tell parents that classrooms would be reopening soon. Her centers have been closed since Nov. 3, impacting 177 kids and 45 staff, many of whom already live paycheck to paycheck, she said.

A number of families were doubly impacted, losing access to Head Start’s resources as well as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP, simultaneously. In the days leading up to the closure, Williams and her staff prepared families as best they could, sharing information about resources for food, assistance for utilities and heating and guidance on child care options. 

On Thursday, Williams wrote to parents via an online portal that she hopes to restart the normal school schedule sometime next week. The post was quickly flooded with comments. 

“This is super exciting!!” wrote one parent. “Best news in a long time. Carter has been asking every day. Hope to see u guys very soon.”

“Yayyy,” wrote another. “The kids miss you guys so much!”

Still, Williams knows reopening won’t be seamless. Along with program leaders across the country, she’ll need to call back furloughed staff, place food orders and handle a number of other operational challenges.

And despite the excitement, the transition back may also prove tricky for some kids.

“I do think that it will feel like starting school again for a lot of our classrooms,” Williams said. “They’ve been out for two weeks … You’re going to work on separation anxiety issues, you’re going to have to get into that routine again and the structure of a classroom environment. So I think that will be a big issue for a lot of our teachers.” 

As of Friday afternoon, Williams was still awaiting communication from the federal Office of Head Start with information about the anticipated timeline for next steps. 

“As soon as we get that notice of award, [I want to] start our staff and kids back immediately,” she said. “The very next day.”

Now that the shutdown has ended, what’s next for Head Start?

Funding for Head Start is complex. Some 80% comes from federal grants that are released to local providers on a staggered schedule throughout the year. This year, grant recipients with funding deadlines on the first of October and November were left scrambling, as the federal shutdown dragged on.

The government began to resume operations late Wednesday night after President Donald Trump signed a bill, funding through Jan. 30 and allowing programs that didn’t receive their funding on time, including Head Start, to use forthcoming dollars to backpay expenses incurred over the past month and a half.

Here’s what Hamm predicts will happen next: The Office of Head Start will recall all staff to resume, including those who were furloughed during the shutdown. The employees will review grant applications, a process which requires them to flag any language that might be reflective of diversity, equity and inclusion practices. Next, money will be sent along to the remaining regional offices, and eventually dispersed to individual grantees. The NHSA is hopeful that this process will be completed by Thanksgiving for all grantees.

There are two things the federal government can do to help centers open faster, according to Hamm. First, they could waive a typical protocol that leads to a period of seven days between when a member of Congress is notified that their state will be receiving funding and when the funding actually goes out, Hamm explained. 

Officials could also notify grantees, in writing, about how much money they’ll get and when it’s expected to come through, so they can begin planning. 

Unlike SNAP, which received guaranteed funding through the budget year, money for Head Start remains uncertain beyond Jan. 30. While the fear of another shutdown has caused “quite a bit of worry” among the Head Start community, Sheridan said it would likely lead to fewer program disruptions, since it wouldn’t fall at the start of the fiscal year.

To prevent similar chaos moving forward, Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin introduced in the final days of the shutdown that would guarantee uninterrupted service for fiscal year 2026. 

“The 750,000 children and their families who use Head Start shouldn’t pay the price for Washington dysfunction,” Baldwin, the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, wrote in a statement to The 74.

Multiple funding threats and deep staffing cuts by the Trump administration over the past year have plunged programs across the country into uncertainty. In the wake of that recent upheaval, a leadership change is also underway. The acting director of the Office of Head Start, Tala Hooban, accepted a new role within the Office of Administration for Children and Families and will be replaced by political appointee Laurie Todd-Smith, according to an email statement from ACF. Todd-Smith currently leads the Office of Early Childhood Development, which oversees the Office of Head Start. 

Sheridan described this move as anticipated and not particularly concerning, though others were less sure. Joel Ryan, the executive director of the Washington State Association of Head Start, noted that Hooban was a longtime civil servant and strong supporter of the Head Start program. Without her, he fears “there’s nobody internally with any kind of power that will push back,” on future threats to the program.

Another worry plaguing providers: current funding for Head Start has remained stagnant since the end of 2024, meaning that through at least Jan. 30, programs will be operating under the same budget amid rising costs across the board.

In previous years, the program’s grant recipients typically got a cost-of-living adjustment, such as the bump ($275 million) for fiscal year 2024. In May, a group of almost 200 members of Congress signed to a House Appropriations subcommittee, requesting an adjustment of 3.2% for 2026. A recent statement from NHSA suggested that instead, the proposed Senate bill for next year includes a jump of just , or $77 million.

“If we don’t see a funding increase in line with inflation, that means that Head Start will be facing a cut of that degree,” said Sheridan. “It’s just kind of a quiet cut, or a silent cut.”

“I think what will end up happening,” said Ryan, “is you’ll end up seeing a massive reduction in the number of kids being served.”

After the federal government failed to renew a $1.5 million federal grant by Saturday, officials at the Gogebic-Ontonagon Community Action Agency say they had little choice: They closed a free preschool program that has served two counties in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula since 1965.

The program was among that missed expected weekend payments because of the ongoing federal government shutdown. Unlike others, the UP program could not secure alternative resources in time to continue operations.

That means 85 students — along with 30 other families with children in Early Head Start — won’t be getting the education, meals and other services they rely on until funding is restored. And employees are currently out of work, program director Renee Pertile told Bridge Michigan.

“We’re kind of one big family, and now it seems like a piece is missing,” she said. “It’s awfully quiet here today.”

Funded primarily by the federal government to serve low-income preschoolers and their families, Head Start programs in Michigan and around the country are among the latest to feel direct impacts from the government shutdown that’s dragged on for more than a month.

Coupled with the recent impacting 1.4 million Michigan residents, advocates warn the ongoing turmoil surrounding federal funding is putting vulnerable kids at risk.

While local schools and community groups can in some cases step in to help keep Head Start programs going, those resources are “not going to be universal, and it’s not going to be a one-to-one replacement,” said Bob McCann, executive director of the K-12 Alliance of Michigan.

“The longer this goes on, the more damage it’s going to do,” McCann continued. “This is a crisis of choice by (politicians), and it’s kids that are paying the price for it.” 

As of Tuesday, the Gogebic-Ontonagon program was the only confirmed closure in Michigan since Nov. 1, , which has so far reported 25 closures nationwide. 

Education advocates warned other programs around the state that have missed grant payments are at imminent risk of running out of money, too. 

Statewide, Michigan has 48 Head Start and Early Head Start programs that serve nearly 30,000 children, bringing in $423 million in federal funds annually, said Robin J. Bozek, executive director of the Michigan Head Start Association. 

Nine of those programs serving 2,944 children, many of them in the Upper Peninsula and northern lower Michigan, saw their funding grants expire Nov. 1, Bozek said. 

Though some of those programs have been able to piece together enough funds from local schools or community groups to temporarily keep them afloat, the lack of new federal funding means money is tight and the future is uncertain, Bozek said. 

“Anytime there’s a pause or a stop…it totally disrupts the system for this type of grant,” she said. 

For the Gogebic-Ontonagon Community Action Agency, there was no money to fall back on. When the grant didn’t come through, the Head Start program had to wind down. 

“We started looking at this in mid-October, thinking, we’d better prepare just in case this was going to happen,” Pertile said. “As it got closer to the deadline, we knew that it was highly unlikely we would get our grant.”

In the short term, program employees are able to collect unemployment, and a local daycare offered to open up temporary slots to help care for kids who’d previously been attending the Head Start program, Pertile said. 

The agency is also looking at the possibility of setting up a mobile food drive for local families in need, and Pertile is planning to provide weekly updates to staff and parents as they learn more.

Even if the shutdown ends tomorrow, it will still take some time to get operations back up and running, she added, noting that many Head Start participants in their rural community don’t have other options readily available for early learning programs, health checks and meals. 

“The longer this goes on, the more concerned we get,” Pertile said. “Because we’re such a rural program, there are limited resources…they might be able to do it for a couple weeks, but then they might have to look for something more permanent.”

Looking ahead to next month, grants for another four Michigan Head Start programs will come up for renewal Dec. 1, Bozek said, meaning the financial pressures felt by Gogebic-Ontonagon and eight other programs could soon extend to others across Michigan. 

Losing Head Start options would be “a huge hardship” to families whose parents need a safe place for their young children while at work, Bozek said. 

But beyond that, she said, it would put early educators out of work and cut needy families off from a connector for additional resources, including food assistance, health care, and even warm coats for kids as the cold weather creeps in. 

“When a Head Start program closes, it impacts the entire community,” Bozek said.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

Therefore, the response begins at City Hall.   

Education leaders and equity advocates reject the idea that standing up for students and protecting funding are mutually exclusive. Both can and must be pursued. Every child in New York City deserves to feel safe, seen and supported in school. The new administration should be guided by that commitment. 

EdTrust-New York has expressed to work closely with the Mamdani administration to fulfill the long-standing promise of free, universal child care for children age two and under, as well as full access to Pre-K and 3-K. Families across the city still pay up to $26,000 annually for child care, and too many remain on waitlists.

Meeting this demand requires sustainable funding, additional child care sites, a well-paid workforce and full-day programs in neighborhoods where families live. Such investments would give all children a strong start. 

New York City must also confront the alarming reality that nearly half of fourth graders score below basic proficiency in reading, with even worse outcomes for Black and Latinx students. While initiatives like NYC Reads and NYC Solves mark progress, they need ongoing support and expansion.

EdTrust-New York encourages the Mamdani administration to continue expanding multilingual materials, provide interventions for English learners and students with disabilities, and ensure that all educators receive training in the science of reading. At the same time, the city should work toward developing a comprehensive adolescent literacy plan to support middle and high school students.

Mamdani’s leadership should reflect a deep commitment to a curriculum that honors the identities and experiences of all students. Fully implementing culturally responsive education means expanding Black, Native American, AAPI and Latin studies, as well as giving educators the training and tools needed to teach the curricula. The city’s schools also need greater investment in collective care teams, educators, counselors, nurses and social workers who can provide the academic and emotional support students need.

Segregation continues to divide New York City students by race and class. The incoming administration has an opportunity to take meaningful steps toward integration by encouraging all districts to create integration plans, using admissions models such as lottery. The city also needs to recruit and retain more educators of color and publicly report school integration data to track progress. 

The Mamdani administration should also protect and support immigrant students and multilingual learners, who face growing threats from federal policies and systemic barriers. Schools can strengthen scaffolds in literacy and math, expand bilingual curricula  and provide mental health services for students facing trauma.

In addition, older immigrant students should have access to the full high school experience, not just for language acquisition or diploma-completion programs. Higher education partners can also play a vital role also by expanding financial aid and creating safe, supportive pathways for undocumented students to attend and graduate from college. 

Improving school climate is another key priority, particularly the need to shift from exclusion and punishment to belonging and support. With more than a third of students chronically absent — especially Black, Latino, and those from low-income backgrounds — and many affected by punitive discipline, the city can invest in restorative justice and mental health programs.

That should include funding restorative initiatives in all schools, training educators in healing-centered approaches and increasing weighted funding for the most-affected student groups. 

Under mayoral control, New York City has achieved important system-wide progress, such as the expansion of universal pre-K and the launch of NYC Reads. Mamdani should maintain this structure but ensure stronger accountability and input from parents and students. He can build on this success by ensuring that parents, students and caregivers, who should be granted voting power on Community Education Councils, have meaningful influence over district policy decisions. 

Finally, the Mamdani administration should expand access to college and career pathways. Too few students can enroll in college in high school programs that boost college success. Let’s expand these programs citywide, closing access gaps and strengthening support in college. That should include proven initiatives like CUNY’s ASAP and ACE, which help students persist and graduate despite financial emergencies. 

As Mayor-elect Mamdani prepares to lead the nation’s largest school system, he inherits both profound challenges and enormous opportunities. This moment offers a shared chance to build a public education system that not only aspires to equity but truly delivers on that promise. 

Members of Gov. Josh Stein’s bipartisan Task Force on Child Care and Early Education got an update on licensed child care closures during their most recent meeting.

“Just in the month of August, we had more than twice as many programs close as open,” said Candace Witherspoon, director of the Division of Child Development and Early Education (DCDEE).

Her statement is evidence that — — the overall trend of licensed child care losses has continued since the end of pandemic-era stabilization grants earlier this year.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

Based on data provided by the N.C. Child Care Resource and Referral (CCR&R) Council in partnership with DCDEE, that North Carolina lost 5.8% of licensed child care programs during the five years when stabilization grants were used to supplement teacher wages.

That net loss has increased to 6.1% since the end of stabilization grants. Family child care homes (FCCHs) make up 97% of that net loss.

Trends among licensed centers and homes

Since February 2020, the last month of data before the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of licensed FCCHs has decreased by 23%. The number of licensed child care centers has decreased by 0.3%.

The trend for licensed FCCHs since EdNC began tracking the data in June 2023 has been one of consistent net loss, decreasing each quarter.

There were 1,363 FCCHs in February 2020. That number was down to 1,096 in March 2025, the last data before the end of stabilization grants. Now there are 1,052 FCCHs across the state.

While licensed child care centers have also experienced a net loss since February 2020, the trend has been less linear.

There were 3,879 licensed centers in February 2020. When EdNC began tracking in June 2023, the number was slightly higher at 3,881. From then on it fluctuated, with net gains in some quarters and net losses in others. There are now 3,868 licensed centers statewide.

While the net loss of centers remains small, the effect of a single center closing is huge — especially in rural communities.

Families on Hatteras Island are learning this firsthand. The only licensed child care program on the island is scheduled to close at the end of the year. With no licensed FCCHs and no clear way to save the sole licensed center, families are trying to figure out how to keep their businesses open and remain in their communities without access to child care.

Access to high-quality, affordable early care and learning is crucial to child and family freedom and well-being. It enables parents to participate in the workforce or continue their education without concern for the safety of their children. It also puts North Carolina’s youngest residents on a path to future success.

Trends among subgroups

In addition to monitoring overall licensed child care trends, EdNC zooms in on trends among three subgroups of counties each quarter.

In the counties that make up the area covered by the (Avery, Buncombe, Burke, Cherokee, Clay, Graham, Haywood, Henderson, Jackson, Macon, Madison, McDowell, Mitchell, Polk, Rutherford, Swain, Transylvania, and Yancey), the number of licensed child care sites is 5% lower than before the pandemic. These counties had a net loss of eight programs from July through September 2025, the largest single-quarter decrease since EdNC began tracking.

In the majority-Black counties (Bertie, Edgecombe, Halifax, Hertford, Northampton, Vance, Warren, and Washington), the number of licensed child care sites remained relatively stable during and after the pandemic. But in the most recent quarter, these counties had a net loss of nine programs, putting them 4% lower than before the pandemic, a sudden and dramatic shift in circumstance. As with the Dogwood counties, this represents the largest single-quarter decrease since EdNC began tracking.

In Robeson and Swain, which both have large Indigenous populations, the number of licensed child care sites had also remained relatively stable during and after the pandemic. In the most recent quarter, for the first time since EdNC began tracking, the number of licensed child care programs in these counties has dipped just below pre-pandemic levels.

Editor’s note: The Dogwood Health Trust supports the work of EdNC.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

Meanwhile, families — especially families of color and low-income families — are left to hold their breath and wonder what this shutdown means for them. As members of Congress keep making their rounds on television, babies still need formula, toddlers still need , children still need breakfast and lunch at school and in their child care programs, and parents still need child care so they can work. Amid extreme stress, families are left, wondering how they will be able to take care of their children.

The demands of children and their families do not stop just because Congress is at a standstill. 

According to , an annual report published by the Urban Institute about federal expenditures, children received only about 9% of all federal spending in 2023, while about 43% of federal spending went toward health and retirement benefits for adults 18 years and older. That’s a very small percentage for a nation in which politicians on have expressed interest in increased government investment in children. These numbers contradict the narrative that claims children matter because they are our future.

That 9% starts to feel even smaller during a government shutdown. Some programs, like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, are mandatory, meaning they don’t require annual congressional approval. But others, including a number of crucial children’s programs, such as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), are funded through the annual appropriations process, which Congress must approve. This means when lawmakers can’t agree on a budget, these critical programs are left in limbo.

The fallout on the horizon from this needless dysfunction is becoming clearer.

, the National WIC Association reminded the public that WIC only had enough funds to temporarily remain open during a government shutdown. Now, according to Reuters, at least two dozen state websites warn there could be an for more than 41 million people in America who get aid from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the nearly 7 million people . 

Georgia Machell, president and chief executive officer of the National WIC Association, delivered this sobering news week.

“Without additional support, State WIC Agencies face another looming crisis,” she said. “Several are set to run out of funds to pay for WIC benefits on November 1 and may need to start making contingency plans.”

Many families in historically marginalized communities, who already face greater barriers to health care, housing and early education, will feel this impact even more sharply. For example, we know that tens of thousands of young children and families rely on vital support received through Head Start, a service that promotes early learning and development, health and well-being. The shutdown is already in its fourth week, and, according to a issued on Oct. 16 from the National Head Start Association, if the government shutdown doesn’t end by Nov. 1, more than 65,000 children and families will be at risk of losing critical services. 

A missed doctor’s appointment, a delay in SNAP benefits or a gap in child care isn’t just inconvenient. It can destabilize a family and hinder a child’s development, especially in the classroom.

A research brief by The Food Research & Action Center highlighted the links between hunger and learning, stating that “behavioral, emotional, mental health, and academic problems are more prevalent among children and adolescents struggling with hunger” and that young people experiencing hunger have lower math scores and poorer grades. The shutdown will have real and lasting consequences on the learning, development and well-being of America’s children because these programs are being impacted.

It’s frustrating to watch lawmakers stand at podiums and declare how much they care about children while their actions — or inaction — puts children at risk. 

Words don’t put food on the table. Words don’t pay rent. But actions do. 

And right now, the actions coming out of Congress are sending an unfortunate message to families: protecting children is not the priority.

If children truly are our future, then they cannot be treated as bargaining chips. Children deserve more than 9% of America’s federal spending budget. We need federal budgets that reflect children’s needs and protection for essential services. Critical programs that protect child health and well-being should never be disrupted by a government shutdown.

Finally, Americans deserve government accountability. Policymakers should be held responsible for their words and actions, especially when they fail to deliver on the promises they make about protecting children.

Children cannot wait. They are growing, learning and developing right now. The choices we make as a country today will shape their tomorrow.

A recent study, “,” reinforces this, showing that the physical act of forming letters strengthens memory and accelerates learning. Far from being a relic of the past, handwriting is a powerful tool that prepares young students for reading, improves their cognitive abilities and builds the groundwork for becoming confident, capable writers.

The power of handwriting comes from the way it engages multiple senses at once. Unlike typing, which relies on a single, repetitive motion, handwriting activates multiple areas of the brain by combining visual, auditory and kinesthetic input. When children form a letter, they’re engaging in a dynamic process that solidifies its identity in their mind. This graphomotor movement — the coordination of hand and eye to produce letters — is key to remembering them.Explicitly teaching children to form letters by hand, even through simple methods like having them copy words from a correctly written letter, word or sentence, and better retain letter and word structures.

This practice has a powerful ripple effect. Once letter formation becomes automatic, a child’s brain is freed to focus on higher-level thinking. Instead of struggling to recall how to write a letter, a child can concentrate on building sentences, expressing thoughts and ideas, and crafting coherent narratives. This is how fluent writing develops. And the benefits extend well beyond childhood: found college students who took notes by hand remembered more than those who typed, likely because writing by hand forces the brain to process and summarize information, not just copy it.

The key to effective handwriting instruction is structured, straightforward direct teaching, explicit modeling, guided practice and immediate feedback. Just as important, handwriting should be woven into the natural rhythm of the day and made part of all subjects. Students can practice numbers in math, label diagrams in science or write vocabulary words in social studies. Treating handwriting as a universal skill reinforces its importance and makes it feel natural in students’ academic lives. This approach builds stronger readers and more confident writers across every subject.

One common challenge in handwriting instruction is pushing students into writing before they’re developmentally ready. For younger learners, a developmentally appropriate approach means starting with gross motor activities that strengthen the shoulder and core, followed by fine motor practice using multisensory tools like clay, sand or chalk. These activities prepare the hand and brain for writing long before a pencil ever touches paper. By allowing students to master these foundational movements, teachers can prevent bad habits from forming and build the confidence necessary to successfully transition to paper-and-pencil tasks, setting students up for fluent, legible writing.

For students with learning differences such as dyslexia or dysgraphia, handwriting can be particularly helpful. Cursive, with its fluid, connected strokes, can help reduce letter reversals and provides a rhythmic pattern that helps children process words as whole units rather than a series of disconnected letters. For students with dysgraphia, the continuous motion of cursive can ease the fine-motor demands of repeatedly lifting and placing the pencil, making writing feel more manageable and less fragmented. The continuous movement can engage the brain’s reading circuits and help improve memory and fluency. The sense of accomplishment gained from mastering this skill can be transformative. 

Handwriting isn’t an old-fashioned skill; it’s central to reading, writing and cognitive development. Prioritizing evidence-based handwriting instruction in pre-K through fifth grade lays the foundation for spelling, sentence-building and clear written communication. Strong handwriting skills support literacy and can enhance learning across other academic areas by building focus, confidence and cognitive connections.

Administrators and teachers can have a lasting impact by ensuring handwriting instruction is explicit, structured and prioritized in the early grades. By providing educators with the knowledge, tools and time they need, schools can ensure that every child has the opportunity to develop this essential skill. It is a small investment that can pay off for a lifetime, helping students feel capable and successful in their learning.

Nearly all staff members in the Office of Special Education Programs and the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education were affected when the department began issuing termination notices Friday. The Office for Civil Rights also saw new cuts after losing half of its staff earlier this year.

“The track record for challenging [reductions in force] in the courts hasn’t been great,” Emily Merolli, a partner with the Sligo Law Group and a former attorney in the department’s general counsel’s office, said during a call with reporters after the hearing. “We still very much consider these offices and these programs to be in immediate danger.”

She was among those eliminated in the mass layoffs in March, which were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in July while the case moves forward. In a second case, an appeals court last month gave Education Secretary Linda McMahon the OK to lay off roughly 250 OCR staff and attorneys.

In her ruling Wednesday, Judge Susan Illston from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, a Clinton appointee, said the that sued over the layoffs are likely to prove that the administration had no authority to let staff go while they were furloughed during a shutdown. Later this month, she’ll hold a second hearing on whether the employees can remain on the job as the court considers the merits of the case. 

It is “far from normal for an administration to fire line-level civilian employees during a government shutdown as a way to punish the opposing political party,” . During the hearing, she said the department’s “ready, aim, fire approach” to reform would be “enormously disruptive” to students.

On Tuesday, President Trump that he’s using the current government shutdown to slash “Democrat programs that we want to close up or we never wanted to happen.” Advocates have described the cuts as an attack on vulnerable students, including the more than who receive services under the Individuals with Disabilities Act. Late Tuesday, nearly 400 organizations issued demanding that the administration “reverse course immediately and restore staffing and transparency at the U.S. Department of Education.” 

In a separate , state special education directors said they were “confused and concerned” by the cuts and worried IDEA funding could lapse with fewer staff ensuring the payments go out on time. McMahon responded Wednesday, saying that the shutdown has not interrupted funding, including money for special education.

“Two weeks in, millions of American students are still going to school, teachers are getting paid and schools are operating as normal,” she . “It confirms what the President has said: the federal Department of Education is unnecessary, and we should return education to the states.”

But Michael Anderson, a lawyer at Sligo and a former department attorney who focused on major grant programs like Title I said the secretary’s statement “loses sight of the big picture.”

Staff cuts are like “deferred maintenance on a car or a home,” he said. “Over time, the effects of not having experienced, knowledgeable staff administering federal education programs” could lead to significant problems. 

Even proponents of eliminating the department were taken aback by this latest round of cuts. Neal McCluskey, director of educational freedom at the libertarian Cato Institute, has been a vocal supporter of closing the Education Department and said the president has the authority to cut employees as long as he keeps enough staff to do the work mandated by Congress. But he said he didn’t understand how the administration could use the shutdown to justify additional layoffs.

The standoff between Democrats and Republicans over the shutdown “feels like a game of chicken, which is bad public policy,” he said. “But [it] seems to be increasingly how federal politics works.”

‘Disability doesn’t fly a flag’

News of the cuts over the weekend left parents and advocates feeling betrayed after Trump and McMahon vowed not to cut “anything that was going to harm or infringe upon the rights of kids with disabilities,” said Jennifer Coco, interim executive director of the Center for Learner Equity. The center advocates for students with disabilities who attend charter schools, which often struggle to provide students with disabilities a better education than they’d receive in a district school.��

The staff who received layoff notices, she said, “represent decades of expertise in understanding what folks in the field needed … to make things better for kids.”

In March, as part of his effort to close the agency, Trump said it would “work out very well” to move the administration of IDEA to the Department of Health and Human Services. But his administration cut in the Administration for Children and Families in April, and plans to eliminate additional , including those to improve preschool.

Ensuring that states follow IDEA is one of the core functions of the Office of Special Education Programs, or OSEP. Earlier this year, the office put in the country on notice that they were failing to adequately serve children with disabilities. 

struggled with timelines for evaluating students for special education services. Michigan saw a of complaints from parents of children with dyslexia who weren’t receiving the reading help they needed. And an investigation found the District of Columbia often delayed services to young children, forcing parents to file lawsuits in order to get services.  

With or without federal monitoring, states “still have the obligation to make sure that the laws are followed,” said Denise Marshall, CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates. 

But parents often look to OSEP for help. In fact, positions slated for elimination include those who take calls directly from parents of children with disabilities “who probably feel like they have exhausted all of their resources at the state level at the local level,” said Becca Walawender, the former director of policy and planning in the department’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services. 

She took offense at the president’s characterization that special education is a “Democrat program.”

“Disability doesn’t fly a flag,” said Walawender, now a senior adviser to Sligo. “People with disabilities exist in all states, red or blue, across socioeconomic lines, across races, religions. Rural, urban — it doesn’t matter.”

Julie Melear, a parent who has navigated special education systems in Colorado, Virginia and Idaho, sought help from federal staff multiple times when she felt her two boys weren’t getting appropriate services for dyslexia. It took OSEP to require the Fairfax County Public Schools to reimburse her for tutoring services the district was required to provide following the pandemic. Now she has a complaint against the Colorado Department of Education. She argues that the state has refused to investigate districts for failing to reimburse parents at market rates when they seek outside evaluations for their children.

“I am concerned that [the department] essentially is turning over federal dollars to let Colorado do whatever it wants,” Melear said. Colorado is that “needs assistance” from the department, according to federal officials. 

A Colorado department spokeswoman said officials had not received the complaint but that districts can “set reasonable cost limits” as long as they don’t prevent parents from getting an outside evaluation.

‘Be careful of what you ask for’

Other parents with a long history of filing state and federal special education complaints point to problems at the federal level. Officials often “moved slowly and allowed noncompliance to continue for too long,” said Callie Oettinger, an advocate in Virginia. There are some parents, she said, who have no problem with federal employees losing their jobs. 

“At the same time, they’re terrified because, as problematic as some staff members were, they did more than the states,” she said. “It’s a case of be careful of what you ask for.” 

It took federal officials, she said, to force Texas in 2017 to lift on the number of students receiving special education services. The limit meant that schools often denied special education services to students with autism, ADHD and epilepsy or offered cheaper accommodations. Gov. Greg Abbott blamed teachers, while educators insisted they were following the Texas Education Agency’s instructions to identify fewer students for special instruction.

“Can you imagine Texas without OSEP’s monitoring?” Oettinger asked. “Not even major investigations by the and others, which made the noncompliance public, resulted in the state making its own changes.”

‘Without any recourse’

The special education office often works hand-in-hand with the Office for Civil Rights when schools violate student rights. In fact, despite the investigations that make the news, nearly 70% of the complaints OCR handles are related to disability, said Beth Gellman-Beer, co-founder of Evergreen Education Solutions, a consulting firm, and a former regional director for OCR’s Philadelphia office.

One OCR attorney who received a layoff notice said she’s “deeply concerned” about how the potential layoffs could affect students.

“The mass elimination of OCR offices that have over 25,000 open cases leaves those complainants without any recourse, let alone answers as to if their case will move forward,” she said. She asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “States are not prepared to handle these concerns.”

States could also see cash flow problems if the department can’t process grant payments in a timely manner because it doesn’t have enough staff, experts said. States and districts have to spend money up front on salaries, supplies and vendor contracts and then request reimbursements from the department.

Small districts, charter schools and rural districts are often “operating payroll to payroll,” Catherine Pozniak, a consultant and former assistant state superintendent in Louisiana, said on the call with reporters. “They cannot afford to wait for weeks to get their reimbursements.” 

The Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, which administers the complex Title I program and and other grants for K-12 schools, was among those hardest hit, losing 132 employees according to an email from the Office of Management and Budget shared with The 74. 

The downsizing could affect one of the department’s top priorities: charter schools. In late September, McMahon announced she was releasing $500 million in grants for charters. But if the charter office is gutted, “who’s going to administer those grants and run grant competitions in the future?” Anderson asked. 

The proposed cuts also come as states, such as Iowa, Indiana and Alabama, seek waivers from laws related to funding, testing and accountability. In general, states don’t lean on the office for “day-to-day guidance,” said Dale Chu, an independent consultant who focuses on testing and accountability. 

But before he resigned Oct. 1, former Oklahoma state Superintendent Ryan Walters was preparing to submit a request to cancel all tests required by the Every Student Succeeds Act — a proposal that federal officials said McMahon was unlikely to approve. It’s unclear whether Superintendent Lindel Fields, his replacement, will follow through with the request. 

“If something like Oklahoma’s waiver proposal were on the table, you’d want a functioning federal partner to keep things tethered to the law,” Chu said. He also feels bad for Kirsten Baesler, confirmed last week as the new head of elementary and secondary education. She’s potentially “walking into an office that’s been hollowed out, and she’ll need to rebuild trust and capacity once the lights come back on.”

‘Meaningful work’

After McMahon let over 1,300 people go in March, some career employees knew they were vulnerable. Andrea Falken has spent 15 years working in the Office of Communications and Outreach, where one of her signature accomplishments was running the department’s , which recognized schools for saving energy and encouraging sustainability. 

“It pleased a lot of people across the country, in red and blue states alike,” she said. “We received scores of notes and even several awards for this work.” 

With an administration that plans to to improve air quality and reduce pollution, the department . Falken was reassigned to handle public records requests and draft a weekly newsletter. The office has dropped from about 80 employees to a skeleton crew mostly working on social media, videos, and the department’s website, she said. 

“They were not effectively utilizing my 20-plus years of professional experience, graduate degrees or multiple languages,” she said. “They were not using us for meaningful work. They did not want us to do anything, really.”

Talk of government shutdowns has become common in Washington, but Congress is usually able to avoid them by passing short-term funding bills to keep money flowing.

Not this time.

The federal government ceased operating at midnight Wednesday morning, adding more uncertainty into the nation’s education system after eight months of cancelled grants, funding freezes and the Trump administration’s moves to take back money Congress already approved.

For most schools, disruptions would be minimal in the short term. The U.S. Department of Education has released a saying that Title I funds for low-income schools and special education funding, expected on Wednesday, would be available as expected. But districts that rely on , such as those near military installations or national parks, could face cash flow problems. Nationally, nearly 1,100 districts, responsible for about eight million students, are eligible for those funds.

“In some cases, they need this funding for basic services such as keeping the buildings open, the lights on and the buses running,” said Tara Thomas, government affairs manager at AASA, the School Superintendents Association. 

A shutdown that drags on for a few weeks or more could trigger additional funding problems for Head Start and school nutrition programs. 

Congress hasn’t completed its budget process on time since 1996, meaning that it on temporary funding measures to keep the government operating. In March, President Donald Trump signed that kept funding at 2024 levels. But that expired at midnight and lawmakers were unable to pass another continuation. The House passed a short-term funding bill that would have given members until Nov. 21 to finalize fiscal year 2026 budgets for all federal agencies. But Democrats are pushing for to offset the cuts to Medicaid in President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” They also want to extend tax cuts that lower the cost of insurance premiums under the Affordable Care Act. Leaders of the two chambers met with the president, but made no progress. 

“If it has to shut down, it’ll have to shut down,” Monday.

Districts and programs serving young children and families have based their expectations of this shutdown on “past precedent,” noted Melissa Boteach, chief policy officer at Zero to Three, a nonprofit advocacy organization focusing on infants and toddlers. But this administration is determined to make the federal government smaller. Trump has already signed one rescission package and wants to for teacher quality efforts toward its civics initiative centered on  the nation’s 250th birthday. 

“We are not in times that have preceded us” Boteach said.

One difference is that the administration, which blames Democrats for the shutdown, could seize on the pause in operations to further its goal of downsizing the government. 

“A lot of good can come down from shutdowns,” from the Oval Office Tuesday. “We can get rid of a lot of things that we didn’t want.”

On Sept. 24, the Office of Management and Budget agencies to consider additional mass layoffs of employees. Federal employee unions have already filed a lawsuit over the plan.

“Only time will tell,” if McMahon or any other agency head acts on that suggestion, said Rachel Snyderman, managing director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank. ”But this is certainly …new information this year.”

Here are some of the ways a shutdown could impact schools and families:

Head Start

Six grantees serving roughly 6,500 children are expecting a new round of funding Wednesday, according to Tommy Sheridan, deputy director of the National Head Start Association. So far, none plan to close right away, but that could change if the shutdown lasts more than a few weeks. Beginning Nov. 1, additional grantees could be in the same position.

If programs don’t close, or if the shutdown is resolved quickly, even talk of disruption can mean children miss out on learning, Boteach added. In January, for example, the administration said Head Start was exempt from a . But over 50 programs serving more than 21,000 children were still locked out of payment systems and some had to close temporarily.

“There were still parents who were confused as to whether or not they could bring their kids and centers who were confused about whether or not they could pay employees,” she said. “There’s what technically happens, and then there’s fear, confusion and chaos.” 

Many low-income families who qualify for Head Start or Early Head Start also receive nutrition assistance through the program. 

“We like to think program by program, but really it’s about the human being at the center of all of it,” Boteach said.

The National Association of Counties that states may have to “rely on their own funding streams” to make sure families receive WIC benefits.

School Meals and SNAP

School nutrition programs rely on monthly reimbursements from the federal government to pay staff and purchase food and other supplies, said Diane Pratt-Heavner, spokeswoman for the School Nutrition Association, which represents district programs.

In its��, the Department of Agriculture said it has enough funds on hand to pay schools back for September and October meals. The agency will also keep a “limited number” of staff on hand to oversee operations.��

Families who depend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, should also receive benefits as usual and should not be affected if the shutdown lasts no more than a week. 

The last shutdown, which also occurred when Trump was in office, lasted 35 days over the 2018 Christmas holidays into late January. 

Education Department

In a shutdown, the majority of federal employees stop working. While some essential staff will remain available at the Education Department, civil rights investigations would be put on hold. A shutdown also halts the department’s work on any regulations or guidance being prepared, and states and districts won’t be able to reach anyone if they have questions about grants or other programs.

Work currently in progress includes gathering feedback on of the Institute for Education Sciences. Christy Wolfe, director of K-12 policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, noted that just last week, the department awarded $500 million through its Charter School Program. 

“Schools that were planning on opening with those funds on a certain timeline,” she said, “may have to be delayed.”

But the attention that math actually gets, from classrooms to statehouses, doesn’t reflect the gravity of its long-term impact. The latest data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) revealed that math scores for fourth-grade students saw the largest drop in the assessment’s 50-year history, with declines the steepest for students furthest from opportunity.

Just as the science of reading has sparked in how literacy is taught, the science of how early math must be taught deserves the same attention and action. 

Too often, the issue starts with how we prepare future teachers. A recent found that most teacher-preparation programs devote insufficient time to key math concepts. When new teachers lack confidence and skills in early math instruction, their students risk falling behind, setting off a chain reaction that can limit students’ long-term potential.

As a nation, we can change this reality by teacher-preparation programs –- one of the first and most important junctures to shape mindsets, beliefs, and practices. Ensuring that future teachers receive high-quality, evidence-based preparation in teaching math to young children is one of the most powerful steps we can take to improve learning outcomes.

In 2024, Deans for Impact (DFI) launched the Early Numeracy by Scientific Design (ENbSD) Network to support programs that bring evidence-based instructional practices to the forefront of teacher training. The network convened three Texas educator-preparation programs – Sam Houston State University, Texas A&M University Texarkana, and Stephen F. Austin State University – to redesign how future educators are prepared to teach math in PreK-3 classrooms. This network builds on DFI’s decade-long work to help programs redesign preparation experiences grounded in evidence-based instruction; since 2015, DFI has supported more than 260 programs to ensure 110,000 future teachers across 45 states are better prepared for the classroom.

In our first year of the math initiative, we kicked off conversations with faculty, both in mathematics departments and in colleges of education, to understand the current state of early math instruction in their programs and identify critical next steps to redesign coursework. We observed instruction in K-3 classrooms, reviewed data on teacher-candidate knowledge and skills, analyzed course materials, and gathered expert feedback to reveal current strengths and opportunities for growth. We also used three research-based instructional practices to guide our work: balancing conceptual and procedural knowledge, focusing on mathematics language, and implementing explicit and systematic instruction.

Over the course of the year, faculty used this framework to examine their syllabi and coursework and to begin co-designing improvements. Through the first year of this work, we uncovered critical insights that can inform how more teacher-preparation programs can support the success of Pre-K math teachers and their students:

1. While math anxiety is real and widespread among teachers, thoughtful coursework design can alleviate concerns.

Many teacher candidates arrive in preparation programs with negative experiences or insecurities about math. affects how they engage with the material and how they’ll eventually teach it. Addressing this challenge requires thoughtful design of coursework that builds confidence and reinforces math as something aspiring teachers can understand and teach well.��

2.��Early math classrooms cannot be underestimated as a critical lever for students’ long-term success.��

There’s a persistent assumption that early math is “easy,” but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. While many children may have a basic grasp of counting upon entering school, research tells us that they can benefit from teachers not only reinforcing these skills but also exposing them to more advanced mathematical concepts . Doing so ensures that more students access and cement foundational skills, which is essential given how much academic math on prior knowledge. While aspiring teachers may find basic number sense and operations skills easy to grasp, the knowledge and skill required to assess where students are in their learning and make effective instructional moves can lead to early success and confidence. As a result, we’re designing instructional modules that ensure learning opportunities that bridge content and instructional knowledge.

3. Collaboration across teacher-preparation programs and K-12 partners is essential for stronger preparation.

In many universities, math content is taught separately from math pedagogy, sometimes in entirely different departments. As a result, future teachers may learn about mathematical concepts in one class but not learn how to actually teach them until a course several semesters later. They also might not get any opportunities to observe or practice in real PreK-3 classrooms during their preparation, losing out on real-world experiences to hone their skills. Without intentional collaboration across these areas, future teachers experience disjointed training. Our network sought to address this misalignment by creating space for mathematics faculty and teacher educators to meet regularly, give each other feedback, and align their instruction to support teacher candidates more holistically. These bridges unlock enormous potential for program-wide change. In one instance, a math and education professor were compelled to co-teach a course together, an unprecedented collaboration in the program that supported candidates to meaningfully connect the dots between content and instruction.

Looking ahead to year two of the network, we hope to strengthen the way we prepare teachers with new instructional modules ready to be piloted in the fall and stronger collaboration across faculty, partnering K-12 schools, and programs. We’re working with faculty across departments to build a strong, cohesive arc for how early numeracy is taught across entire preparation programs. Most importantly, these programs are modeling what’s possible in teacher preparation.

Improving math instruction is not just a job for prep programs and K-12 school districts. State policymakers can uphold high standards for effective preparation aligned to evidence and require or incentivize ample on-the-job learning opportunities for aspiring teachers to put knowledge into practice. Philanthropy organizations and funders can invest in emerging efforts and lift up promising models of effective practice.

When teacher-prep programs are empowered to make evidence-based early numeracy a priority, all teachers and students stand to benefit.

Barren cupboards at home during the summer. Empty stomachs at school in the fall. Advocates predict that may soon be the reality for many of the nation’s children after passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which calls for dramatic cuts in federal food aid.

Signed by President Donald Trump after squeaking through the House and Senate, the massive bill will reduce funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, by roughly — approximately 20% — between 2025 and 2034. And new rules are expected to make it harder for needy families to obtain the aid.��

The result: Some will lose at least some benefits, including 800,000 children, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research and policy institute.

The controversial bill, which delivers tax breaks to the , comes just a few months after the agriculture department slashed from programs that allowed schools and food banks to buy locally produced goods. 

And it arrives at the same time that 13 GOP-led states, including Texas, are , rejecting federal dollars to feed children during the months when they are most vulnerable, citing .

Erin Hysom, senior child nutrition policy analyst at the Food Research & Action Center, said the cuts and eligibility changes to SNAP — the deepest since its as the food stamp program — put students’ well-being and education at risk. 

“Children’s learning will be disrupted and their health will be jeopardized,” she said. “It’s really going to be devastating. Every state will be affected by this.”

Currently, people without dependents are limited to three months of SNAP benefits in a three-year period unless they work at least 80 hours per month and continue to do so until age 54. The new law . 

Under current rules, SNAP recipients responsible for a child under 18 are exempt from the work rule. The new bill .

Mia Ives-Rublee, senior director for the at The Center for American Progress, a left-of-center think tank, said the work-related rules, which require extensive documentation, will pose an administrative hurdle some families might not overcome. 

“A lot of people who get cut off from these services are people who are working but don’t have the time or energy to fill out all of this paperwork,” she said. 

But perhaps the most significant change to SNAP is a shift in financial responsibility for the program from the federal government to the states. All 23 Democratic governors warned Congress in June that they were unprepared to shoulder this new — some noted they from the program completely — and food banks are  

Child and family health advocates were relieved to see at least one of their fears was not realized: The , which reimburses tens of thousands of schools that provide free breakfast and lunch to all students, was expected to lose billions. Those changes were not included in the bill’s final version.

SNAP eligibility among children is a trigger for schools to provide free meals. As fewer kids qualify for food aid at home, those children will not get the nutrition they need and their classmates will also lose access, advocates say.

“As SNAP enrollment drops, fewer schools will be able to offer all students free meals,” Hysom said. “So, we’ll see a rise in stigma in the cafeteria, a decrease in school meal participation, the return of for many schools and increased hunger in the classroom.”

Rev. Dr. Starsky Wilson, president and CEO of the Children’s Defense Fund, is worried about the kids who will be pushed out of the program despite their ongoing food insecurity, noting that children of color might be .  

Wilson said schools moving toward universal free meals in recent years — delivered without students having to apply —  The changes brought about by the new bill mark a major step backward, he said.  

“We believe we will see a shift back to an individual eligibility model, which costs more and means fewer students will have access to it,” he said. 

Beginning in fiscal year 2028, any state that has a payment error rate — the percentage of people given benefits who did not qualify or who were denied aid despite meeting the requirements — must contribute a 5% match for the cost of SNAP program allotments. 

State contributions rise incrementally as the error rate increases: those reaching 10% or higher will be required to kick in 15%, though questions loom about how this will be implemented. as soon as others. 

The paperwork requirement is not only burdensome for families, but for those who process the documents, child advocates say. The task comes as the federal government also plans to drastically reduce what it spends on SNAP’s administrative costs, from 50% to 25%, leaving states responsible for the rest.

Gina Plata-Nino, the Food Research & Action Center’s deputy director for SNAP, fears states will not be prepared to properly administer the benefit program. 

“This will cost state agencies a lot of time — and time is money,” she said, adding new applicants might have to wait to be processed. “The state agencies are already at capacity.” 

Plata-Nino said the related calculations will be more complex, especially for families with children. 

The bill also eliminates , an evidence-based program that “helps people make their SNAP dollars stretch, teaches them how to cook healthy meals, and lead physically active lifestyles,” according to the USDA. 

Correction: An earlier version of the story incorrectly reported that the bill changed the work exemption for able-bodied adults with children from those with dependents under age 18 to those with kids under 7. The reduction to age 7 was in the House version of the bill, but was changed to age 14 in the Senate version that was ultimately approved.

But I’m here to change your perception.

About 4,500 Wyomingites call Buffalo home. My school, Cloud Peak Elementary, serves 225 students in grades 3 to 5, more than a third of them from low-income families. We have the equivalent of 19 full-time teachers and one full-time school counselor.

Before becoming principal of Cloud Peak, I’d taught in this building. I’d walked alongside teachers as the district reading coach. I knew the strengths of our staff, the heart of our students, and the potential within our walls. That familiarity became one of our greatest assets as we set out to transform the way we support every learner.

I didn’t design our school-wide intervention and extension model myself, but I had a front-row seat to its beginnings. Now, I have the honor of helping it evolve. I believe what we’ve built is not just working — it’s something other schools can do, too.

According to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 31% of fourth-grade students performed at or above the proficient level in reading. The conclusion? Across the country, we’re falling short when it comes to reading instruction.

Until two years ago, Cloud Peak used a “traditional” intervention model. We identified the lowest performing students as “struggling readers.” They all received the same intervention regardless of their skill gaps. Does that sound like your school or district?

At the time, we didn’t have a systematic approach to ensure that interventions targeted the students who needed them most. While teachers were doing their best with the tools they had, there was no consistent way to measure if what they were doing was working — or if some students were slipping through the cracks. High-achieving students weren’t always given opportunities to extend their learning, and struggling students didn’t always receive the intensive support they needed.

We set up professional learning communities (PLCs) — groups of educators who work collaboratively to improve teaching and learning for all students — and received intensive training on using data to collaborate on innovative solutions.

We looked at our data and introduced diagnostic measures to identify specific skill gaps interfering with students’ reading ability, followed by diagnostic assessments to home in on targeted interventions. Then, we got to work.

In a small school, it takes every single staff member to run a successful intervention and enrichment program; one of our proudest accomplishments is investing in our support staff. Paraprofessionals are full members of our instructional teams, attending every professional learning opportunity and participating in PLCs. Several have completed Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS) traing, along with almost all of our certified teachers. That’s not common — but it should be.

Our most powerful shift was carving out a dedicated intervention and extension block, which we call “Reading I&E.” Every third, fourth, and fifth grader receives daily targeted reading instruction — support or enrichment — in addition to regular core reading instruction. Each grade level holds I&E at a different time, so our entire staff can support it. Even I teach when I can — whether it’s stepping in briefly, modeling a lesson, or leading enrichment. It’s a clear reminder that every adult in our building is a reading teacher.

While traditional models might offer intervention a couple of days a week to the lowest performing readers, we do intervention and enrichment every day for every student. Since I&E is built into our master schedule, students aren’t pulled out of science or social studies class for intervention.

These I&E blocks are non-negotiable. They reflect our belief that all children deserve instruction tailored to their needs. Learning to read is that important because it unlocks every other type of learning.

Reading I&E instruction is deeply responsive. We group students based on data and regroup them every three weeks using curriculum-based and state assessments and benchmarks. Teachers, interventionists, and paraprofessionals sit together to review the data. We reflect, regroup, and make adjustments. Our weekly PLCs build on that work, helping us stay aligned, share strategies, and get better together.

In fifth grade, for instance, all students read novels, but their experience varies greatly depending on their needs. Enrichment for stronger readers includes book talks, character interviews, and story mapping. Intervention for others includes vocabulary, explicit decoding support, and structured scaffolds to boost comprehension.

No one is stuck in a label. Every student constantly learns and grows with the support or enrichment they need.

Since introducing Reading I&E, we’ve seen improvement in student outcomes. Our first group of students to experience this model made remarkable gains — moving from 5.4% below the state average on the third-grade assessment to 11.2% above the state average just two years later as fifth graders.

Looking at third-graders at the end of this school year, 100% showed growth and improved their correct-word-per-minute scores; 82% scored proficient in reading. We decreased the share of students flagged as “at risk” in reading skills by three percentage points, and we increased students who scored “advanced” by five percentage points.

Plus, fluency scores improved across all grade levels. More importantly, our students are transferring skills from instruction to real-world reading tasks. That’s the goal.

This journey hasn’t just changed how we teach — it’s changed how we think. Instead of saying what we used to do was wrong, we simply say, “We’ve found something that works even better.”

We’re still learning. Right now, we’re working to refine our common formative assessments so they align tightly with our instruction. In Grade 3, we’re also identifying students who’ve mastered foundational skills so we can transition them into more advanced reading work. It’s a good challenge to have: How do we best serve kids who are ready to stretch?

I’m sharing our story because our model is replicable, and it works. It engages educators and meets students exactly where they are — even if that changes over time. For us, having students who don’t learn how to read is simply not an option. You don’t need a magic curriculum or a huge grant. You just need to be willing to think differently.

But after this weekend, when President Donald Trump Bowen, who specializes in primary care pediatrics, fears a new obstacle: her patients might lose access to the publicly funded health insurance that makes her work possible.

“Before they had insurance, but then they couldn’t get to the provider,” Bowen said. “Now you’ll have providers coming out — but they won’t have the insurance.”

Experts say Bowen’s concerns are not unfounded. The sweeping, which Republicans pushed through Congress last week without any Democratic votes, will cut federal spending on Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program benefits by $1.02 trillion and increase the number of uninsured Americans by 7.8 million people over the next decade, according to estimates by the nonpartisan

Cuts to the Medicaid budget will have “just tremendous impacts,” Bowen added. Schools receive about $7.5 billion annually from , a popular joint federal and state health program that insures nearly 70 million Americans, most of whom are low income. For more than 30 years, it’s paid for services in schools for students with disabilities as well as low-income students.

If all provisions in the bill are enacted, it will lead to enrollment drops in the , which provides low-cost health coverage to children in families that earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid, and a $125.2 billion reduction in Medicaid by 2034, the Budget Office predicted, though it’s not clear just how many kids would be impacted. 

The cuts will come through a variety of mechanisms over the next decade, ranging from immediately enacted provisions that curb states’ ability to raise their share of Medicaid funding to new federal limits on eligibility — including work requirements for parents of kids 14 years or older — which will go into effect in 2027. These, in particular, could harm children, who are less likely to be covered themselves if their parents lose access, according to Anne Dwyer, an associate research professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families.

“Like many, we’re still unpacking exactly what this will mean for states and for individuals covered by Medicaid and for students in schools,” Dwyer said. “Some of these cuts are immediate and some go into effect over time.” 

Republican lawmakers, though, argue they’re actually Medicaid recipients by removing undocumented immigrants and others they say never should have had access in the first place.

While there weren’t any provisions in the bill that directly slash school-based Medicaid services, the 20-plus Medicaid provisions it does include will ultimately place immense financial pressure on states to make up for the lost funds, which will have trickle-down impacts on schools, according to Dwyer.

In response, states will either have to raise taxes, or make further cuts within their Medicaid programs — the more likely option, Dwyer said. They could also look to backfill budget shortfalls by slashing other school-based programs.

“It’s just hard to imagine a scenario where states are faced with these levels of cuts, and individuals across the program aren’t impacted,” she said. 

School-based Medicaid makes up less than 1% of the overall program’s budget, but is still the fourth-largest federal funding stream for districts and allows them to pay for a swath of resources, including therapies for students with disabilities, school nurses, mental health care and specialized equipment, such as wheelchairs. 

The loss of funds will significantly impact how schools are able to cover mandatory services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, according to Mia Ives-Rublee, the senior director for the at the Center for American Progress, a left-of-center think tank.

Kids who are eligible for Medicaid through expansions or waivers — state-based mechanisms that widen access to some people who wouldn’t normally qualify — are particularly at risk of losing services, since their eligibility isn’t required by federal law, said Ives-Rublee. 

But, she added, children will largely remain more protected than adults since a number of pediatric services are mandated at the federal level, including preventative screenings, check-ups and vision and hearing services. 

Still, if fewer children are enrolled in Medicaid overall, it will reduce the pool of money that goes towards school-based services leading to fewer resources and providers.

“What we will start seeing, and what we’ve seen in previous states, is that there will be a chunk of people who will just lose eligibility … because they either don’t get the information about the new paperwork requirements, they don’t understand that they now have to do check-ins twice a year [to determine eligibility vs. once a year] … and they might miss a recertification process,” Ives-Rublee added.

The changes could also result in fewer social workers or school-based psychologists and decreased access to health care — especially in rural and urban communities, according to a opposing any proposed cuts that was spearheaded by the Medicaid in Schools Coalition and signed by 65 organizations.

of districts use Medicaid funding to pay for the salaries of health professionals, according to 2017 data. And — 40 million — are now insured through Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

In Alabama, where Bower sees patients, over are enrolled in these programs.

“If you put all the kids in the country together, they’re the largest group of impoverished people,” said Bowen, who also serves as the president of the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners, “and they have no political voice … They rely on adults to hopefully do the right thing so that they can grow up and be healthy and contribute to this country …. but if they’re sick, they’re hungry, they can’t be educated. It’s an all-around impact.”

These impacts will be challenging to track, though, as they play out over the next decade, experts warn — especially less tangible ones like the amount of time states will spend trying to untangle how to implement the bill’s complex provisions.

“We’re in for a long haul here,” said Dwyer. “A lot of these changes aren’t going to be overnight. They’re going to be over the next months and years to come. And so I think just documenting what’s happening, what’s working [and] where pressures are coming up will be really important.”

was originally reported by Chabeli Carrazana of .��

Parents, you’re not imagining it: The cost of child care is rising. By a lot.

The average annual cost of care in 2024 was $13,128, a 29 percent increase since 2020 — outpacing even inflation. That’s according to an from Child Care Aware, a national child care advocacy group that calculates average prices every year.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

The rapid rise of child care costs is swallowing larger portions of families’ income. On average, a married couple earning the median annual income in their state is draining about 10 percent of their earnings on child care. A single parent spends 35 percent of their income on child care.

In some states, it’s a lot worse. For a married couple with an infant in center-based care, by share of median income are Hawaii (17.9 percent), California (16.3 percent), Maryland (15.8 percent), Oregon (15.5 percent) and Nebraska (15.1 percent). In those states, single parents earning the median income are paying about half their earnings on child care.

That means child care costs are rivaling home costs as the top line item in most family budgets. In 45 states and Washington, D.C., child care for two kids costs more than a mortgage. In 49 states and D.C., child care for two surpasses what families pay in rent.

For years, the list of states where parents are likely to pay more for an infant’s care than higher education has been growing. According to Child Care Aware, the cost of center-based infant care exceeds the cost of in-state college tuition in 41 states now. The organization uses three methodologies to arrive at its average, looking at price, supply of child care providers and the number of child care spots, pooling data from 49 states and Washington, D.C., to arrive at its annual price analysis.

“Child care prices are a sizable part of family budgets — they are by no means under control for the majority of families,” said Anne Hedgepeth, chief of policy and advocacy at Child Care Aware. “If we are going to talk about family budgets, and if we want to talk about things you could solve for family budgets: Make a dent in child care prices. You would really bring down one of those highest costs or expenses for a family.”

Child care remains so expensive because of staff needs and federal investment. To preserve the safety of babies and toddlers, centers are required by law to have more teachers in the classroom. The federal is one person for every three to four infants and young toddlers, and one person for every seven when you get up to 3-year-olds, but each state sets its own ratio. That’s different from a kindergarten classroom, where classes may have one teacher for every 20 kids, for instance. The costs of employing that many people are also not offset by substantial federal, state and local investment like public education is subsidized. So parents are left footing the bill, and centers can only pay their teachers about minimum wage to keep costs as low as possible. Profit margins at centers are only

For years, the United States has toyed with the idea of investing more broadly in child care. Currently, the federal government only covers some costs for very low-income families — and even then only about are able to access subsidized care. But broader proposals that go as far as introducing a “universal” child care system have repeatedly been .

After the pandemic, when , the United States got as close as it ever has to investing more broadly in the industry. Through September 2023, states received a historic investment of $24 billion in stabilization grants that helped keep centers open and raise wages for teachers at .

But after those funds ran out, Congress did not allocate any additional resources.

Among families, there is broad support for more federal and state investment in child care, regardless of political party. In a nationally representative Child Care Aware , 82 percent of Democrats, 72 percent of independents and 68 percent of Republicans said they want their elected officials to increase funding for child care and early learning.

That support is also resounding among men. Another nationally representative found that 90 percent of men, including 87 percent of Republicans, are in favor of ensuring families have access to affordable care.

Since the reversal of Roe v. Wade, Republicans have grown somewhat more vocal in their support of child care investments. On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump said he supported child care but didn’t offer any policy proposals for improving affordability or access. Former President Joe Biden proposed a $400 million child care package that included universal preschool, but it .

At the moment, the closest the Trump administration could come to a child care investment is an update to the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, a tax break for families on their child care expenses that could be in the final version of Currently, most families only get an average tax break of about (the maximum parents can claim for one child is $1,050), which doesn’t do much to offset child care costs that easily run into the thousands. A bipartisan effort in the Senate to update the tax credit could get added into the package. (The House version that passed in May did not include it). The Senate’s Child Care Availability and Affordability Act would increase the maximum amount parents can get back in their taxes through the credit to .

Julie Kashen, a senior fellow and director for women’s economic justice at the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, said improving the tax credit is a good policy move for the families that benefit from it, but ultimately it doesn’t solve the problems facing the child care industry as a whole.

“It’s one piece of a much larger puzzle,” Kashen said. “If you can’t afford to lay out the money up front to pay for child care, then it doesn’t help you that you have a refundable tax credit.”

Advocates worry child care has so far been a footnote in this administration. In April, a leaked version of Trump’s budget called for , the federally-funded program that provides early learning and other services to half a million very low-income preschoolers ages 3 to 5. After from child care providers and parents across the country, the proposal was ultimately withdrawn.

“It tells us a little bit of what it looks like when policy makers — in particular, members of Congress and members of the administration — hear about child care from the constituents, and what they heard was how much of a non-starter it is to eliminate these core early learning services in every district across the country,” said Hedgepeth of Child Care Aware.

Still, it will likely be a battle to keep the existing child care safety net — a battle increasingly at odds with the majority of American parents who are looking for relief on child care costs.

Because the reality is simple, Hedgepeth said:�� “This is not what people are looking for.”