How Childcare Happens: Lessons from Frontline Implementers
July 13, 2026
The US has failed to invest in childcare as a public good on a national scale. But the childcare crisis is impossible to ignore, and in recent years, state and local governments have pushed unprecedented early childhood policy innovations. Much of this momentum started with temporary pandemic-era federal investments in state early childhood systems. Even after that funding expired, many states learned valuable lessons and kept building, raising local revenue, consolidating early childhood departments, and investing in the public infrastructure that makes life easier for working families.
Universal childcare is an ambitious goal. But it is not an impossible one.
In this interview series, we talk to the public administrators, advocates, and system builders working on the nuts and bolts of childcare around the country. These implementers show us that it can be done. Progress toward childcare as a public good takes resourced public infrastructure and a government committed to actually improving the lives of its people.
