Join our zero2eight Substack community for more discussion about the latest news in early care and education. Sign up now.
Many early childhood educators can’t afford childcare for their own children — an irony that has long marked the early care and education field.
That began to change in 2022, when Kentucky became the first state in the country to roll out an initiative making most early childhood educators automatically eligible for childcare subsidies.
Novel at the time, this program — which, in effect, provides free childcare to early childhood educators in licensed programs through an expansion of the state’s Child Care Assistance Program — caught the attention of leaders in dozens of other states and has been replicated widely in the years since.
“It’s not just happening in one type of state,” said Diane Girouard, state policy director at the National Association for the Education of Young Children, a nonprofit that advocates for high-quality early learning experiences. “It’s happening in [states] big and small; blue, red and purple; rural and non-rural. States are just seeing that it’s working. It’s unique. It’s a really good workplace benefit.”
The idea to make early educators automatically eligible for childcare assistance was conceived as a strategy to help recruit and retain early childhood educators in the wake of the pandemic. By 2022, many families needed childcare to return to a normal work schedule but often couldn’t find spots for their children because early care and education programs were so severely understaffed, leaving slots unfilled and entire classrooms vacant.
The model was so successful in Kentucky that other states took notice and began to fund their own versions of an effort to provide childcare assistance to early childhood educators, primarily through pilot programs. More recently, some states have even moved to make the program permanent.
Last month, both Kentucky and Iowa enacted laws making most early childhood educators automatically eligible for childcare assistance. Iowa’s governor signed a bill on April 9, while Kentucky’s program was made permanent a few days later, on April 14.
“We’re psyched,” said Sarah Vanover, director of policy and advocacy at Kentucky Youth Advocates and one of the champions of this program in the Bluegrass State.
“We’re known for being frugal and conservative with money,” Vanover said of Kentucky’s legislature, which is overwhelmingly Republican. “And yet this is something we’re investing in. When you have that dialogue with [program] directors, they’ll tell you they have been able to open classrooms and keep staff.”
The reason states have continued to invest in this type of program, Vanover and other state leaders shared in interviews, is because it works. By delivering free or discounted childcare to early educators — many of whom have jobs with low wages and few, if any, benefits — several states have seen workers who are more willing to stay in their jobs. And some educators who had left the workforce to stay home with their young children are finding it’s just enough of an edge to lure them back into their teaching positions, surveys and program directors have shared.
Since 2022, leaders from 38 other states have reached out to Vanover about the model, she said. Many of those leaders have gone on to pursue some form of the program. At least a dozen states, including Arizona, Iowa, Massachusetts, Maine and Rhode Island, currently have at least a pilot program in place providing childcare assistance to early childhood educators. Two others, New Jersey and West Virginia, have introduced related bills. Washington is the only state known to have initially offered and then ended this type of program, and in that case, it was the result of a severe budget deficit, Girouard said.
While the model has spread, no two initiatives are exactly alike, Girouard added.
Kentucky and Iowa, for example, make this benefit available to early childhood educators regardless of income, while most other states only have enough funding to increase the income threshold above what is available to all families in their states. In Rhode Island, for instance, the state’s childcare subsidy program is available to all families with an income less than 261% of the federal poverty level. For early childhood educators, that income cap increases slightly, to 300%.
And Kentucky’s program includes any staff member working in a center-based early care and education program — from teachers to administrators, cooks to early intervention specialists.
“You can’t run a childcare program without the assistant teachers, without the nutrition staff, without the administrators,” Vanover said. “If you’re looking at doing this without the other staff, you’re going to have teachers get shuffled around. It’s essential for the whole program to take advantage of it — every employee.”
Assistant Teachers Key to Early Education, Yet State Policies Don’t Reflect That
Meanwhile, a pilot program in Maine — called the “childcare employment award” — has emerged as unique in a couple of ways.
Maine’s program provides at least a 50% discount on childcare for early childhood educators, according to Heather Marden, co-executive director of the Maine Association for the Education of Young Children, a state affiliate of NAEYC. For staff who were already eligible for childcare subsidies before the pilot, the state also covers the cost of their co-pays, which can run anywhere from $3,000 to $8,000 a year, Marden said.
Importantly, Maine’s program is distinct in that it allows home-based childcare providers — a group often left out of this benefit — to participate. (The legislation that made Kentucky’s program permanent also allows home-based providers to use the benefit for the first time.)
A recent evaluation of Maine’s pilot program found that it has had a positive impact on workforce retention, noting that nearly every participant was considering leaving the field before receiving the award.
Moreover, the report found, many of those participants were weighing whether to leave the workforce altogether to stay home with their children, rather than looking for jobs in other fields. The discounted childcare has put enough money back into their pockets that they have been able to stay.
Marden noted that while that’s good for each individual teacher, it’s also good for entire communities.
“The impact of retaining one educator is pretty incredible,” she said, explaining that a single educator gained or retained opens up licensed classroom slots for four to 12 children.
Maine’s childcare employment award program was serving 511 children from 313 families as of September 2025, with nearly as many children and educators on the waitlist. The state has funded the pilot at $2.5 million a year for the past two years, and it just hasn’t been enough to reach everyone, Marden explained.
While many early childhood leaders in Maine want to see the pilot program funded at a higher amount, the reality is that it will likely soon cease to exist altogether. During the recent legislative session, which ended in mid-April, policymakers did not fund the pilot for another year. As of now, the program is slated to end after June 30.
In Iowa, uptake has been strong. As of September 2025, more than 3,600 children from 2,153 families had taken advantage of the benefit, according to data from the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services. And a survey conducted by the state agency, the results of which were shared in January 2025, found that 87% of participants remain in their roles, and 12% began working in childcare as a result of the pilot.
Hollie Allen, co-owner of Vine Street Child Care, a large center-based program in West Des Moines, Iowa, said that at least 13 of her teachers — out of about 60 people on staff — are enrolled in the program. They still owe co-pays between $35 and $100 per week, depending on factors like household income and number of children, she said, but that’s a big improvement over the full cost of a spot in her program.
“I don’t understand why they’re calling it free childcare. It’s not,” Allen said, but added that, compared to the $360 per week she charges for an infant slot, “paying $67 is awesome.”
The program has been a “double boon” for Allen, she said, because she was previously giving staff who weren’t eligible for other financial support a 50% discount on childcare at Vine Street — and losing money on those slots in the process. Now, with the state’s childcare assistance program covering the cost of early childhood educators’ childcare, Allen has been able to give every person on payroll a $2 per hour wage increase.
“It was a big cashflow injection for our program,” Allen said. “Those across-the-board wage increases were critical.”
In other states, such as Rhode Island, where the pilot program has been extended through 2028, the impact on turnover in the field has been real but modest, said Lisa Hildebrand, executive director of the Rhode Island AEYC.
“It’s still helpful,” she said. “The intent is there. It’s still retaining some educators. But it could be a lot better.”
Hildebrand added: “We just need way more money in the system. This is not going to solve all the problems. It’s a little bit of Band-Aids. You’re giving free childcare to educators because you’re not paying them enough that they can afford childcare on their own. You’re still not paying people enough, and that’s the problem.”
Did you use this article in your work?
We’d love to hear how The 74’s reporting is helping educators, researchers, and policymakers. Tell us how
