The National Institute for Early Education Research released its 2026 State of Preschool yearbook earlier this week. It is the field's most comprehensive annual look at how publicly funded pre-K is doing across the United States, and it is worth a careful read by any family with young children.
The headline finding, as covered by the First Five Years Fund and others: public pre-K enrollment reached a new high of nearly 1.8 million children during the 2024–2025 school year. That is a meaningful milestone. It is also, as the report makes clear, arriving at a moment of unusual structural pressure.
We want to walk families through what the report actually says, why it matters, and what we are doing locally in response.
What the headline numbers mean
The 1.8 million figure is striking primarily because of the trend it sits on top of. Public pre-K enrollment has been growing, sometimes haltingly, for more than two decades. The 2024–2025 number represents a recovery beyond pre-pandemic levels in most states, and a real expansion of access in a handful of states that have committed new funding in the past five years.
What the headline obscures, though, is the unevenness. State-funded pre-K is not a national program. It is fifty different programs, with fifty different eligibility rules, quality benchmarks, and funding levels. A four-year-old in one state has free access to a full-day, high-quality public pre-K classroom; a four-year-old in another state has no public pre-K option at all. The gap is large and persistent.
The yearbook documents this in detail. A handful of states meet all ten of NIEER's quality benchmarks. Several meet fewer than half. And many states that have funded pre-K expansion in recent years are now facing decisions about whether to maintain that investment as federal pandemic-era supports phase down and state budgets tighten.
The federal funding picture
The second headline from the report, less photogenic but more consequential, is the funding cliff.
Federal pandemic-era child-care and early-learning supports — including the American Rescue Plan Act funding that propped up the sector through 2024 — have been winding down. The 2026 state budget cycles are the first in which most states are absorbing the full cost of programs they had been partially federally subsidized to run. The yearbook notes that 2026 is "poised to bring a series of deeper challenges to the field, as states prepare to make difficult budget decisions in anticipation of the looming federal funding cuts."
Translated: a number of states are about to have to choose between cutting pre-K enrollment slots, cutting quality (larger classes, lower teacher pay, fewer support services), or finding new state revenue. Most of these decisions will be made between now and August.
This is not abstract. Decisions made in this state budget cycle will determine whether some four-year-olds in our community have a publicly funded classroom seat in September.
Quality, not just access
The yearbook also makes a point that gets underemphasized in most coverage of early-childhood policy: access without quality does not produce the long-term outcomes that justify the investment. A child sitting in a "pre-K" classroom with twenty-five other four-year-olds and one teacher with no early-childhood credential is not getting what the research describes when it talks about the benefits of early education.
NIEER's ten quality standards include things like maximum class size of 20, child-to-teacher ratio of 10:1 or better, teachers with bachelor's degrees and early-childhood specializations, comprehensive curriculum standards, regular professional development, and ongoing program assessment. Programs that hit all ten consistently produce better outcomes for children. Programs that hit fewer can still help, but the effect sizes shrink.
Most of the political conversation right now is about access — how many four-year-olds can we serve? The harder and equally important conversation is about quality. Adding seats without protecting quality looks good in the short run and disappoints in the long run.
What BrightRoots is doing
We get a small number of questions, particularly from families who are new to the area, about how BrightRoots fits into the public pre-K landscape. The short version: we are not a public pre-K program. We are an independent nonprofit running tuition-free early-learning programs, family workshops, and educator professional development.
What that means in practice is that we are not subject to the state legislative cycle in the same way public pre-K programs are. Our funding mix — foundation grants, individual donors, employer sponsorships, and a small amount of public funding — gives us some insulation from a single budget vote. We are not immune to broader sector pressures, but we have more capacity to plan stably for the next school year than a publicly funded program facing a budget unknown does.
For the 2026–2027 program year, we are committing publicly to: no reduction in enrolled families, no reduction in teacher-to-child ratios, and no reduction in our family workshop offerings. Our pay parity goal for educators is being maintained on its existing schedule.
That commitment is possible because the funding base our donors and foundation partners have helped us build has held up. It is not guaranteed for next year. We will keep being honest in our annual report about the gap between where our staff compensation is and where it needs to be.
What families can do
A few specific things, given where the field is right now.
Pay attention to your state's pre-K budget conversation. It is happening now. Many state legislatures are voting on FY 2027 education budgets this spring and summer. Your state representatives and senators are making decisions about early-childhood investment in the next sixty days. A short call or email from a parent describing what early education has meant for your family is a more effective form of advocacy than most people realize. The First Five Years Fund and your state's child advocacy organization can usually tell you exactly which votes are happening and when.
Read the report. It is publicly available on NIEER's website. Even a skim of your own state's profile will tell you a lot about the system your child is part of.
Ask quality questions, not just access questions. When evaluating a program — public or private — ask about teacher credentials, ratios, ongoing professional development, and curriculum. The right program for your child is not always the most convenient one.
A closing note
The same week NIEER's report came out, our own staff were running a typical, busy week in the classrooms — outdoor learning blocks, family workshops, a kindergarten readiness session for parents of soon-to-be five-year-olds. The big picture of early childhood funding can feel abstract from inside the room. The room itself stays specific.
What the State of Preschool 2026 report is telling families is that the room your child is sitting in this fall is the result of dozens of small, often invisible policy and funding decisions. Those decisions are still being made. We will keep doing the work in front of us, and we will keep being clear with families about where the field is, what is at stake, and how to be part of shaping what comes next.
