Governors Say Early Learning Is a Priority. Federal Cuts Put That at Risk.

It’s not often you see red and blue states agree. But this year, nearly two-thirds of governors did, naming early learning as a top priority in their State of the State addresses.

While governors are pledging to do more for early childhood, federal policy is shifting in ways that will leave their states with less. 

Changes to Medicaid, SNAP, and Preschool Development Grants are already in motion, and they won’t just hit one program. Health, nutrition, and early learning programs are deeply connected, so shifts in one area often affect others. Cuts to Medicaid can make it harder to identify toddlers who need services, SNAP reductions can strain family budgets that affect child care stability, and changes to Preschool Development Grants can limit states’ ability to plan and build new programs. Together, these shifts could ripple through whole systems — reshaping how families access care, how centers stay open, and how states design the next generation of programs.

That’s why we created a new resource: Tracking Potential Impacts of Shifting Federal Funding on Early Care and Education. This document lays out the specific cuts in play, and more importantly, the questions every state leader should be asking right now.

If you’re responsible for early childhood, or work in a system that touches it, these risks may not be obvious at first, but they could be significant and far-reaching. To get ahead of them, here are three steps state leaders can take to understand the ripple effects and protect the kids most at risk.

How to protect early childhood education in your state:

1. Understand the ripple effects

Cuts don’t land neatly in a single silo. A change in Medicaid eligibility doesn’t just change health care access — it could change how states identify kids for early intervention, how home visiting programs are funded, and whether children with developmental needs ever make it into the system. 

The same is true across programs, what looks like a health or human services adjustment can also show up downstream in early learning. Leaders need to be asking: what are the second- and third-order effects of these changes on kids?

2. Break down silos and connect across agencies
   Too often, state agencies try to patch their own holes without looking at the bigger picture. When one agency “solves” for a cut in isolation, the burden may shift somewhere else — onto another agency, or worse, onto families.

Governors’ offices need to break that cycle by insisting on cross-agency planning. If Medicaid changes eligibility rules, for example — child care, early intervention, and K–12 leaders should already be at the same table, mapping out what it means for their programs.

If you run an agency, consider reaching out to your counterparts to understand how their cuts might affect you and how your decisions might affect them. If you’re in the governor’s office, make sure those conversations happen early and often. The goal is to understand how changes in one place cascade into others, and how to keep kids and families from falling through the cracks.

3. Make a plan for the kids most at risk

When eligibility rules shift, the flags states use to find and serve children start disappearing. Most early childhood systems rely on a few core pipelines tied to other programs in order to identify families.

For example, a single change in Medicaid can make kids effectively invisible across multiple systems at once. And the ones most at risk of disappearing are the kids who already face the biggest challenges — children with developmental delays, disabilities, or unstable housing. These are the children who need the most support, and they’re the ones states will struggle hardest to reach if they slip off the radar.

That makes your job harder, not easier. And it means you need a proactive plan to find those kids through other signals.

Start by asking yourself some hard questions: How will you keep the most vulnerable kids visible? How will you make sure they stay connected to the supports they need?

If you don’t have these answers, now’s the time to get them. And if your agency isn’t responsible, you should be at the table with the ones who are.

Let’s get muddy

Download the resource here.

While the steps above are focused on state leaders, every early childhood advocate has an essential job to play here too. If you’re an advocate, your job is to make sure those questions get asked in the rooms where decisions are made. Push governors’ offices to bring their agencies together. Write. Call. Ask questions. Hold events. Speak out. Don’t stop. 

They’ve all said early childhood is a priority. But it’s on all of us to keep it a priority.