What the Election Results Mean for Early Care and Education

While it will take weeks for all the votes to be finalized in congressional races across the country, what we know today is that Donald Trump will be the next president. By doing so, he has made history as the first politician since Grover Cleveland in the late 1800s to lose re-election and then later run a successful campaign to return to the White House. Trump will be pursuing his agenda with the help of a Senate that is now controlled by Republicans. Control of the House of Representatives will likely not be clear for days or even weeks, but it’s possible that President-elect Trump will be leading a Republican trifecta during his first two years in office.

Federal ECE Policy

The defeat of Kamala Harris likely means the end of hopes for a major expansion of federal funding for early care and education. While Harris had a solid track record of support for ECE and ran on plans to limit child care costs to seven percent of household income, Trump’s first term in office and subsequent presidential campaign were largely bereft of policy ideas focused on improving ECE access and affordability. It remains to be seen how serious the Trump administration will be in its stated desire to abolish the Department of Education and return the department’s powers to individual states, or in Project 2025’s plans to eliminate Head Start.

While Trump did sign into law a 2018 bill that represented a historic funding increase for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), he actually originally proposed a $95 million decrease for the program in his budget proposal. If there is congressional interest in working to improve CCDBG, it could resemble a 2022 bill introduced by Senators Tim Scott (R-SC) and Richard Bull (R-NC) to reauthorize the program and make child care free for families making less than 75 percent of state median income.

An issue that will dominate much of 2025 is tax reform since portions of the 2017 tax cuts passed under Trump are set to expire without congressional action. On this issue, there is reason to believe that bipartisan cooperation is possible. Vice President-elect J.D. Vance has repeatedly called for an expanded child tax credit, an idea many Democrats also support. Earlier this year, Senators Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Katie Britt (R-AL) introduced a bipartisan proposal to make child care more affordable, partly by increasing the size of the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) and making it refundable, while also strengthening the Dependent Care Assistance Program (DCAP) and the Employer-Provided Child Care Tax Credit (commonly referred to as 45F).

Local ECE Initiatives

There were three local ballot measures on Tuesday’s ballot directly related to ECE. In St. Paul, Minnesota, voters rejected a proposal to raise property taxes to fund child care subsidies for families with low incomes. Had it passed, the tax would have raised about $20 million that could be used to make child care more affordable for many of the city’s residents.

The news was better in Travis County, Texas (home of Austin), which is now poised to become the first county in Texas to help families with low incomes pay for child care. Voters there approved a 2.5-cent property tax rate increase that is expected to generate a $76 million fund for early childhood education, after-school care, and summer care for about 9,000 children ranging in age from infants to 18-year-olds. The fund, which is expected to be rolled out in late 2025 or early 2026, is also designed to pay for training programs for child care staff and assist at-home providers in becoming licensed.

Finally, voters in Sonoma County, California, approved a quarter-cent sales tax designed to generate about $30 million dollars per year. A majority of those funds will be focused on ECE while other portions will be directed toward early childhood health, including mental health. The ballot measure was specifically focused on ensuring access to ECE and health care for children from low and middle income families. An advisory council will work with the First 5 Commission of Sonoma County to distribute the new tax revenue.

State Education Initiatives

In addition to local ballot initiatives, three states voted on measures related to school vouchers. These three contests were seen as a litmus test of whether the school voucher movement could maintain its recent momentum. The answer to that question was a resounding no as voters in all three states voted against efforts to expand school vouchers.

In Colorado, voters rejected an attempt to pave the way for the expansion of school choice with a constitutional amendment that would have stated that each “K-12 child has the right to school choice.” Thanks to a 1994 law, Colorado children have actually been allowed to attend any public school for free no matter where they live. The rejected amendment, however, would have likely opened the door to public funding for things like private school vouchers or payments for homeschooling.

In Kentucky, voters overwhelmingly rejected an attempt to revise the state constitution to allow the legislature to spend taxpayer dollars on nonpublic education. The defeat likely means state lawmakers will be unable to succeed in their wishes to fund charter schools and school vouchers.

Finally, in Nebraska, voters approved the repeal of the state’s new $10 million private school voucher law. Despite the defeat, it’s possible that state lawmakers will once again attempt to revive the voucher law by passing legislation to that effect in the next legislative session. In the months and years ahead, it will be interesting to see if these three states’ successes in blocking school choice programs can serve as a blueprint for repealing similar choice efforts in states, such as Arkansas and Florida.

There are more questions than answers at this point when it comes to federal ECE policy. We’ll keep you updated in the weeks and months ahead as we analyze presidential appointments, the president’s proposed budget, and the State of the Union address.