This integrated approach ensures every policy recommendation serves your state's economic competitiveness while expanding real choices for working families — without growing government or replacing markets. Each strategy builds on successful state experiences and tackles real barriers facing families today.

Our policy framework, grounded in our Five Core Principles, connects key policy goals to practical strategies for achieving them.

Our Three-Part Policy Approach

Our approach works at three levels: Our Five Core Principles establish the values that guide every policy recommendation. Our Policy Framework connects big-picture goals to concrete strategies and specific policy solutions. And our two Key Policy Goals translate these principles into actionable priorities that states can implement today.

These two goals are essential for states pursuing meaningful ECE reform — driving real impact for families, children, businesses, and state economies. Click each goal to explore why it matters and proven strategies for achieving it:

• Empower Lower-Income Parents to Access Quality ECE

• Build a Strong Early Care and Education Workforce

These goals reinforce each other: When parents can access quality care, they enter and remain in the workforce. When states invest in their ECE workforce, quality programs become sustainable businesses that serve more families. One goal enables the other.