As another school year gets underway, several states are considering whether to give students more time for recess, and some have already expanded the role of unstructured play in a child’s school day.  The momentum around recess has been building for years, with experts raising awareness about the importance of preserving time for daily play...

Several years into California’s robust expansion of public transitional kindergarten, private preschool providers are facing challenges that could ultimately upend care for young children of all ages.  The program, which comes at no cost to families, added a new, pre-kindergarten grade level to public school districts throughout the state. The 2026-27 school year marks the...

This story was co-published with Mother Jones.  Updated March 27, 2026: In response to this story, YouTube terminated six channels for violating the platform’s terms of service and one channel for violating its spam policy. In a video that has been played almost 50,000 times since it was posted five months ago, two cartoon children sing...

Hunger is on the rise for the early care and education workforce, according to recent research from the Stanford Center on Early Childhood, and signs suggest the challenge is unlikely to improve in the short term. In June, 58% of early care and education providers surveyed by the RAPID Survey Project at Stanford said they...