Conversational Turns: Sara Mickelson

talking about what New Mexico's universal child care eligibility gets right and wrong, and what other states can learn from it

Welcome to Conversational Turns, a recurring feature where I speak with leaders doing interesting work in the early childhood space about that work, what they’re learning, and what others can learn from their experiences. I recently spoke with Sara Mickelson, an early childhood leader who has held key state and local leadership positions in Oregon; Harris County, Texas; Rhode Island; and most recently served as Deputy Cabinet Secretary for the New Mexico Early Childhood Education and Care Department. In a recent Vox piece, she wrote about New Mexico’s widely heralded move to implement universal eligibility for child care subsidies, and why she fears the state’s efforts may be coming up short. She elaborated on those themes in our interview, as well as what she thinks other states can learn from New Mexico’s experience. (Since we have the same first name and both our last names start with M, I’ve used only our last names in the interview transcript below. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.)

Mead: I can’t tell you how many friends in my social network have emailed me articles about New Mexico launching universal childcare, asking, why can’t we have this? When is this gonna be here for me?

Mickelson: I got that, too, in New Mexico! It’s captured the imagination of so many people. That’s a positive of New Mexico really leading on a big and bold vision; it creates a better conversation.

Mead: But you argue the state is at risk of making a mistake that could prevent New Mexico from delivering on the promise of its investments? What’s the concern here?

Mickelson: Other places, like South Korea, or Quebec in Canada, have also pursued universal child care within a very similar childcare market to us, leveraging private businesses and non-profits. But really what they implemented was universal eligibility for child care. That’s different from the kind of universal access we see in, for example, K-12 education, where, when your child is required to enroll in first grade, there’s no question of whether there will be a school they can enroll in.

Intuitively, it seems like universal eligibility should make sure that all children and families who need child care can get it. It’s free for the consumer. Child care providers are also getting more money than they have before. But what we know from these other countries, and what I saw in my time in New Mexica, is that universal access doesn’t build supply in the deliberate way needed to serve all children and families in need of care.

If you start with a policy that doesn’t actually build supply, families will still struggle to find the care they need. And the resulting inequities in access will particularly affect families with fewer resources and populations, like infants and toddlers, that were already underserved by the existing system. That’s what we’ve seen in Quebec and South Korea, and what families are experiencing in New Mexico now.

Mead: What are some of the early data points or indicators you’re seeing that suggest this is happening?

Mickelson: There’s a perception that New Mexico just went universal in November, but this has actually been a five-year build, and because of the income distribution in New Mexico, eligibility was nearly universal when we expanded eligibility to 400% of the federal poverty level [in 2002], so we actually have a few years of data to look at.

When you look at data in the aggregate, you see way more people are being served, more centers are opening, the market seems to be responding. But when you dig into the numbers at a disaggregated level, the picture is more complicated. The majority of the growth in the program comes from families who were already enrolled in a child care program. We’ve just changed who’s paying. And that can have real economic benefits for those families! But it’s not helping the thousands of families who can’t even find child care.

We also started hearing from our eligibility workers that very low-income people with infants and toddlers couldn’t get a slot in childcare programs. Providers, very understandably, didn’t want to wait the 8 to 10 weeks of processing time before the family was determined eligible for subsidies. So instead, the slots were going to higher-income families who could afford to pay the tuition for a few months until they were found eligible. When there’s not enough supply, those who can navigate the system a little bit better win out over others who might have really urgent needs but face greater barriers.

It’s also important to look at patterns by age of children served. New Mexico has a universal preK program that serves children in both public schools and child care programs. [ed. note, Because this is a primarily a school day program, many families still need before or after and summer care.] A lot of the growth in subsidy enrollment is coming from children who were already attending universal preK in a school or child care program, and now they’re accessing subsidies to pay for before/after care as well.

But we haven’t seen the same kind of growth in access for infants and toddlers. Yes, more infants and toddlers are in the subsidy program, but they’re now a lower share of total enrollment than they were before universal eligibility. It’s harder to serve infants and toddlers, so we haven’t seen as much growth in supply to meet demand.

You also have to look at the mix of childcare providers. In New Mexico we have licensed care and something called regulated care, which is family, friend, and neighbor providers who are monitored for health and safety and can accept subsidies, but aren’t fully licensed. These providers play a really important role in smaller communities in rural parts of New Mexico. If you look at supply of just licensed care centers and homes, it looks like there’s been a lot of growth. But at the same time, regulated providers are closing. That’s happening for a lot of reasons, not related to universal eligibility. But it means that growth in access hasn’t been evenly distributed in the state, and looking at growth in licensed care only overstates the growth in supply.

More broadly, because there’s not a strategy to build supply, that means we’re relying on the business decisions of individual providers to drive where supply grows and where it doesn’t. The providers who are growing tend to be the ones who are already in the field and have some type of access to capital. And the reasons they choose to grow in a particular place may not have anything to do with where the greatest shortages are or where families with the greatest need are located.

None of this means universal eligibility is wrong. But we should be looking at data honestly and saying, “what could we be doing differently or better?” It’s great to be out front, as New Mexico is, but it also behooves us to say, how do we look at these early data points, learn, and try to make adjustments? Which families aren’t benefiting? Which children aren’t benefiting? And what can we do to address that?

Mead: Why hasn’t New Mexico coupled the expansion of childcare subsidy eligibility with the kinds of infrastructure or supply-side investments and strategies that you argue are needed?

Mickelson: I think they would say that they have. But the supply-side efforts are just dwarfed by the eligibility expansion. For example: There’s a low-interest loan fund for facilities that increased by a few million dollars. But New Mexico is spending almost a billion dollars annually on child care! The supply-side resources don’t go very far relative to the need.

More broadly, New Mexico has tried to rely on the existing infrastructure, the voucher system, the existing child care programs, because it’s in place, it’s what people understand. That makes sense, especially in the beginning. When states have a political moment, and all of the sudden there’s an infusion of cash, it makes sense to start with the existing infrastructure.

But what I’ve learned and feel the responsibility to say field-wide is that money is only part of the problem. We always talk about child care being a broken market. Well, a broken market is a broken market even if you fix the financing. We need the right policy to implement once the money is in place. We need politicians to use the bully pulpit, to use their leadership and power to get funding, but then it’s up to us to be very intentional about what is the right policy, and eventually build towards that.

Mead: So what steps can New Mexico take now to correct course and make sure that its investments do translate into improve access and outcomes for children and families?

Mickelson: First, I think they need to take a step back and really think about what goals they’re trying to accomplish with universal eligibility. Is it just to change who’s paying for children who are already enrolled in care? Or is it something bigger?

Then they need to look at what other tools they can use. We need to fund slots for infants and toddlers in the same way we fund preK. Meaning, in a deliberate way that builds capacity and builds supply. That requires distributing funds through grants and contracts rather than vouchers. Having contracts supports providers’ operating costs in a more predictable and stable way so that they’re more willing and able to take the risk of investing in growth, and it enables them to take the risk of enrolling lower-income families who can’t afford to pay before they’re found eligible. New Mexico has made some grants and contracts but it’s very small relative to what they’re spending on child care subsidy vouchers.

Then, they need to look at the current child care budget and think about where it’s possible to invest more directly in building supply, focusing on areas with less childcare, especially for infants and toddlers, and building capacity there. Sometimes that’s literal buildings, and sometimes that’s shared services, encouraging new family child care providers to open, stay open and make it a viable career that’s not super stressful.

Shifting some funding to specifically focus on cultivating the child care workforce is another area. There is no [early childhood educator] wage strategy. There was a wage and career lattice developed by a work group. But the way universal eligibility has been financed, hasn’t been tied to the wage and career ladder. There needs to be real support for wages for the workforce, and real supply building.

Ultimately, New Mexico needs to build more capacity in the system, and while I don’t know for sure the best way to do that, I know that we can make different choices that will get us closer.

Mead: So what lessons should policymakers, advocates, and leaders in other states, or at the federal level, take from experience in New Mexico?

Mickelson: State leaders and advocates need to imagine the system they want and try to sequence back from there. You need a vision of where you want to go. Not just, “we want to serve everyone,” but: What do we want that to look like? Do we want people to be able to walk into a center or home and be able to access publicly funded care without ever needing to apply to the state to be found eligible? Do we want to include family child care? (I would argue yes!) All these choices about how you want the system to work and what you want the experience to be for children, and families, and child care providers.

And then when you know what you want, you gotta build the political will, you gotta get things done. That takes time. And you need to iterate and evolve, because we don’t know the perfect answer. We have examples of things that are working, and basic policy knowledge that can guide us to make better choices, but we also need to learn as we’re going.

I think of it like training. If you want to run a marathon, you don’t start by running 26.2 miles! There are lots of programs you can buy that are tested and proven to help you go from someone who doesn’t run at all to someone who can run a marathon. But there isn’t a similar roadmap for states on early childhood. And there are always a million improvements you can identify that need to be made, because the field has been neglected for so long, and it’s devalued.

New York is an interesting example. The mayor really wants universal childcare. I’m sure they would love to be serving everyone tomorrow, but because they’re facing budget realities, they can’t move that fast. And they are using time to think about all those issues I’ve talked about: Who will really have access? Will there be enough capacity? It’s a good example of thinking strategically about: where could you start today? They chose to serve two-year-olds under a certain threshold of state median income, which I think is interesting, because they’ll learn a lot about serving two-year-olds, where the program needs to differ from preK, and when they’re able to expand further they’ll know how to do that better.

So states need to look at what steps you can take first. And then make informed next choices within our system based on where you want to go.

But you need to know where you want to go first. It’s time for the early childhood field to be clear that we don’t all have the same endgame. Not everyone believes in universal childcare. Some states might say: our goal is more about serving 100% of the currently eligible population.

I do want universal childcare, though, 100%. I don’t want anyone to read my article as saying otherwise. It’s because I think it holds so much promise that I really want us to get it right. It’s time for our field to have these conversations, and I hope my piece was a contribution to that, because at the end of the day we’re all working to make things better for children and for families and we need to hold ourselves and our field accountable.