A new national study by the National Institute for Early Education Research finds North Carolina ranks 32nd in the nation in providing preschool access to four-year-olds. The 2025 State of Preschool Yearbook notes that North Carolina spent less on preschool programs and enrolled fewer children in the 2024-2025 school year than the previous year.
Steve Barnett, NIEER’s senior director and founder (Photo: NIEER)According to the report, N.C. Pre-K served 26,707 of the state’s four-year-olds, about 21%. Compare that to South Carolina, which served 45% of its four-year-olds and 6% of eligible three-year-olds.
Steve Barnett, NIEER’s senior director and founder, said it’s fair to say that North Carolina is heading in the wrong direction.
In 2024-25, North Carolina spent nearly $1,000 less per-pupil on the state pre-K program than the year before, Barnett said.
“Georgia, by contrast, has a universal preschool program that newly meets all 10 of our research-based quality standards, showing that quality preschool can be expanded at scale,” said Barnett.
Barnett said participation rates in pre-K are also vastly different from county to county in North Carolina.
“When the state underfunds the program, local dollars have to make up the difference,” said Barnett. “Some communities have those local dollars to make up the difference for more kids. Other communities, rural communities may already be stretched thin.”
Allison Friedman-Krauss, lead author of the NIEER report (Photo: NIEER)Allison Friedman-Krauss, lead author of the NIEER report, said in recent years North Carolina, like other states, used federal COVID-19 funding to support their preschool programs. But with the loss of pandemic dollars, many states have decreased their spending per child and their overall spending on early childhood education.
At the same time, childcare centers have struggled to keep their doors open and retain high-quality staff. North Carolina has lost 262 childcare operators in the last two and a half years.
“That’s a real issue happening in child care, but also in preschools across the country,” said Friedman-Krauss. “Child care is expensive, and it’s really important that states and programs prioritize not just the access to those child care programs, but thinking about that quality … how can we get qualified teachers in those doors and then pay them so that they will stay?”
It’s a problem that many young parents are painfully aware of.
The average annual cost of an infant in child care in North Carolina is $11,720, according to the N.C. Task Force on Child Care and Early Education. For two children in child care, the average annual cost for parents is nearly $19,500.
It’s an affordability problem the state cannot afford to ignore, said Barnett.
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“Parents have to work. The question then becomes, what’s happening to their young children? Are they in arrangements that the parents aren’t happy with, that aren’t particularly good for the kids?” Barnett said.
In his budget recommendations this week, Gov. Josh Stein proposed a refundable child care tax credit providing an average credit of $250 per year to help offset childcare costs. Stein’s budget would also include an additional $11 million recurring investment in N.C. Pre-K for FY 2026-27. The governor’s budget earmarks $80 million to stabilize child care programs across the state and establishes a statewide subsidy reimbursement rate floor.
Barnett said lawmakers need to consider that children who miss out on pre-K and high-quality early childhood education programs do worse in school, struggle to focus, and may even have a smaller vocabulary.
“That’s going to hinder them for a long time,” said Barnett. “It’s very difficult to make up for these early deficits.”
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