On Friday May 2 Wendy Cervantes will be speaking at the 2025 Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) Biennial Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota for a panel titled, “The Role of Research in Immigration Advocacy: How Science Can Support the Well-Being of Immigrant Children.”
Find out more information by visiting srcd.org.
This statement can be attributed to Cemeré James, interim executive director of the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP)
Washington, D.C., March 21, 2025 – Yesterday, President Trump signed an executive order to follow other recent administrative actions meant to decimate the Department of Education (ED) under the veil of “returning power to states.” His action will disrupt the ability of schools to provide the learning opportunities students need. States already hold the primary responsibility and authority for education, while the ED manages and distributes funds, collects essential data, conducts valuable research, and ensures equity in access to public education. Closing ED will disproportionately harm students of color and children with disabilities, instill fear in immigrant students, and reverse decades of progress in enhancing civil rights protections for all students. This order is also consistent with the administration’s stated goal to undo the progress made through Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility efforts that improve and expand educational opportunities.
Closing the Department of Education (ED) will negatively impact students of all races and economic backgrounds. The department plays a crucial role in supporting and holding schools accountable to ensure children with disabilities receive the services they need to succeed, and that young children have access to high-quality early learning. ED also ensures that students receive an education free from harassment and intimidation, and that they are prepared to attend college, universities, and other post-secondary institutions. The withdrawal of federal funds from institutions that do not align with the political values of the Trump Administration will reduce access to education. Ultimately, these actions will deny young children and students from marginalized communities the same educational opportunities, support services, and protections as their peers.
Contrary to language in the Executive Order that ED has failed children, teachers, and families, the department has long defended students’ civil rights to equal education and ensured educational accessibility for students in every state. Eliminating ED deprives immigrant students, students of color, and students with disabilities of federal oversight to shield them from openly discriminatory state governments. Trump’s actions only serve the purpose of resegregating American education along the lines of race and class.
Executive orders are not laws. Trump’s attempt to enact his education policy agenda outside of existing legal parameters is unconstitutional. The order explicitly acknowledges that ED can’t be closed without the approval of Congress, which is an open admission that the administration is undertaking a shameless effort to violate the separation of powers doctrine upon which our government was founded. CLASP stands ready to fight for the educational rights of all students.
We call on federal and state policymakers to oppose these reckless actions and take steps to slow down and mitigate the harm while also supporting children, families, and educators at risk. In addition, we call on our partners in the education and children’s advocacy spaces to join the effort to push back against these harmful attacks, which are an affront to our collective goals to build a more just and equitable country.
This statement can be attributed to Cemeré James, interim executive director of the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP)
Washington, DC, March 12, 2025—Yesterday, the Trump Administration slashed half of the U.S. Department of Education’s workforce when it laid off approximately 1,300 career staff and 600 probationary employees. A nation’s strength is built on the strength of its public education system, and these actions purposely weaken not only American education but America itself. Mass layoffs also undermine the economy and, if left unchecked, will lead to higher unemployment.
For 46 years, the Department of Education (ED) has helped advance and protect equitable educational opportunities for all students seeking to learn in the United States. The Trump Administration’s “final mission” for the department is to intentionally dismantle it, disregarding both its importance to the nation and the profound unpopularity of shuttering the ED. Allowing Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency to operate the federal government like a private equity firm and unilaterally strip federal agencies of valuable people and resources will be ruinous to students, families, communities, and the economy.
Yesterday’s action is particularly concerning because of the impact on marginalized and vulnerable student populations. Public school systems that rely on federal spending will face increased difficulty in continuing to educate students. With a greatly reduced staff, the ED’s Office of Civil Rights cannot fulfill its obligation to vigilantly enforce federal civil rights laws in schools and among other recipients of ED funding. Researchers will struggle to analyze educational outcomes produced by various federal programs after the elimination of the National Center for Education Studies. Postsecondary students will be unable to begin or continue their educational pathways with the loss of staff capacity to manage financial aid awards. The harm of these cuts to students with disabilities, including the effects on early intervention programs for young children, remains unacknowledged by a Secretary of Education who struggles to remember what IDEA (the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) stands for.
The administration has no intention of resolving these concerns or communicating how it will replace the ED’s essential services and programs. Since Inauguration Day the administration has wielded authority without regard to the democratic process, ignoring the laws or livelihoods they break.
CLASP stands ready to work with and on behalf of students, families, and communities to advance and protect the educational rights of all students. We call on federal and state policymakers to oppose these reckless actions and take steps to slow down and mitigate the harm while also supporting children, families, and educators at risk. In addition, we call on our partners in the education and children’s advocacy space to join the effort to push back against these harmful attacks, which are an affront to our collective goals to build a more just and equitable country.
By Mark Swartz
(EXCERPT)
Key advocacy organizations, including The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) and the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) are providing — and regularly updating — resources for child care educators. According to Suma Setty, a senior policy analyst at CLASP, about one in five U.S. child care providers is an immigrant. “Unless something drastic happens, there are certain things that will remain true, like your Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights,” she says, referring to protection against arbitrary arrest and self-incrimination, respectively. “All people have a constitutional right to remain silent.”
By Stephanie Schmit & Rachel Wilensky
Federal budget proposals currently under consideration threaten resources available for children and families through multiple key programs, including the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG) programs. These programs are vital supports for families with low incomes throughout the country and provide access to essential services, including child care and early education. The Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) is the primary source of federal funding for child care and early education, but in some states TANF and SSBG provide significant support for child care assistance. The proposed threats to these programs will further restrict access to child care and early education for tens of thousands of children and families.
Child care access for close to 40,000 children across the country is at risk in addition to vital supports and services for families if we do not protect SSBG and TANF funding. This fact sheet provides background information about SSBG and TANF programs and highlights the number of children whose child care would be impacted by threatened cuts.
>> Read the full fact sheet here
By Rachel Cohen
What happens if the people caring for American children get deported?
Read the full article at vox.com
By Alyssa Fortner and Shira Small
This year’s Black History Month theme, “African Americans and Labor,” provides an important opportunity to uplift and reflect on the ways Black women have shaped America’s child care system. This reflection is particularly critical one month into a new administration that has demonstrated disregard for the contributions of diverse workforces today and throughout history. To change the future of child care, it is important to understand the past, both to acknowledge how injustice shapes the sector and ensure a fairer and more equitable future for those who sustain and utilize the child care system.
In the time of chattel slavery, enslaved Black women were forced to take care of white children, while not being allowed to take care of their own. In the post-emancipation period, low-paid domestic work was one of the only industries available to Black women. And throughout the 1900s policy choices and both proposed and enacted laws further marginalized and harmed those in the child care workforce and the families that relied on them. CLASP’s more detailed timeline of this history and impact can be found here.
Though the U.S. child care system has changed over the course of history, the labor of Black women continues to be underpaid and undervalued. While 18 percent of child care workers are Black, Black people only compose 13 percent of the overall U.S. workforce. Despite their overrepresentation in the child care workforce, Black women earn less on average than their white counterparts in a field that is already woefully underpaid, with the average worker earning $30,370 in 2023. For center-based providers, the wage gap between white and Black workers amounts to an average of more than $8,000 per year. Workers in home-based child care programs, which Black providers operate in higher numbers, earn even less.
On top of low wages, the workforce’s limited access to health insurance, retirement savings, and other benefits demonstrate the continued devaluation of Black women’s labor, harming the entire sector. Creating an economically sustainable profession that supports the well-being of all providers is not only a necessary step in creating a stronger child care system, but in working to repair the history of exploiting Black women’s work.
Anti-Black racism, discrimination, and a refusal to chart a new path for child care to disconnect it from its unjust roots keeps child care workers underpaid and keeps care unaffordable. At CLASP, we are committed to helping transform the child care system by outlining its history, changing narratives around the system and workforce, and putting forth policy solutions that support those who have been undervalued or overlooked.
As too many communities in this country face increasing threats to their economic and personal well-being, CLASP remains steadfast in its mission to advance racial and economic equity—especially in moments when progress and justice feel fragile. We are committed to working at the intersection of advancing equity and improving policy, which are inextricably linked. To that end, below are CLASP resources that center racial equity to expand access to child care and support for the child care workforce. These resources seek to understand the impacts of anti-Blackness and racism in the child care sector, because recognizing injustice is the first step in eradicating it.
Centering Black Families: Equitable Discipline through Improved Data Policies in Child Care
This report documents the history of inequitable disciplinary practices that disproportionately impact Black children in child care and early education and how data can be used to create meaningful solutions that address the harms.
This blog discusses ways in which the legacy of white supremacy in the child care sector can be dismantled.
Child Care Assistance Landscape: Inequities in Federal and State Eligibility and Access
This report analyzes variations in eligibility and access to Child Care and Development Block Grant subsidies in 2020, disaggregated by race and ethnicity.
The Racist History Behind Why Black Childcare Workers Are Underpaid
This 2022 op-ed examines the history of black labor in the child care sector and how it underpins the workforce’s severe underpayment.
Expanding Access to Child Care Assistance: Opportunities in the Child Care and Development Fund
This report and its fact sheets explain how the child care workforce can be better supported and diversified to provide more culturally responsive child care options for families and provides strategies for states to expand access to care.
This report examines how community engagement strategies can help create more equitable policies on the road to dismantling systemic racism.
Parent and Provider Experience Should Inform Child Care Policy
CLASP partnered with parent leaders from the United Parent Leaders Action Network in this blog to highlight the importance of community engagement as a tool to advance equity, just as it is a tool for creating effective policy.
By Shira Small with support from Charis Davis, DéJon Banks, Sr., and Sonja Lennox
What’s the best way to create child care policies that work for families and providers? Give them a seat at the table. In October 2024, the Administration for Children and Families released guidance to help state child care policy makers do just that. The guidance affirms that Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) and Preschool Development Grant Birth through Five (PDG B-5) funding can be used to engage people who have lived experience with the child care subsidy system and provides best practices on how to implement effective and equitable community engagement. This includes both parents and providers, with the guidance recognizing that gathering community feedback is a key component of improving the quality of services.
We partnered with three parent advocates from the United Parent Leaders Action Network (UPLAN) to write this blog and elevate the importance of parent voice in the state child care policy making process. Their message is clear: collecting data from directly impacted groups is not enough. To implement meaningful, community-driven policy solutions, policymakers owe parents transparency, trust building, and action. Bridging the gap between those creating policy and those impacted by it is long overdue.
Charis Davis, Ohio Parent Advocacy Network: Without parent voice, we are left with old rules and outdated laws from older individuals, mostly men, that no longer understand the position and economy that we are facing. They don’t understand what it is like to raise children today. It’s important that people get to see this guidance so more entities can start engaging with parents. To build trust, there needs to be a clear starting point/understanding and communication between all parties involved. If parents have a request, states should be transparent about what they can do, how they can do it, and work together to figure out a solution. We need transparency. Transparency is essential!
DéJon Banks, Sr., UPLAN: Decisions about us cannot be made without us. A lot of things are happening behind closed doors. There need to be direct connections between community groups and the state so that the state is coming to recruit them and bring them to the table for this engagement. Engage them at the ground level. Come to the groups where they are. When we try to speak to people in government, we get a secretary or assistant, but high-ups need to be available, so people feel heard and connected and that decision makers are actually with them. It’s hard for decision makers to deny and hide when we as parents are holding people accountable by being part of the process, which this guidance can help with.
Sonja Lennox, Washington State Parent Ambassadors: Parents should be at all tables where decisions are being made, especially when it is about them. Parents’ experiences make decision makers realize things that they are missing. With the guidance, people can see it and think of problems in a new way and how policy will affect parents and families. I think the advice that I would give people trying to start engaging parent voices is to start doing focus groups and make sure they are diverse in all demographics. Ask them what is and isn’t working well with this policy, how would you change it, and how would changing it impact you, your family, and your community? And there needs to be a stipend or something else given that says: we value your voice and opinion. To build trust, states need to walk their talk. Do what you say you’re going to do.
The guidance includes the following recommendations:
The expertise of families and early educators is critical to creating effective policy. This guidance is a helpful resource and starting place for states looking to gather feedback from people who have experience with the subsidy system, and states should prioritize co-designing engagement opportunities with parents and providers and/or consulting them about their needs. To create a more equitable child care system, parents and providers should have a role in setting the table, not only sitting at it.
CLASP would like to thank Sonja Lennox, Charis Davis, and DéJon Banks, Sr. with UPLAN for providing their expertise to help draft this blog.
This statement can be attributed to Cemeré James, interim executive director of the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP)
Washington, D.C., January 28, 2025 – Last night, President Trump announced unprecedented funding freezes for programs that serve people in every congressional district. By cutting off agency grant and loan programs without any notice, the Trump Administration is harming families, children, workers, and communities across the country—and imperiling our nation’s economy.
We are glad to see that numerous state attorneys general and others are challenging the legality of this attempt to override the will of Congress, which has already authorized and appropriated these funds. Congress, not the President, is empowered by the Constitution to determine how the federal government spends its funds. Even so, the harm and chaos that these freezes are already causing and will continue to inflict on popular, impactful programs like community health centers, child care subsidies, and Meals on Wheels cannot be overstated. Moreover, the administration is planning to permanently defund some programs based on arbitrary assessments of whether they meet an ideological purity test.
This power grab will affect not just the individuals and families who rely on these programs and funds but also workers in sectors all over the country. Even if funding is eventually restored, programs may not be able to meet payroll or pay their rent, and the uncertainty has significant, immediate impacts inflicting fear, confusion, and challenges. The hardworking people who look out for others in their communities are at risk of losing their livelihoods because the Trump Administration has put more focus on cutting taxes for its billionaire allies than protecting children, seniors, veterans, and millions of other Americans.
We urge the administration to reverse course and ensure that funds already appropriated by law are allocated to programs relying on them.
By Rachel Wilensky and Stephanie Schmit
On December 20, 2024, President Biden signed the American Relief Act, 2025 into law. In lieu of passing a full new budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2025, Congress passed this continuing resolution, which will keep the government funded at FY2024 levels through March 14, 2025. Among other additions, the law included an additional $500 million for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG). Half of this funding is reserved for necessary expenses directly related to the consequences of major disasters and emergencies that will go to states impacted by these events. The other $250 million is designated as emergency discretionary funding to be made as payments to all states.
The Office of Child Care in the Administration for Children and Families has published the allocations for states for the $250 million that is designated for all states from the American Relief Act, or ARA. These allocations often help state administrators and advocates understand and plan for the resources that will soon come their way. The state funding allocations distribution for major disasters and emergencies (the additional $250 million allocated through the ARA) has not yet been released and is not included in these numbers.
CCDBG is a critical support for families with low incomes who, without access to assistance, would likely be unable to afford their current child care arrangements. However, due to limited federal funding, the program was only able to serve 15 percent of eligible children in 2021. The annual appropriations process is an important opportunity to increase federal investments in programs that respond to additional need and ensure funding keeps up with rising inflation.
The additional funding for CCDBG included in the ARA is vital for communities recovering from natural disasters and for the child care sector as a whole, which continues to face the financial challenges of maintaining and building on the positive improvements from the pandemic relief funding. However, the amount allocated is hardly enough to cover the costs of inflation from the previous year.
As concerns about economic recovery, unemployment, and inflation persist, significant and sustained increases in annual discretionary funding remain a critical support. In addition, given the fragile nature of the child care sector caused in part by decades of insufficient federal funding, the need for long-term and sustainable increases for child care remains ever present. More resources for child care and early education are urgently needed. As Congress works to finish the FY25 appropriations process and begins the FY26 appropriations process, federal lawmakers must center the real needs of children, families, and providers in funding decisions.