Jordan Brown, Catherine Davis | October 2nd, 2025

How Does the Texas Child Care System Work?

In Texas, three types of early learning settings are available to children ages 0 – 5: private child care, public prekindergarten, or Head Start. While families who meet specific eligibility criteria (typically low income or educationally disadvantaged) can send their children to a public pre-k or Head Start program for free, the majority of families with young children will only have access to tuition-based child care.

In Texas, parents pay child care tuition that averages around $823 per month, or nearly $10,000 per year, a rate that rivals the cost of tuition at a 4-year public university. Texas provides relief in the form of subsidies to low-income, working families through the federally-funded Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG), which also supports quality improvement activities, licensing, and child safety regulations for the state.

Elements of this system are divided among several agencies and implemented at various levels.

The Various Agencies Overseeing Texas Child Care & Their Roles

HHSC – Licensing

The Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) oversees child care licensing, which verifies that a program has met the minimum safety, health, and child development standards under Texas law. Licensed child care programs are listed in the state registry and become eligible to participate in the Child Care Services program. Not all child care programs are licensed, and the agency actively works to ensure unlicensed programs (frequently operating in family homes) can achieve licensed status.

TWC – Access and Quality

The Texas Workforce Commission’s (TWC) Child Care Services program is open to any licensed child care program in the state and includes both the Child Care Scholarships program and Texas Rising Star.

The Child Care Services program is funded primarily by the federal Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG), which appropriated $1.3 billion to Texas in 2025. While TWC oversees the state-level administration of these services, the majority of the work is administered locally by 28 Local Workforce Development Boards. Typically, workforce boards will contract the operation of the Child Care Services Program to a local entity, usually a non-profit, with expertise in early learning.

Here is a brief overview of the two components of the Child Care Services Program:

Child Care Scholarships (CCS) are vouchers provided to low-income working families to help pay for child care. Families receiving CCS can take their voucher to any child care program participating in Texas Rising Star. In order to qualify for a scholarship, a household must not exceed 85% of the state’s median income ($87,731 for a family of four in 2025), and the parent(s) must be working or attending a job training or educational program for a certain number of hours per week. Because there are so many low-income families that meet these criteria and funding is limited, only about 14% of eligible families receive a scholarship. The waitlists for scholarships have become notoriously long. As of 2025, Texas has nearly 95,000 families on a waitlist.
Texas Rising Star (TRS) is a voluntary program which provides ongoing quality supports to child care providers to improve and maintain high-quality standards. It also annually rates programs to help families decide where to enroll. In order to accept children receiving CCS, child care programs must participate in TRS. A higher TRS rating also increases the per-child scholarship amount a program receives.

Eligibility-based Early Learning Programs

The state of Texas also funds public prekindergarten for children aged 3-4. This program is managed by the Texas Education Agency and operated by school districts. As opposed to child care programs, which provide full-day and year-round care, pre-k is provided on a half day basis and only during the school year. Districts can choose to partner with child care programs to provide public pre-k within the context of a high-quality child care program, but less than 2% of school districts statewide have done so.

Head Start and Early Head Start are part of a federal grant program aimed at supporting highly vulnerable young children through high-quality early education and intensive wraparound supports. The federal Office of Head Start awards grants to local organizations to operate the program in their communities. Communities across Texas—urban and rural—have Head Start and Early Head Start grantees; there is no state agency.

Challenges: Unoptimized Systems & Difficulties of Navigating It

Unfortunately, there is no true “early learning system” in Texas. Rather, a patchwork of programs with disparate governance. This results in the following challenges:

Difficulties for Parents: A recent interim report from the Texas Senate highlighted the difficulties parents face with understanding the child care and early learning resources available to them. Information is scattered across multiple agencies, and local communities employ different coordination strategies, meaning there is no one-stop-shop for early learning information or assistance. This leaves families to research options on their own. For instance, a family who needs full-day child care might be eligible for free (half-day) pre-k, but without contacting each nearby district to know if they partner with a local child care program, the family might settle for paying full price for child care just because it fits their work schedule.
Lack of Data & Understanding: Siloed responsibilities also contribute to a lack of consolidated data, which makes it difficult for agencies, workforce boards, and the public to understand the overall health of the early learning system. It also makes it difficult for families to find care, as there is no searchable website that provides timely information on open seats.
Difficulties for Programs: These silos are also felt by child care programs, who must adhere to regulations and procedures set by licensing (at HHSC), funding and quality (at TWC), and, in partnership scenarios, prekindergarten (at the Texas Education Agency), or Head Start (local grantees). This disjointed structure can result in wasted resources and overlapping regulations, creating unnecessary red tape for child care programs.

Opportunities: How can Texas improve?

By putting the experience of families, children, teachers, and child care providers at the forefront, Texas can model a system that works better for everyone. A unified early education system—consolidated within a team that plans strategically around best outcomes for families—will require bringing together child care, licensing, pre-k, and Head Start into one room and designing a process for families and providers to easily access resources. That could look like an early childhood agency, a state department, or more coordinated regional bodies at the local level. This should naturally lead to improving the family experience and integrating data systems to better track child outcomes.

In the 89^th Texas Legislative Session, a bipartisan group of lawmakers passed HB 117, HB 4903, and HB 3963 with the intention to increase coordination between agencies and ideate new system designs with early education stakeholders at the table.

Although there is no single best method used to coordinate an early learning system, Texas can learn from other states who have already taken steps to strengthen their ECE system and governance.

Learning from other states

Florida has consolidated child care and pre-k services into the Florida Department of Education, within which the Division of Early Learning oversees child care scholarships, prekindergarten services, quality programming, and referral services. These programs are implemented locally via Early Learning Coalitions, comprised of early learning stakeholders with the overarching purpose to connect families to available opportunities (see Florida State Statute 1002.83).

Other states have created separate agencies or departments dedicated to operating early childhood services. The Arkansas Department of Education oversees the state’s child care subsidies, licensing, quality rating system, and pre-k program. North Carolina does the same under its Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees implementation via 75 regional partnerships in the Smart Start Network. Similarly, Colorado uses Local Coordinating Organizations to implement its universal preschool program in various community-based settings.

These are just a few examples; more states have adopted other governance structures from which Texas could learn. With a more coordinated ecosystem, families could more easily access care, child care programs would operate in a business-friendly environment, and stakeholders could better solve pressing challenges.