By Alison May

Just a little over a month ago NCSL blogged about the preliminary findings of the annual Early Care and Education State Budget Actions Report. We know that some of you have been waiting for the final report, and the wait is now over.

Read the full report, including colored maps, and view the state appropriations tables today. Overall, state appropriations to early care and education increased 3.8 percent ($368.8 million). Appropriations increased in each of the four categories—child care, prekindergarten, home visiting and other related programs—with prekindergarten appropriations seeing the largest increase between FY 2014 and FY 2015.

NCSL sent electronic surveys out in May 2014 to legislative fiscal staff in 21 selected states with responses from 20  states: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin. All are included in this final report. Surveys requested information on FY 2014 and FY 2015 state appropriations for various early care and education programs.

Some of the highlights:

• The top five states to increase prekindergarten appropriations, above FY 2014, are: Michigan ($65 million), Texas ($22 million), Colorado ($20.4 million), Washington ($16 million) and Ohio ($13 million).
• The top five states to decrease home visiting appropriations, below FY 2014, are: Minnesota ($8.6 million), Ohio ($4 million), Texas ($1 million), Tennessee ($840,000) and Iowa ($279,000).

If you are interested in digging in deeper to the numbers be sure to visit this exciting report today.

Alison May is a staff coordinator in NCSL’s Children and Families program.   

Alison May