20 Oct 2025 Forward Arkansas explores solutions to strengthen early childhood education

LITTLE ROCK — With input from early childhood education (ECE) stakeholders, Forward Arkansas is exploring opportunities to scale and strengthen the state’s ECE system to enhance families’ access to high-quality programs. 

“High-quality early childhood education begins by ensuring our providers have the necessary support for effective, efficient and sustainable operations,” said Ben Kutylo, Forward’s president and CEO. “By identifying potential gaps in the current landscape, we can be more strategic in developing solutions to build statewide capacity.”

Forward is pursuing stakeholder engagement, fiscal analysis and strategy development with a grant from the Walton Family Foundation. Forward and All Children Thrive, an early childhood policy consultant, will gather feedback from ECE providers, ADE-selected local leads and families on the factors impacting enrollment and programs’ operations, ranging from access and financial management to staffing and technology support. 

According to the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE), there are approximately 180,000 children under the age of five across the state, with far too many kids lacking access to ECE. Research from the Child Care and Early Education Policy and Research Analysis Project, funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, strongly links program quality to the benefits children experience from ECE. The First Five Years Fund shows these children experience lifelong gains from their participation, including stronger cognitive development, better social-emotional regulation, higher graduation rates and increased upward mobility.

“We cannot maintain or expand high-quality early childhood education if providers don’t have the ongoing support or the resources needed to sustain their businesses,” said Jamie Rayford, PCED, chief strategy officer for the Batesville Area Chamber of Commerce and Forward’s project lead. “Operational excellence is the key to building stable, supportive environments where our state’s practitioners can thrive and children can flourish.”

Established in 2015 by the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation and Walton Family Foundation, Forward Arkansas is committed to reimagining learning to improve all students’ outcomes. By supporting great teachers and leaders in developing and scaling innovative practices, Forward aims to help all kids achieve success in the classroom, career and life. For more information, visit forwardarkansas.org.