The OMEP-Backed Universal Preschool Campaign That Oregon Launched—And the Results That Have 15 Other States Watching Very Closely

In the midst of a worldwide pandemic on a soggy June day in 2020, a team of community organizers in Multnomah County, Oregon, had four and a half weeks to gather 23,000 handwritten signatures. They received more than 32,000. Preschool for All, arguably the most watched early childhood education experiment in the United States at the moment, was founded on that unlikely signature drive. Fifteen states have taken notice of the program in an attempt to determine whether Oregon has cracked a code that has eluded American education policy for decades.

By the standards of American education funding, the plan that was approved as Measure 26-214 in November 2020 was truly out of the ordinary. It imposed a progressive income tax on high earners, defined as single filers earning more than $125,000 and joint filers earning more than $200,000. The money collected was specifically allocated to free preschool for all Multnomah County children aged three and four. It’s not a pilot project. Not a subsidy based on income. Each and every child. Families with lower and middle incomes can receive free before and after care for six hours a day. Additionally, lead teacher salaries were set at about $74,000 annually, matching what public kindergarten teachers in the district make. This detail attracted the attention of economists and education advocates nationwide.

It was a purposeful wage structure. In the past, childcare and preschool workers have been paid poverty wages despite being required to perform some of the most developmentally significant tasks in any community. The Multnomah program placed a wager that increasing teacher compensation would aid in resolving the staffing shortage that had severely reduced access to early education in Oregon and the majority of the nation. The early enrollment figures indicate that something is working, but it is unclear if that wager will fully pay off at scale. Internal surveys revealed that 97% of families were satisfied with the program, which grew from 728 children in its first year to 3,800 in the 2025–2026 school year. The majority of government programs don’t generate those figures.

There has been a mixture of sincere curiosity and cautious skepticism as other state capitals have watched this develop. The most noteworthy aspect of the program is its funding mechanism, which is a dedicated, progressive tax rather than general fund dollars or a sales tax. This is because it provides a revenue source that most early education programs do not have, one that does not compete annually with roads and prisons for the same pot of money. Among the 14 economists who supported the Multnomah plan was Nobel Prize-winning Joseph Stiglitz, who argued that tuition-free preschool programs are cost-effective because the benefits are greatest for children from lower-income families and eventually more than offset the investment.

However, the difficulties are genuine. In a different but related endeavor, a state audit discovered $1.4 million in unnecessary spending within Oregon’s statewide Preschool Promise program, demonstrating how challenging it can be to scale complex early childhood systems quickly. Governor Tina Kotek is among those who have criticized Multnomah County’s own program for moving too slowly in terms of actual enrollment in comparison to the funds it has accumulated. These are serious critiques. The state is aware that a program that is sitting on multimillion-dollar balances while children are still not enrolled is failing to live up to expectations.

Governor Kotek established a new Early Childhood Care and Learning System Roundtable in February 2026 with the goal of creating a plan for universal preschool access throughout all 36 Oregon counties, which is a much more complex geography than a single urban county centered on Portland. The CEO of the Children’s Institute and chair of the roundtable, Kali Thorne Ladd, was straightforward about what that complexity entails: what works in Portland doesn’t necessarily work in a rural county two hundred miles away, where there might only be one child care facility within thirty miles and a workforce pipeline that hardly exists. The Multnomah challenge is not an expansion of the statewide challenge. It’s a distinct challenge.

Nevertheless, the 15 states examining Oregon’s model do not anticipate a failure. An early-stage proof of concept with actual enrollment growth, high family satisfaction, a stable funding source, and an increasingly compelling economic case is what they’re looking at. Currently, Oregon loses an estimated $1.4 billion a year as a result of parents, who are disproportionately mothers, being unable to find or afford child care and staying out of the workforce. The economic case for replication grows rapidly if universal preschool returns even a small percentage of those workers. Other states are doing the same calculation, which is why this Oregon experiment—messy audit findings and all—continues to be investigated.