If you drive by enough strip malls in the suburbs of America, you’ll start to notice the same things: signs in bright colors, names that sound like they were inspired by nature or are meant to sound academic. Sunshine School. Point of Discovery. Care Group for Learning. There is a growing network of franchise childcare companies that are quietly taking over what used to be one of the most community-based industries in American life. Many of them look like small businesses, but they are actually part of something much bigger.
This isn’t a sudden change. It’s been getting worse for years, but most parents haven’t really noticed because it’s been happening so slowly. Once dominated by church basements, nonprofit co-ops, and independent operators, the preschool sector is now being changed more and more by franchise models backed by private equity, venture capital, and the kind of investor excitement that usually comes with businesses that can grow and make money over and over again. It turns out that early childhood education does a great job of meeting both needs.
From the point of view of an investor, it’s easy to see the appeal. Parents need kids to watch. Demand is not very flexible. When families sign up, it’s hard to switch schools because it’s hard on them emotionally and practically. A franchise model lets you quickly expand into new areas without having to spend a lot of money on building your own properties. You sell the brand, the course, the training systems, and the marketing plan. The real estate risk is on a local operator. Fees and royalties are paid to the parent company. This building style works well in both fast food and fitness. It’s now coming in full force at the toddler level.
When you walk through some of these centers, you get the feeling that they were made to be as efficient as possible. The curricula come already put together. Teacher training is organized and doesn’t last long. Ratios in the classroom are set by the minimum requirements for licenses, not by developmental goals. All of this isn’t always bad—structure and consistency are good things to have in early childhood education. But it’s important to think about who these systems are best for and whether “scalable” and “developmentally rich” always mean the same thing.
It’s still not clear if having a business owns young children makes their lives significantly worse. The research is really mixed, and honest people have different opinions. One thing that is clear is that childcare has small profit margins even when teachers are paid fairly. This means that wages, ratios, materials, or programming depth must be cut somewhere. These choices are also made by independent operators. But when a franchise has to meet goals every three months, they are under a different kind of pressure.
Most of the time, the teachers who work in these systems are aware of the tension, but they don’t say it out loud very often. It’s not fair that preschool teachers are some of the lowest-paid workers in the country, especially when you consider how much companies that hire them are being valued. It’s hard not to notice the difference between what these brands say (like “nurturing the whole child” and “building lifelong learners“) and how the workers actually make money to do what they say.
All of this doesn’t mean that all franchise preschools are bad or that parents who choose them are wrong. A lot of these programs are really good, and some are even great. But this brings up a bigger question that American education policy has mostly avoided answering directly: what happens when the infrastructure of early childhood is based on investor returns instead of child outcomes? There isn’t a clear answer to that question yet. However, it is most likely best to start asking this question before the consolidation is complete, not after.
