The 2019-20 Budget: Analysis of Governor’s Preschool Slot Estimate

May 6, 2019 - Given the lack of existing data, we think the administration ’s Head Start program overlap assumption seems reasonable and make the same assumption. We differ from the administration in that we use more recent participation data and we use federal program participation data that is most comparable to state data.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4027

The 2025-26 California Spending Plan: Child Care and State Preschool

Nov 14, 2025 - The budget provides $21.8  million in one-time federal funding to reform and automate state and local data systems to allow for the implementation of new child care provider rates based on an alternative methodology.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5088

The 2023-24 Budget: Transitional Kindergarten and State Preschool Proposals

Feb 14, 2023 - LAO Comments TK Estimates Will Be Updated as Current ‑Year Data Become Available. The state will have a better sense of TK attendance for 2022 ‑23 when CDE releases preliminary attendance data in the coming weeks (based on attendance data through December).
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4682

California's Education System: A 2019 Guide [Publication Details]

Feb 6, 2019 - Throughout the report, we rely almost entirely upon state and federal government data sources and cite the most readily available data. Within each chapter, we tend to focus on the students who are served, the state programs designed to serve them, the funds supporting those programs, how program funding is spent, and what is known about outcomes in that area.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Detail/3924

The 2019-20 Budget: Governor's Proposals for Infants and Toddlers With Special Needs

Feb 28, 2019 - Since publishing our evaluation, we received updated data for California which indicate the state has improved somewhat on meeting these deadlines but still does notably worse than most states were doing in their most recent data.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3954

The 2024-25 Budget: State Preschool

Apr 16, 2024 - Preliminary enrollment data for 2023 ‑24 indicate growth of less than one-half of 1  percent in 2023 ‑24 compared to 2022 ‑23. Given these trends, State Preschool enrollment is likely to increase in 2024 ‑25.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4894

A Review of Child Care and Preschool Program Flexibilities in Certain Counties

May 13, 2021 - At this stage, CDE may request additional data to validate the county ’s rationale for wanting specific flexibilities. Based on our conversations with CDE and LPCs, counties often must submit multiple iterations of their plan before CDE determines it has the appropriate data to approve the plan.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4431

The 2016-17 Budget: Analysis of Child Care and Preschool Proposals

Feb 24, 2016 - This cap equates to about 60  percent of the 2014 SMI, the most recent year for which we have data. Updating the income cap to this level imposes no additional program cost. For purposes of establishing voucher eligibility, we recommend the state update the SMI annually based on the most recent data available (for example, using the 2015 SMI when preparing the 2017 –18 budget).
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3367

Options for Modifying the State Child Care Tax Credit

Apr 7, 2016 - Data Issues. We note that the most recent personal income tax data cover tax year 2013. To produce the estimates in this report, we start with 2013 data and project the 2016 income distribution. Estimates will vary somewhat as new data become available.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3417

The 2020-21 Budget: CalWORKs Child Care Outlook

Nov 21, 2019 - The second change was to annually update the data used to calculate the SMI. Prior to this change, the state was using an SMI based on 2007 data. The effect of these two changes is that families currently are eligible to receive subsidized child care if their income is at or below 85  percent of the 2017 SMI —$69,620 for a family of three (compared to $42,216 under the previous policies).
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4115