Gov. Tim Walz raised eyebrows when he said “… And then in Minnesota, we have universal pre-K for everyone, so students come ready to do what they need to do,” in front of a Texas audience on Nov. 13. Many in the Black community disagree, saying the state’s early-learning system is far from universal, and far from equitable.
Danielle Tucker, an early-childhood educator who owns ProVisionary, an Afrocentric child care center in North Minneapolis, said that even if universal Pre-K eventually exists on paper, it still won’t match the realities facing Black children or the needs of Black families.
Tucker argues that the state’s focus on expanding free Pre-K for four-year-olds misses a deeper opportunity: providing universal or meaningfully subsidized childcare beginning at infancy, which she says would do far more to close Minnesota’s persistent racial achievement gap.
Minnesota currently ranks 37th in the nation for preschool enrollment, serving just 11% of four-year-olds and 1% of three-year-olds in state-funded programs. The Legislature approved an additional 5,200 voluntary Pre-K seats by 2026, but the state remains far from universal access. The gaps are even wider for Black families, according to public school data.
Child care in Minnesota remains among the most expensive in the country, costing $12,000 to $15,000 a year per child, far out of reach for many working families.
Walz’s proposed expansion may help some parents save a year of child care costs, but Tucker says it has unintended consequences for independent providers and does little to prepare Black children in culturally appropriate ways.
“Universal Pre-K actually takes kids away from us a year earlier,” Tucker said. “Before, a child would stay with me from infancy to age five. Now, at four, they leave for free Pre-K. That’s not necessarily better for the child, and it hurts the sustainability of small providers like mine.”
“By the time a child is four, inequities are already baked in. Families who can’t afford child care from infancy are at the biggest disadvantage. If we want to close the gap, we need to start before age four by making child care affordable.”
She said the state is using free Pre-K to solve a different problem, children arriving in kindergarten unprepared because families can’t afford early learning programs. But school-based Pre-K, she argues, is not designed to meet the developmental, cultural, or emotional needs of many Black four-year-olds.
“A four-year-old in a big public school, with kids up to age 11 or 12, is not always the best environment,” she said. “Early childhood educators like me are trained specifically for this age group. We could prepare them better if the funding came to us.”
Tucker said cultural affirmation and identity-building in early childhood, something missing in most public programs, are essential. Public schools, she said, are already failing to reflect Black children’s lived experiences.
“My third grader had 20 stories this year. Only one featured a Black child, and that story was about segregation.”
An elementary school teacher who works in the South but has ties to Minnesota agreed that the issue is bigger than Pre-K. “Child care and Pre-K are two different worlds,” he said. “Universal child care would let families work and survive.” He argued that subsidized child care would ease financial strain, reduce the need for parents to work multiple jobs, and give families more time to build routines and support learning at home.
Minnesota’s Black-white achievement gap remains among the worst in the nation. A Minnesota Reformer analysis found that fewer than one in eight school districts have returned to pre-pandemic reading or math proficiency levels, with Black students facing the steepest barriers.
“By the time a child is four, inequities are already baked in,” Tucker said. “Families who can’t afford child care from infancy are at the biggest disadvantage. If we want to close the gap, we need to start before age four by making child care affordable.”
Tucker also emphasized that Black-led early childhood programs provide cultural grounding that public systems cannot replicate. “Most public school teachers are not Black,” she said. “They don’t share the cultural identity, don’t understand the family structures, [and] don’t always live in the communities. They’re good people, but they’re not equipped to give Black children the cultural foundation they need.”
Both Tucker and the teacher said the state should prioritize scholarships, direct funding for child care centers, and free or low-cost commercial space for Black providers to expand. “We could serve more kids if we had the funding public schools get,” Tucker said. “We could offer real early childhood education, not just a seat in a classroom.”
They also say Black community voices must be centered in early-learning policy. “Families need to be at the Capitol, but many don’t have the time or the political experience,” Tucker said. She pointed to organizations like the Northside Achievement Zone as potential leaders in pushing for systemic change.
Asked what she would tell the governor and state legislators, Tucker didn’t hesitate: “If Minnesota wants Black kids to succeed, start earlier. Invest in culturally affirming child care. Put resources where they’ll make the biggest difference.”
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