UK to lead statewide kindergarten readiness pilot

LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 10, 2026) — A new statewide initiative led by the University of Kentucky aims to better understand how to help more children enter kindergarten ready to succeed.

Under House Bill 6, passed by the Kentucky General Assembly in the 2026 Regular Session, UK is establishing the Kentucky Kindergarten Readiness Performance-Based Child Care Incentive Pilot Program, a pilot program to evaluate whether performance-based financial incentives for eligible parents and childcare providers improve kindergarten readiness outcomes.

"The big goal of early childhood education is helping more children arrive at kindergarten ready to learn and succeed,” said Sen. Danny Carroll, who sponsored the kindergarten readiness portion of the legislation. “This pilot allows Kentucky to study an innovative, outcomes-focused approach and to ask an important question: What strategies are most effective at preparing children for the next step?”

The pilot program will be led by Collin Shepley, Ph.D., an associate professor in the UK College of Education who studies early childhood education and early intervention systems.

As the project gets underway, Shepley will assemble a workgroup of researchers and other stakeholders to develop a way to reliably measure whether performance-based incentives can help increase the number of children entering kindergarten ready to learn.

Shepley said the process will be complex, partly due to the many pathways children take before entering kindergarten. A child may attend a licensed childcare center, participate in Head Start or state-funded preschool, receive care in a home-based childcare program, stay home with a caregiver or experience a combination of those settings before arriving in a kindergarten classroom.

“Our job at UK is to make sure that we design the study in such a way that it considers all the nuances, braiding of funding streams and variations across settings that exist in early care and education,” Shepley said.

The pilot program is expected to bring together experts from across disciplines to ensure the study reflects the complexity of the early childhood landscape. Shepley said the workgroup will include different types of expertise, including those who understand causal research design, are familiar with Kentucky’s early care and education system and who are committed to following the evidence so that the project produces reliable findings for Kentucky families, early care and education professionals and policymakers.

Shepley said one of the challenges facing the early childhood system is the cost of care for both providers and families.

“If we look at the studies conducted to determine reimbursement rates for centers across the state, the only centers that actually break even at the end of their fiscal year are those with huge enrollment numbers,” Shepley said.

The pilot program aims to explore whether performance-based funding could provide a new way to support both families and providers while improving outcomes for children.

UK College of Education Dean Nick Pace, Ed.D., said the project reflects the college’s commitment to connecting research with real-world challenges.

“Kindergarten success is a key part of a child’s educational journey,” Pace said. “We are eager to collaborate to provide Kentucky communities, early childhood education providers and policy makers with information on how we might best support children’s readiness. Generating knowledge that supports children as they start school is an important part of our mission to serve and strengthen the Commonwealth.” 

For Shepley, the effort is also about recognizing the work that often happens behind the scenes. Long before a child arrives at school ready to learn, early childhood educators and families are helping children navigate behavioral challenges and developmental milestones.

When those efforts are successful, the result may be a child who is confident and prepared for kindergarten. However, the work that made that outcome possible is not always visible, Shepley said.

“This project provides an opportunity for the folks who are doing good quality work in raising and caring for children to be financially recognized,” he said.

Although the pilot will examine financial incentives, Shepley said supporting children and families requires more than funding alone. UK researchers plan to develop and curate supports that help families engage with their children’s development in ways that fit into their daily lives.

“A big part of this is recognizing that, for many caregivers, raising a child is either a second full-time job or a job that doesn’t end at 5 p.m.,” Shepley said. “Parents are tired when they get home from work or from simply caring for their child throughout the day. We can’t expect parents to spend every second with their child stressing about development and kindergarten readiness. They need time to rest and reenergize because no one is a good parent when they are exhausted.”

Instead, the team hopes to build resources around activities families already enjoy doing together.

The goal for researchers at the conclusion of the pilot is to provide Kentucky families, early childhood professionals and policymakers with reliable data about whether performance-based incentives increase kindergarten readiness and what it would take to implement such a model statewide.

“If we do this right, we will be able to not only reliably isolate and understand the effects, or noneffects, of performance-based incentives, but we will have very precise data about the costs required to implement this at scale for the Commonwealth,” Shepley said.

Caroll agreed. “I believe parents and child care providers play a critical role in a child's learning development, and this pilot recognizes that partnership while allowing us to gather meaningful data on what works. Rather than relying on assumptions, we can measure results, learn from the experience and use that information to guide future decisions,” he said.

The initiative illustrates the importance of collaboration and innovation to address needs in Kentucky, Carroll noted.

“I'm grateful to my legislative colleagues for supporting this effort and for putting forward the funding necessary to see it through. I also appreciate the University of Kentucky’s leadership and look forward to seeing what we learn,” Carroll said. “If we can identify approaches that help more children enter school prepared for success and support Kentucky’s early childhood education sector, that is a win for students, families, educators and the Commonwealth."