Groundwork Ohio Releases 2025 Early Childhood Dashboard: A Call for Bold Investments and Parent-Led Solution | Groundwork Ohio

Columbus, OH – Groundwork Ohio has released its 2025 Early Childhood Dashboard, a data-driven resource providing updated insights into the well-being of Ohio’s youngest children and their families. Building on the 2023 Dashboard, this edition highlights persistent and growing needs despite recent investments and calls for bold, scalable solutions that respond to the needs of parents.

“Despite efforts to improve outcomes for young children, Ohio is not making progress at the scale needed,” said Lynanne Gutierrez, President & CEO, Groundwork Ohio. “We must ask: What can Ohio do differently? The answer is clear—invest boldly in proven solutions and listen to parents to drive meaningful change.”

Key Learnings from the 2025 Early Childhood Dashboard:

• Ohio’s Youngest Children Face Persistent and Growing Challenges that Require Bold Investments: Despite well-intentioned policy change over the past few years, Ohio has not achieved meaningful population-level change in key early childhood outcomes including, but not limited to, infant mortality and kindergarten readiness. The state must commit to bold goals matched with priority investments in proven strategies ensuring they reach kids families who need them the most. 
  
  – One promising step is Governor DeWine’s proposed child tax credit, which would invest $890 million of new revenue over the biennium back into the pockets of working families with young children—the single largest proposed investment in young children under his leadership. This level of investment meets the scale of the challenge, not just the margins. This proposal coupled with plans to expand access to affordable child care, the driving barrier to work for parents of young children, will make work pay and allow families to provide for their children.

• Parents Know What Works—It’s Time to Listen: Parents are the experts in their own experiences, and their voices must drive policy solutions. 
  
  – Groundwork Ohio has engaged working parents of young children through story collection, polling, surveys, listening sessions, and data analysis as highlighted in the 2025 Dashboard. Their top concern: financial security and meeting basic needs. Many are just getting by, and lack of affordable child care remains a major barrier to work and financial stability. Investing in child tax credits and child care directly addresses these concerns, removing barriers to work and ensuring families can thrive. 
  
  – Similarly, while Ohio has yet to see significant statewide progress in reducing infant mortality, local efforts show success. Cradle Cincinnati, for example, has cut Hamilton County’s overall infant mortality rate in half from 10.2 deaths per thousand down to 5.5 deaths, the national average, and the Black rate by nearly 50%, narrowing the racial gap by centering solutions around moms’ experiences. Scaling this type of collaborative, parent-driven model is key to meaningful change.

“As Ohio policymakers consider these findings, the 2025 Early Childhood Dashboard serves as a call to action to implement bold, parent-driven policies that will create lasting change for young children and their families”, said Lynanne Gutierrez, Groundwork Ohio’s President & CEO.

VIEW THE FULL 2025 EARLY CHILDHOOD DASHBOARD

About Groundwork Ohio

Groundwork Ohio is a nonpartisan public-policy research and advocacy organization that champions high-quality early learning and healthy development strategies from the prenatal period to age 5, that lay a strong foundation for Ohio kids, families, and communities. We advance quality early childhood systems in Ohio by engaging, educating, and mobilizing diverse stakeholders and strategic partners to promote data-driven and evidence-based early childhood policies.