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Cuts That Hurt Kids

 

Late Friday night, May 2nd, the U.S. government shut down the PBS Kids Ready to Learn Grant effective immediately. This decision is bad for kids and bad for families. Given the downstream costs when children are less well prepared for early schooling, long term it is also bad for the budget.

 

Only a bipartisan outcry has a chance of turning this decision around. Let’s unite on this one!

 

PBS Kids Ready to Learn funds the development of new shows, video games, and other materials for children from ages 2 to 8.

 

Why should you care about the elimination of the Ready to Learn Grant?

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  • All PBS Kids content is required to be developmentally appropriate and educational. This is not true of any competitor media brands. They listen to developmental and educational psychologists like me and put children’s learning first.

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  • PBS KIDS does not advertise. Content is not designed to sell products or to get children watching addictively.

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  • PBS KIDS reaches millions of children every day. Google Analytics reports 345 million monthly streams across PBS KIDS’ digital platforms.

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  • PBS KIDS has been proven to accelerate learning, which reduces education costs later. A study of 45 evaluations of Ready to Learn children’s television programs involving nearly 25,000 children found substantial positive effects on vocabulary and early reading skills, for example.

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  • PBS KIDS helps families help their children. In one study, for example, families given tablets with a PBS Kids program targeting informational reading and writing learned more than families given tablets without that content.

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  • Grants to PBS KIDS Ready to Learn support the development of new and needed content, such as Lyla in the Loop. Ready to Learn also refreshes classic shows based on new insights from research.

 

Wherever you stand on the political spectrum, please stand up for quality children’s media.

 

Please let our elected officials know that this is work worth funding and call on them to reinstate funding for PBS Kids Ready to Learn!

© 2025 Nell K. Duke

Early Literacy Research, Policy, & Practice

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Land Acknowledgement: I acknowledge that land on which I live and work is the ancestral homeland of the Anishinaabeg and Wyandot peoples. I acknowledge that my employers, my family, and I benefit daily from past exploitation of and genocide against these peoples. I acknowledge that peoples of these communities have long resisted and continue to resist their exploitation. I acknowledge that I have a responsibility to work toward just treatment of all peoples.

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