As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary this year, Oklahoma has 3 cities among the largest 250 in the nation.
For two decades, Oklahoma has been cited in national reporting as the universal-pre-K success story of the American South: 66 percent of the state's 4-year-olds enrolled in publicly funded pre-K, the third-highest reach in the country, meeting nine of ten NIEER quality benchmarks. The Tulsa program, anchored by the George Kaiser Family Foundation, is a genuine model. The rest of Oklahoma's childcare system is not. Just 6 percent of 3-year-olds are reached; the licensed-slot supply gap stands at 34.2 percent; the median early educator outside the public-school pre-K workforce earns $12.60 an hour, or 60.8 percent of a single-adult living wage. The result is a 47/100 Strained ranking, 37th of 50. The dimensions explain why.
Key highlights & actionable takeaways
- Strained (47/100), 37th nationally — pulled down by supply and family strain despite one of America's most ambitious universal pre-K systems.
- Pre-K reaches 66 percent of 4-year-olds, third-highest in the country, and meets 9 of 10 NIEER benchmarks; just 6 percent of 3-year-olds are enrolled.
- Median early-educator pay is $12.60 an hour, 60.8 percent of the living wage; the licensed-slot gap is 34.2 percent.
Affordability — 72/100
Oklahoma families pay a forward-projected 2025 average of $11,349 a year for full-time infant center care — about 66 percent of the $17,163 national figure but the highest of the four states in this batch. Toddler and preschool care both run $9,541, and family child care home rates land at $8,545 for infants and $8,298 for toddlers.
The state's $63,603 median household income translates that infant figure into 17.8 percent of HHI — meaningfully heavier than Texas (15.6 percent) or Arkansas (15.7 percent), and only four points below the 21.9 percent national share. The 0.97 childcare-to-rent ratio means that in Oklahoma, a year of infant center care nearly equals a month of rent — a tight squeeze in a state where rent runs $980 a month and median incomes have not kept pace with center-care inflation since 2020. Oklahoma City and Tulsa families face the heaviest absolute prices; rural counties trend lower but lose what they save on price to thinner supply.
Supply — 35/100
Oklahoma counts roughly 181,350 children under 5 with potential care need against 119,150 licensed slots — a 34.2 percent statewide gap. The broader denominator of all under-5 children with working parents (308,719) makes that gap meaningfully larger in lived terms. The state operates 977 licensed establishments, or 3.95 per 1,000 kids under 5 — below the 4.21 national rate.
This is the dimension where Oklahoma's universal pre-K story collides with the rest of the childcare system. The state's 4-year-old slots are well-supplied through the Oklahoma Early Childhood Program, which is administered through public schools and absorbs much of the demand for that age cohort. The infant, toddler, and 3-year-old market — which sits outside the public school system and depends on the licensed center and family-child-care market — runs persistently undersupplied. Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and Norman all post supply scores in the 30s and 40s at the city level, and rural areas across western and southeastern Oklahoma run thinner still.
Workforce — 31/100
Oklahoma's median early-educator wage of $12.60 an hour translates to $26,210 annually for full-time work, against a $20.73 single-adult living wage — a 60.8 percent ratio that runs slightly below the 62.6 percent national benchmark. The state employs 9,550 workers in the SOC 39-9011 occupation.
The dimension picture deteriorates inside the major metros. Oklahoma City and Norman both post worker-wage-to-living-wage ratios of 53.7 percent. Tulsa runs 61.5 percent. The state's universal pre-K teachers, who hold bachelor's degrees and are paid on public school salary scales, sit well above this floor — but they are excluded from the SOC 39-9011 measurement. The childcare workers in licensed centers and family child care homes who serve infants, toddlers, and 3-year-olds earn the wages above, and turnover at those programs is the single most consistent operator complaint in the state. The dimension score reflects a labor market that is structurally underpriced for the work and the local cost of living.
Family strain — 24.5/100
Mothers of children under 6 in Oklahoma participate in the labor force at 63.49 percent, nearly five points below the 68.21 percent national rate and the lowest figure in this four-state batch alongside Texas. Sixty-four percent of children under 6 live in households with all parents working, and 33.35 percent of households with children are single-parent — slightly above the national 31.81 percent figure.
The 24.5 family-strain score — the lowest dimension reading in this batch — reflects a compound: high single-parent share, mothers' LFP suppressed below the national rate, and a working-family share of children under 6 that is itself low. Oklahoma is a state where a meaningful share of mothers have decided that the math of paid work plus childcare does not pencil, and the dimension score quantifies the consequence.
Policy support — 52.3/100
This is Oklahoma's strongest dimension and the chapter most often miscovered in national childcare reporting. The state's Oklahoma Early Childhood Program enrolls 66 percent of 4-year-olds in publicly funded pre-K — among the highest reach in the country — and meets 9 of 10 NIEER quality benchmarks. Tulsa Public Schools' partnership with the George Kaiser Family Foundation has anchored the program's national reputation since the early 2000s. Per-child spending is $5,133.
The numbers have always been more layered than the headlines. Three-year-old enrollment is just 6 percent — Oklahoma chose breadth at age 4 over depth across both ages. CCDF subsidy reaches 15.8 percent of eligible children, serving about 29,100 kids per month, and Head Start enrolls 12,595 (3,507 in Early Head Start). The state has no paid family or medical leave program.
The composite is a state that does one thing — universal high-quality 4-year-old pre-K — about as well as anywhere in the country, while leaving the infant, toddler, 3-year-old, and parental leave pieces of the system to a thin, low-paid, undersupplied market. The Tulsa story matters here because it is so frequently cited as a national model: the universal pre-K program is a model, in its narrow domain. The childcare system that surrounds it is not. National policy reporters routinely conflate the two, and the index's dimension scores are designed to make that distinction visible.
City spotlight
Top performer. Oklahoma City (44/100, Strained, #1 in state, ranked 178th nationally) leads the state's measured cities on relative balance — affordability of 62.2, supply of 44.1, family strain of 44.4 — even as its 4.2 workforce score sits among the lowest in the country. Infant care here costs 18.7 percent of household income.
Bottom performers. Tulsa (40/100, Strained, #3 in state, ranked 210th nationally) posts the harder numbers: 45.3 affordability, with infant center fees at 21.3 percent of household income, and a 25.3 family-strain score. Tulsa's national reputation rests on its pre-K system, but the broader childcare market under it strains in the same ways the state-level numbers describe. Norman (42/100, #2 in state) sits in between — better workforce visibility than Tulsa on paper, weaker affordability than Oklahoma City.
The state has only three cities in the index's 250-city set; the rural and suburban gap-counties across Oklahoma are not separately measured but inherit the state-level supply and policy scores in the methodology.
In-home care in Oklahoma
In-home care in Oklahoma is concentrated in the Nichols Hills, Edmond, and downtown Oklahoma City corridor and in the Brookside and Maple Ridge neighborhoods of Tulsa. Beverly Research's metro-level intake data shows full-time live-out nanny rates in those areas running $20-28 an hour — among the lower bands in the country, but still annualizing above $40,000 for a full-time hire, which puts a private nanny well above center care for one child here.
The relevant substitute in Oklahoma is the public pre-K system itself: the state's 66-percent 4-year-old enrollment rate functionally relieves nanny demand for the year before kindergarten, leaving the in-home market to serve infants, toddlers, and the small 3-year-old cohort not absorbed by public pre-K. Nanny shares between two families occur in both metros but at modest scale. The state's relatively cheap underlying labor market means experienced nannies in Oklahoma are often recruited away from licensed centers — the same workforce-bleed dynamic visible in Louisiana — which puts further downward pressure on center supply at exactly the ages where supply is already tightest. Au pair placements remain rare statewide; the J-1 program's logistical demands fit better in larger metros with established host-family networks.
Methodology: The the score is a 0-100 composite score across five dimensions — Affordability (30 pts), Supply (25 pts), Workforce Health (15 pts), Family Strain (15 pts), and Policy Support (15 pts). State scores roll up county-level price and supply data to a population-weighted average. Full methodology and data sources: beverly.io/research/methodology.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2019-2023 5-year estimates; U.S. Department of Labor Women's Bureau National Database of Childcare Prices (2018 base, 2023 DOL-projected, 2025 forward-projected); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS (May 2024) and QCEW NAICS 624410 (2024); Bipartisan Policy Center 2026 state childcare data PDFs; Buffett Early Childhood Institute / Child Care Aware childcaregap.org (Sept 2025); NIEER State of Preschool Yearbook 2024; HHS ACF CCDF FY2023; National Partnership for Women & Families (March 2026); EPI Family Budget Calculator (2024).