Defunding PBS Will Shrink Learning Opportunities for Young Children

Fifty-six years ago today, Fred Rogers testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications to ask them to maintain $20 million in funding for public broadcasting. Rogers, as most will know, was the man behind Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, the television show aimed at supporting young children’s social emotional development. He explained that much of his work focused on helping children understand that they are unique, they are cared for, and that they can manage their feelings. He concluded his testimony by reciting a song he had written to help children deal with feelings of anger. Senator John Pastore was charmed. “I think it’s wonderful. I think it’s wonderful,” he repeated. “ Looks like you just earned the $20 million.” 

It’s difficult to imagine a similar scene playing out now. At a March hearing Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R, GA-14) called for defunding two mainstays of public media: PBS and NPR. She lobbed a series of accusations against public media, for example, that “the content that is being put out through these state-sponsored outlets is so radical it is brainwashing…American children with un-American, anti-family, pro-crime, fake news.”  Greene’s comments distort the purpose of public media, but seem to have convinced President Trump, who signed an executive order directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to cease federal funding for PBS and NPR. By politicizing public media, the current presidential administration is diminishing and dismantling a trusted and free educational resource that has positively impacted young children’s learning and development.

Decades of research prove that the educational shows that air on PBS, such as Sesame Street, Super Why, Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, and Peg + Cat, have a measurable impact on young children’s early literacy and numeracy skills and social emotional development. 

Sesame Street, which first aired in 1969, was created to help low-income preschool children learn foundational skills to help get them ready for school. Research has always been an integral part of the show’s development process. As Joan Ganz Cooney, who created the show, wrote in the introduction to the book G is for Growing: Thirty Years of Research on Sesame Street, the creators were constantly testing the material for “appeal and comprehension.” Content would be changed or removed based on their findings. Producers and researchers were also interested in knowing whether children actually learned from the show. 

A 1999 review of research on Sesame Street highlights that children who frequently watched the show performed better than children who watched it less on standardized tests of word-letter knowledge, mathematics, vocabulary and school readiness. Other studies summarized in the review found that children who watched the show exhibited a range of what researchers call “pro-social” behaviors, such as sharing with their peers and taking turns. In addition, adolescents who watched Sesame Street as children had higher math and science grades and spent more time reading books for fun than their peers who did not watch the show.

But Sesame Street has not just benefitted children in the U.S.; the program has a global reach. A 2013 meta analysis of 21 international studies (from 15 countries outside of the US) found that children learned literacy and numeracy and also about science and the environment, health and safety, and their own culture. The authors of the 2013 analysis conclude that “Sesame Street is an enduring example of a scalable and effective early childhood educational intervention.” 

This impactful international work is now at risk due to the loss of grant funding from USAID, one of the first agencies to be dismantled by the Department of Government Efficiency. 

Sesame Workshop’s model of using research to inform the design and development of the show and to understand its impact on children’s learning set a foundation for the shows that followed. Today, many of the shows featured on PBS are rooted in research and apply findings from the  learning sciences to ensure that their content and structure are developmentally appropriate. Programs such as Super Why, Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, Peg + Cat, and Molly of Denali provide evidence of the efficacy of this approach. Most of these programs were developed with the support of Ready to Learn grants from the US Department of Education that have the broad aim of improving school readiness and require that programs be available on public broadcasting stations. [1]

Super Why was designed to support early literacy skills (e.g., alphabet knowledge, vocabulary, story structure)  for children ages 3-6. A 2015 study by children’s media researcher Deborah (Linebarger) Nichols found that children who watched the show knew more letters and letter sounds and had stronger phonological and phonemic awareness than those in the control group after 8 weeks. Molly of Denali focuses on teaching children how to use informational text to answer real-world questions. In 2021, researchers from EDC and SRI conducted two studies of 263 first graders to learn more about how the show impacted their problem solving skills. Over a 9-week period some of the children interacted with Molly of Denali videos, games, and activities via a preloaded tablet, while others had a tablet that did not have these resources and was blocked from PBS Kids altogether. Their results showed that children who interacted with the show’s resources and content saw improvements in their ability to use informational text to solve a real-world problem. These findings underscore the role that developmentally appropriate digital media can play in developing the foundational skills young children need to learn in order to read and comprehend text. 

PBS has also featured educational programs designed to support early numeracy skills and the development of children’s social and emotional skills. In Peg + Cat  the show’s protagonist (Peg) used math and teamwork to help solve a problem such as how to get 100 runaway chickens back into their coop. Similar to the research described above, a team from EDC and SRI provided children with a curated set of resources via a dedicated website and devices (e.g., tablet and laptop). They set out to answer multiple research questions, including whether children who interacted with the show’s resources see improvements in their mathematical skills and what role parents and caregivers play in supporting their child’s use of and learning from these resources. Findings revealed that children who engaged with the materials saw significant growth in their mathematical skills and parents and caregivers felt more comfortable in supporting their child’s math learning. Including a focus on the role of parents is important given other research demonstrating how caregivers can facilitate children’s learning from educational media.

These positive impacts are being ignored by Greene and Republican colleagues who seek to end funding for public media. Part of their argument rests on the fact that the internet has made information more accessible and that there is now a proliferation of media sources that make public media unnecessary. What this argument overlooks is that the internet, along with streaming services and satellite radio, is not free; having access at home comes with a monthly bill. And while YouTube is full of child-directed content, parents do not have a way to discern quality or whether the content is developmentally appropriate and designed to promote learning. 

Eliminating federal funding for public media will only add to the list of anti-child actions the current administration has taken. In its first 100 days, the Trump administration has delayed funding and threatened to eliminate Head Start, undercut the role of vaccines even in the face of a measles outbreak, decimated staffing at the Department of Health and Human Services that support child care programs, foster care and direct-aid to vulnerable families, dismantled a committee that advises on infant screening, weakened civil rights enforcement and cut legal support for unaccompanied minors. Taken together, these actions will have a compounding effect that will negatively impact children and families for years to come.

[1] The Ready to Learn grant program was terminated on May 2, 2025. 

This blog post was updated at 9:45am on May 2, 2025 to include a link to the executive order directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to cease federal funding for NPR and PBS.

This blog post was updated at 10:10am on May 12, 2025 to include information about the termination of the Ready to Learn Grant program.