Access to high-quality early care and education (ECE) supports healthy child development, accelerates academic achievement, reduces educational inequality, and catalyzes economic growth. The benefits of ECE are even greater among economically disadvantaged children, children with disabilities, and multilingual learners. However, despite these well-established benefits, public investment in ECE remains far below the level young children, families, and ECE providers need. One area of particular interest for many states is public funding for pre-K programs, where K-12 and ECE intersect. Direct state investment in pre-K has more than doubled in the past 20 years, from about $5 billion in 2003 to more than $11.7 billion in 2023.4 But there is plenty of room for publicly funded pre-K to grow: While 65% of five-year-olds attended public kindergarten in 2022, just 27% of all three- and four-year-olds attended public pre-K programs in 2022. This brief examines state funding mechanisms for pre-K programs and provides an overview of the approaches and considerations that states can take to fund and expand access to high-quality pre-K. It serves as an introduction for advocates and state policymakers with an interest in supporting ECE via state funding policy.