Special Report

Last fall and again in the spring, the government administered a standardized literacy and math test to all children in the Head Start program. It’s being given again this year. Four-year-olds are asked to count objects, name alphabet letters and simple geometrical shapes, understand directions, characterize facial expressions, and identify animals, body parts, and other […]

Forty years ago, as Marian Wright Edelman and her fellow pioneers at the Child Development Group of Mississippi were organizing sharecroppers, fending off Jim Crow, and cobbling together a model for the nation’s Head Start program, Betty Hart and Todd Risley were up in Kansas City working on an early childhood program of their own. […]

An important reason why quality early education and care is not universally available in America is because the public is not demanding it. Many of the people most affected by current supports for young children are not engaged in the conversation about it, and some natural allies feel ignored. Many parents scramble for care when […]

Lilliana Diaz has operated a child-care business in her Lowell, Massachusetts, home for more than four years. Often rising before dawn and putting in 10-hour days, she guides eight toddlers through a busy schedule of reading, playtime, meals, and more. To get to this point, Diaz completed a 63-hour training course, then earned a Childhood […]

Education for all is a defining value of our country, and living up to it takes more than lip service. It takes dedication, hard work, and financial commitment. It means working in partnerships to create the best federal, state, and local policies to increase educational opportunities for all. It also means starting early. States across […]

To judge from public debates on everything from marriage promotion to educational standards, the United States is exceptionally concerned with the well-being of children. But as American families struggle to balance work and family demands, our government is doing little to help. Parents in countries such as Sweden and France also balance work and family […]

The movement to universalize preschool education is not new. Americans have been attempting to get public support for educating our youngest children for more than 150 years. Why has it taken so long? What are the obstacles? And what do past successes suggest about promising strategies for the future? In 1830, a petition to formally […]

Who would have thought a 40-year-old program that has helped millions of our nation’s poorest preschoolers get a head start could come under attack? Despite its many successes, recorded by researchers and lived by families, Head Start’s future is now uncertain as policy-makers debate a Bush-administration proposal that could effectively dismantle the cherished program. This […]

What would happen if the best minds in the country concluded that investments in early-childhood development are necessary and cost-effective? That the early years present an opportunity, unequaled later in life, to enhance inborn potential and avert harm? What if they could identify the “active ingredients” of healthy psychological development, and how to enhance these […]

U.S. leadership was critical in building the global human-rights agenda from the ground up, beginning with the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. More than half a century later, that agenda and the movement it inspired are in need of renewed U.S. leadership at every level, from grass-roots activism to government policy and actions, nationally […]