Introduction [We aim] to lighten the burdens of children, to set their feet upon surer paths to health and well-being and happiness. . . . Let no one believe that these are questions which should not stir a nation; that they are below the dignity of statesmen or governments. If we could have but one generation of properly born, trained, educated, and healthy children, a thousand other problems of government would vanish. —President Herbert Hoover, 1930 Address to the White House Conference on Child Health and Protection
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ince 1935, the federal government has supported early childhood care and education for poor children to promote young children’s healthy development and give them a fair opportunity to succeed in life. Informed by recent advances in brain science, our understanding of the lifelong importance of children’s earliest years has never been greater. Yet while the nurture and education of children from birth through age four is increasingly recognized as a crucial policy area, federal early childhood policy is in urgent need of reform. Today’s federal early care and education policies are fragmented, inefficient, and unnecessarily complex. An outsider surveying the federal policy landscape encounters a daunting alphabet soup of disparate, uncoordinated federal funding streams: Head Start, Early Head Start, CCDF, TANF, IDEA, MIECHV, ESEA, RTTELC, and EHS-CCP, among others. Head Start, along with Early Head Start for infants and toddlers, is the largest and most visible federal preschool program. The Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) are also major funding streams, providing child care for poor and low-income working families. The Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) offers funding for preschool children with diagnosed
learning disabilities. The Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program (MIECHV) funds 16 different home-visiting programs for children under five. Advocates are currently pushing for a bigger early childhood component to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Over the last several years, the Obama administration has added Race to the TopEarly Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC), Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships (EHS-CCP), and Preschool Development Grants to this unwieldy mix.1 Each of these programs has its own administration, rules, standards, monitoring requirements, and accountability frameworks. Further, the quality of children’s experiences often varies greatly depending on which funding stream they are attached to. A series of US General Accountability Office (GAO) reports over the last 20 years reflect this persistent problem: Early Childhood Programs: Multiple Programs and Overlapping Target Groups published in 1994, Early Education and Care: Overlap Indicates Need to Assess Crosscutting Programs in 2000, and Early Learning and Child Care: Federal Funds Support Multiple Programs with Similar Goals in 2014.2 At the state and local levels, integrating these multiple federal funding streams with growing city- and state-funded early childhood programs ranges from 3
