Licensing is the first line of protection for children in out-of-family child care settings in the United States. The highest level of program quality assurance available to most parents is through accreditation systems, which are intended to identify high quality programs. This research and policy brief, a quarterly synthesis of issues addressed…

Discusses four major U.S. early childhood programs, supported and regulated by various levels of government, in regard to whether education and care of children prior to kindergarten should be extension of education system or separate function of society. Discusses child care, services for children with disabilities, Head Start, and other…

The development, care, and education of children from birth to age 5 has been the focus of rapidly increasing public interest, and numerous early childhood public policy initiatives have focused attention on a major problem of coordination and collaboration of services for young children. Four segments of services for young children--(1) child…