More than a third—2.8 million—of the nation’s 3- and 4-year-old children were from low-income families in 1990, a growth of 17 percent since 1980. An increase in the number of infants and toddlers living in such families during the same period suggests that this trend will continue. These disadvantaged children often live in environments that undermine their development and impair their ability to benefit from elementary school.Already lagging behind their peers when they enter school, many of these children fail to catch up. Consequently, disadvantaged children, more than other children, are placed in special education classes, repeat one or more grades, or drop out before completing high school. A recent Carnegie Corporation report characterizes the condition of some of the nation’s youngest children, including the disadvantaged, as a “quiet crisis.” The report documents the importance of environmental factors on children’s development and concludes that “the quality of young children’s environment and social experience has a decisive, long-lasting impact on their well-being and ability to learn.” According to the report, less than half of the nation’s youngest children receive adequate cognitive stimulation, such as being read to by their parents. To prepare for school, disadvantaged children can benefit from programs that offer specific features of child development services, promote parent services, and provide adequate health care and nutrition services. Such services may be found in early childhood centers, such as preschools, nursery schools, child care centers, or early learning centers. Such services also may be found in other settings, including family child care, or provided by parents themselves. If disadvantaged children do not receive these services, their future success in both school and life may be jeopardized. The Congress’ inclusion of a school readiness goal as part of the 1994 Goals 2000: Educate America Act suggests the need for and importance of helping young children prepare for school. The act establishes eight national education goals, the first of which states that “By the year 2000, all children in America will start school ready to learn.” The goal also articulates the fundamental elements needed to foster the development of all children, including the disadvantaged, and to prepare them for school. These elements include high-quality, developmentally appropriatepreschool programs (in this report, centers), parents who are involved in their child’s learning, and adequate health and nutrition services. However, accomplishing this goal may become an elusive pursuit as schools receive a continuing stream of disadvantaged children whose early experiences do not include these fundamental elements needed to prepare them for school. The Congress has also enacted other legislation that addresses the need for preparing children for school: the Head Start Amendments Act of 1994, a part of the Human Services Amendments of 1994, P.L. 103-252; and the Improving America’s Schools Act, P.L. 103-382, which amended the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA). The Head Start Amendments of 1994 reauthorized and expanded Head Start, a program that provides some disadvantaged children—mostly those who are categorized as poor—with all services needed to prepare for school. The Improving America’s Schools Act provides, among other educational programs, early childhood services in some schools with large numbers of disadvantaged children. The provision of early childhood services is also likely to be a key issue in the debate over welfare reform. Welfare reforms may result in an increased demand for child care should those parents who are unemployed and receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) be required to participate in education or employment training programs. To be prepared for school, all children need early childhood experiences that foster their physical, emotional, social, and cognitive development. Children also need relationships with adults who are responsive to their needs and who foster their development, parental guidance and support, health care to maintain physical well-being or correct medical problems, and nutritious diets. However, the early childhood experiences of many disadvantaged children do not include these experiences. Family income is an important predictor of children’s success or failure in school; disadvantaged children are more likely to experience difficulties. Their early childhood experiences often hinder their development, leaving them unprepared for school. Recent research on infants and toddlers provides compelling evidence of the environmental deficits—such as too little cognitive stimulation and inadequate health care—that undermine disadvantaged children’s development. It also documents the effects of these deficits on children’s school performance and later lives. A 1991 study of children whose families were recipients of AFDC, the federal welfare assistance program, found that the conditions under which the nation’s most disadvantaged children live are detrimental to these children’s development and undermine their chances for success in school. Researchers found that children who were from families receiving AFDC were twice as likely as children of more economically advantaged families to do poorly in school, repeat a grade, and become classroom disciplinary problems. Two-thirds of these children lived in home environments that did not stimulate their cognitive growth and where they received insufficient emotional support from their parents. The study revealed similar findings for the children of low-income families that were not receiving AFDC. Disadvantaged children have less access to health care and nutrition, especially preventative health care, than children whose families have higher incomes. The same 1991 study of AFDC children found that children from low-income families were less likely to have visited a doctor within the last year than children in families with higher incomes. Twenty-one percent of the children in low-income families had not visited a doctor within the last year compared with 14 percent of children in families with higher incomes. Also, children in low-income families were more likely to receive care in a hospital emergency room, which is not an adequate source of preventative care. Forty percent of the children in low-income families—compared with 7 percent of children in families with higher incomes—received regular care through a hospital emergency room or clinic. Poor health can negatively affect children’s ability to perform well in school. Other factors associated with low-income families—low parent educational attainment, single-parenting, and linguistic isolation—also increase children’s risk of doing poorly in school. None of these factors, however, are insurmountable. Research on early childhood development validates the belief that children can be helped to prepare for school. Many researchers have found that disadvantaged children can overcome the environmental deficits they have experienced and become better prepared for school. One way disadvantaged children can make these gains is by attending early childhood centers that provide services important to promoting school preparedness. For example, the Perry Preschool Project, a longitudinal study of the effects of disadvantaged children’s participation in a high-quality preschool, found significant differences between children who participated in the preschool program and those who did not. Participating children, compared with nonparticipating ones, had significantly lower rates of placement in special education classes, were less likely to repeat a grade, and tested higher on IQ tests on school entry. Other studies have also documented that attendance in high-quality early childhood centers have positive effects on children’s development and school achievement. However, the research, while generally positive, has documented that the benefits of such attention are not always long term. The extent to which these benefits are maintained appears to be influenced by other factors, such as the child’s experience as he or she makes the transition from an early childhood program to elementary school or the way in which the elementary school environment supports young children’s development. The federal government, as well as a majority of state governments, invests in different kinds of early childhood programs for disadvantaged children. The mission of some of these programs is to promote child development; the mission of other programs is to provide child care so that parents can work. Federal responsibility for administering these programs rests with the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Service (HHS). All of these programs fund early childhood centers that can affect the child’s development. Many of these programs, especially those for providing child care, also make funds available for other settings. For example, children may be cared for in family child care homes, where groups of children receive services in someone else’s home. (Detailed descriptions of all these programs appear in app. I.) Early childhood development programs are a key strategy in the federal government’s effort to help disadvantaged children improve their performance in school. Head Start, the federal government’s largest such program, is administered by HHS and provides funding directly to local grantees who, in turn, provide some disadvantaged children, mostly those who are categorized as poor, with a full range of early childhood services. That range includes, but is not limited to, child development, parent, and health and nutrition services. In order to serve more children and improve quality, the federal government has increased Head Start funding annually since 1989. In total, increased funding provided services for an additional 287,000 children from fiscal year 1990 through fiscal year 1993. Head Start’s funding was $3.3 billion in fiscal year 1994; the Congress increased the program’s appropriation to $3.5 billion for fiscal year 1995. Legislation reauthorizing Head Start calls for a study of the need for full-day, full-year Head Start programs; program guidance encourages centers to provide full-day programs rather than the usual half-day programs when there is a need among the families served by the center. Other federal programs also provide some early childhood services. For example, the 1994 amendments to ESEA provide funding from the Department of Education for child development programs that are operated by schools with high numbers of disadvantaged children. In school year 1992-93, Title I served 116,612 children in early childhood programs; data on the amount of money expended to provide these programs are unavailable. In addition, Education’s Even Start Family Literacy Program is another example of a program that provides early childhood development services to disadvantaged children.