This landmark 1994 report, released by the Carnegie Corporation in April 1994, provides research evidence on the "quiet crisis" that young children face in the U.S. It offers a comprehensive set of recommendations to meet young children's needs, including promoting responsible parenthood, ensuring good health care for all infants and toddlers, and guaranteeing quality child care choices.

Children in child care benefit from positive interactions with caregivers and good language stimulation—but interaction between parents and babies in the first three years is still one the most important predictors of cognitive development. For more details, read the report of a study conducted by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

This organization acts as a resource for parents and professionals who work with children aged 0 to 3. The site offers networking opportunties and resources including advice on choosing quality child care and information on brain development.

Mathematica looks at the impact Early Head Start programs are having on kids in low-income families.

The only national Latino organization that focuses exclusively on children, NLCI focuses on the healthy and complete development of Latino children. Be sure to visit the resource page.

This project of the Communications Consortium Media Center designs and implements strategic public education strategies aimed at creating the public will to expand both the supply and the quality of early care and education resources.

The Committee for Hispanic Children and Families offers child care training and referral services, youth services such as family counseling and after school care, and health education addressing AIDS/HIV, domestic violence prevention and education.

Overall, most kindergarten kids are improving their reading and math skills by a significant amount regardless of race, income, mother's educational attainment or other demographic measures. But, according to The Kindergarten Year, that doesn't mean that all kids are learning the same things at the same rate.

As policy makers and others debate government funding for pre-kindergarten programs and Head Start expansion, a working paper from the Joint Center on Poverty Research reviews evaluations of several center-based early childhood intervention programs. "What We Know about Early Childhood Interventions" finds that well-designed, well-funded early interventions can have large and significant effects on school readiness and subsequent
child outcomes.

This U.S. Dept. of Education report considers why schools should be involved in early childhood and what roles they should play. The report explores successful state preschool programs credited with improving readiness for kindergarten: Georgia's voluntary pre-kindergarten funded in part by state lottery funds and North Carolina's Smart Start, providing subsidies to improving child
care quality.