Title: The Structure of Early Care and Education in the United States: Historical Evolution and International Comparisons (2004)
| Citations: | 3 - 0 self |
BibTeX
@MISC{Poterba04title:the,
author = {James M. Poterba and Dryden Witte and Marisol Trowbridge},
title = {Title: The Structure of Early Care and Education in the United States: Historical Evolution and International Comparisons},
year = {2004}
}
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Abstract
Most European governments have universal, consolidated, education-based early care and education (ECE) programs that are available from early in the morning to late in the evening throughout the year. European ECE programs are uniformly of high quality, generally last at least three years, and are funded to serve all children. The U.S. ECE system is composed of three separate programs (Head Start, Pre-Kindergarten (Pre-K), and the child care voucher program) targeted to low-income children. With a few notable exceptions, U.S. ECE programs are funded to serve less than half of the eligible children. U.S. ECE programs developed quite separately. They have different goals, different funding sources, and different administrations and policies, and they generally last for an academic year or less. Pre-K and Head Start operate only 3 to 6 hours a day and are open only dur-ing the academic year. The average quality of U.S. ECE programs is generally much lower than the average quality of European ECE pro-
