Child Care, Early Education & Afterschool

This Dispatch will discusshow funding from the federal recovery plan can help offset the costs ofmaintaining and even expanding early education programs. This Dispatchwill also highlight the economic and educational benefits of supportingearly education programs, as well as the different methods that stategovernments are employing to help reduce the cost of and promote theexpansion of quality early child care and state pre-k programs.

In state elections across the country, how to create quality, affordable child care has become a potent campaign issue.

It's now ten years since the 1996 welfare law promised to end "welfare as we know it." That goal may have been accomplished, but the results have been decidedly mixed, both for poor families and for state lawmakers coping with changing federal mandates.