Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews | 2019
Cradle to Kindergarten: A New Plan to Combat Inequality
Abstract
Cradle to Kindergarten: A New Plan to Combat Inequality lays out an ambitious plan to provide comprehensive, universal early care and education services to American children from birth through age five. Authors Ajay Chaudry, Taryn Morrissey, Christina Weiland, and Hirokazu Yoshikawa—among the country’s foremost experts on early childhood education—explicate an evidencebased framework for delivering comprehensive universal services to children, as well as more targeted services for low-income and disadvantaged children. The plan advocates for a substantial expansion of the federal government’s role in funding and implementing these programs and services, as well as in developing systems to hold states accountable for the quality of their service delivery efforts. Specifically, the authors’ proposal calls for $70.3 billion in additional federal spending annually, representing a 20 percent increase over current annual federal spending on children. The authors’ plan consists of four major components, and these correspond to the main book chapters: (1) Paid Parental Leave, (2) Affordable, High-Quality Care and Education, (3) Universal Preschool, and (4) A New Head Start. The book motivates the proposed plan by describing common challenges families face when securing access to high-quality, affordable care and education for their children; summarizing the importance of early childhood experiences in shaping later life outcomes; and documenting growing income-based disparities in kindergarten readiness. The first component of the plan calls for a dramatic increase in paid parental leave, which would provide job protection and at least partial wage replacement for parents for up to sixteen weeks following the birth of a child, at an estimated at-scale cost of $18 to $20 billion annually. The authors propose that the program be jointly administered by the Social Security Administration and the Department of Labor and financed either by deferring the age at which program beneficiaries receive Social Security, or by increasing employee/employer taxes. Next, the authors propose two policy reforms intended to increase the affordability of high-quality early childhood care and education: the Assuring Care and Education (ACE) for Young Children system and a revised child care tax credit system. The ACE program would provide direct subsidies to income-eligible families to access high-quality, center-based care environments, while revisions to the child care tax credit system would reform the current Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) to allow families at all income levels to claim tax credits for a broader range of child care and education options. The third section of the book advocates for universal access to high-quality, centerbased preschool for all threeand four-yearolds. The authors summarize available evidence of income-based gaps in average preschool quality and make several recommendations for how the federal government can take steps to reduce those gaps: by providing matching funds to states for expanding access to center-based preschool programs aligned with K–12 public education; by targeting implementation efforts to serve the highest-need children first; and by investing in evidence-based practices, including curricular adoption and professional mentoring. The fourth section of the book calls for a restructuring of the federal Head Start Reviews 43