Is Build Back Better really dead? Katharine B. Stevens analyzes the childcare and universal preschool provisions of BBB, revealing a detailed legislative blueprint of an increasingly influential vision for America’s young children: federally-controlled preschool programs for all children from birth onwards.

Katharine Stevens and Matt Weidinger propose allowing parents to advance future child tax credits into the earliest years of their child’s life, strengthening families' ability to choose how and by whom their children are cared for during the formative first years of development.

One-third of lower-income eighth graders still fail to demonstrate even minimal competence in reading and math, and wide achievement gaps persist in every state, despite decades of ever-intensifying school reform and steadily increased spending,

Advancing access to high-quality childcare is a wise investment in America’s future — strengthening business today while building the workforce we’ll depend on tomorrow and for decades to come.

Widely cited early childhood programs vary greatly in both design and results. The research on these programs shows neither that “pre-K works” not that it doesn’t; rather, it shows that some early childhood programs yield particular outcomes, sometimes, for some children.

Today’s federal early care and education policies are fragmented, inefficient, and unnecessarily complex. Federal policymaking is driven by coping with what exists rather than by what we are trying to accomplish: giving America’s least-advantaged children a fair chance at a happy, productive life.