Because we want this book to be immediately useful to busy people – policy makers and their staffs, education administrators, and others trying to make universal preschool happen – here we provide a summary of the previous pages. We do hope everyone will make time to read the whole book, which describes the empirical and theoretical underpinnings of our recommendations for a universal preschool education system.

Early childhood education is considered by many to be a cornerstone for American education reform. The Goals 2000: Educate America Act, which guided education reform in the United States during the 1990s, specified school readiness as the very first goal: “By the year 2000, all children in America will start school ready to learn.” The legislation articulated that the goal was to be achieved through universal access to “high-quality and developmentally appropriate preschool programs”, parent involvement, and attention to children's physical and mental health. Five-plus years after our deadline, although progress has been made, we remain woefully short of this vision.

Significant research over the past 40 years has demonstrated the positive effects of high-quality preschool programs. Benefits include:

• Improved school readiness

• Reduced grade retention

• Reduced need for costly remedial and special education services

• Improved educational test scores

• Increased high school graduation rates and postsecondary education

• Increased employment rates and family income

• Reduced criminal activity and likelihood for incarceration

• Reduced dependence on welfare

These findings derived mainly from studies of model early intervention programs that maintained very high quality and were funded well enough to pay for it.

The purpose of universal prekindergarten (UPK) is to help all children get ready for the learning opportunities that will be presented when they begin formal schooling. How school readiness is defined has important implications for how UPK should be organized, the types and quality of services that should be provided, and the length and intensity of programming needed to have the best chance of achieving this goal. To paraphrase an old adage, it's impossible to know what direction to head if we don't know where we want to go. The definition of school readiness influences more than policy statements and mandates about curricula, class sizes, teacher training, and other details regarding how UPK is to be delivered. The definition spells out the desired results and therefore gives program designers a master plan for determining whether their efforts are successful.

The immediate goal for any system of universal preschool is of course to increase the school readiness of all students. By implication, the ultimate goal is to increase their chances of succeeding in school and later in life. In this chapter, we discuss why school readiness is so critical for later educational success. We also look at various approaches to dealing with “unready” students, approaches that are shaped by how one defines being ready for school. We examine current debates about what it means to be prepared for school and offer a comprehensive model of school readiness to be used by state policy makers for strategic planning for a universal UPK system.

The term “school age” carries significant meaning in American society. The day a child walks through the schoolhouse doors marks an unforgettable benchmark for the young student and his or her family. Of course, the first day of kindergarten is not the first “teachable moment” the child has experienced. A vast amount of learning has preceded that eventful day. Knowledge, skills, and abilities have been acquired and practiced at home, in the playground, and – for the majority of children born in the 21st century – in child care settings. The difference between “preschool” and “school age”, then, is not really about teaching and learning but about where and how these activities take place, and who assumes responsibility for them.

In the United States today, formal schooling is largely the responsibility of state and local governments. In most communities, children are eligible to enroll in the public education system when they are about five years old. Historically, it was not unusual for children to be admitted at younger ages. The first kindergartens in America commonly served children younger than five – for example, New York City schools admitted four-year-olds, and Boston's public schools enrolled toddlers as young as 22 months (Mitchell, Seligson, & Marx, 1989). Wisconsin's state constitution has contained “a commitment to free education for four-year-olds” since the middle of the 19th century (Barnett, Hustedt, Robin, & Schulman, 2004, p. 170).

Up to this point, we have described the growing national momentum toward universal preschool, as well as the developmental and economic rationales for early education and its role in the lives of children across the income spectrum. In the next several chapters, we turn our attention to issues regarding the content of effective preschool services. In this chapter we discuss issues of program intensity and duration. We also focus on the various components of quality associated with lasting benefits and strategies for how programmatic quality can be facilitated and maintained during large-scale implementation.

The effectiveness of any preschool program is related directly to the quality of that program and the amount of the program that is actually received. Beneficial impacts are most appreciable when services are delivered at reasonably high levels of quality and received in sufficient quantity by those who need the services (Brooks-Gunn, 2003; Ramey & Ramey, 1998). Aspects of program delivery can be described as program duration, intensity, and quality. An analogous description is used in medicine: when describing medication effects physicians often refer to how long the patient receives the medication, how often the patient receives it, and the amount of active ingredient it contains. Although everyone in the medical community would agree that these components are of paramount importance to good medical care, decision makers and administrators responsible for implementing social and educational programs often seem to skimp on these features and end up with a ghost of the originally planned intervention.

The movement to establish public prekindergarten for all young children in the United States has steadily accelerated. Forty states now provide some form of classroom-based preschool services to at least some groups of children, whereas in the 1960s half the states did not even have universal kindergarten and just seven had limited programs for preschoolers (Gilliam & Marchesseault, 2005; Mitchell, 2001). Today there are throngs of advocates for universal preschool, including many outside the ranks of expected supporters like parents and early childhood educators. Surveys and public opinion polls repeatedly show that the majority of the public approves of state funding for prekindergarten programs and believes these should be available to everyone. As described in Chapter 1, private philanthropic foundations have mounted a national mission to promote universal preschool. Economists and members of the business community, whose opinions generally carry great weight among policy makers, have identified preschool as necessary to building a skilled and productive work force in coming generations. The time is right to capitalize on this momentum, to put our accumulated research on the benefits and cost-effectiveness of early education to use, and to urge all states to adopt or expand prekindergarten services. But this is also the critical time to guide the construction of these programs so they are of high enough quality to achieve the expectations being placed in them.

Over the past 40 years, the field of applied developmental psychology has come into prominence. Scholars in this field work to deploy the store of knowledge about human development to help decision makers construct effective social policies and build evidence-based social action programs that improve the lives of children and their families. This book is an exemplar of this type of undertaking.

The first author has studied children's growth and development for half a century and has been closely involved with a number of early intervention initiatives for more than 40 years. He helped design several national programs, including Head Start, Early Head Start, the School of the 21st Century, and the Child Development Associate training credential for early childhood workers. On the policy front, he was the federal official responsible for administering Head Start during the Nixon administration, chaired a panel that produced the first draft of what became the Family and Medical Leave Act, and has advised Republican and Democrat federal and state leaders since the time of the Kennedy administration. Coauthors Walter Gilliam and Stephanie Jones trained at the Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy at Yale University. They have become outstanding young scholars in developmental science and its application to informed social policy.

This book is an effort to translate our knowledge into practice. We review the accumulated evidence about children's development and helpful interventions and show how to apply it to create a voluntary preschool system with universal access.

It may surprise some readers to learn that this statement was written some 30 years ago. It could easily have been written today. Literacy has become the buzzword not only in educational circles but in the halls of the United States Congress. In kindergartens and first-grade classrooms across the nation, arts and crafts and even recess are “out.” Practice with writing and all things related to words and spelling are “in.” After-school time that was once free for play and favorite activities is now occupied by homework for children as young as five and six years old. “Educational” toys and DVDs occupy increasing space on store shelves.