New Municipal Action Guide on Improving Family, Friend and Neighbor Care

The experiences children have early in life have a profound impact on their development and achievement in school. Children who are cared for in settings that do not stimulate early learning prior to kindergarten begin school without the skills they need to succeed. Nationally, about one-fifth of all kindergartners lag behind on cognitive measures and almost one-third are behind on social and emotional measures. Several studies have demonstrated that as much as half of the achievement gap that exists in the third grade between disadvantaged children and their peers is already evident at school entry, a gap that grows throughout their educational development.