High-quality early care and education for children from birth to kindergarten entry is critical to positive child development and has the potential to generate economic returns, which benefit not only children and their families but society at large. Despite the great promise of early care and education, it has been financed in such a way that high-quality early care and education have only been available to a fraction of the families needing and desiring it and does little to further develop the early-care-and-education (ECE) workforce. It is neither sustainable nor adequate to provide the quality of care and learning that children and families need?a shortfall that further perpetuates and drives inequality. Transforming the Financing of Early Care and Education outlines a framework for a funding strategy that will provide reliable, accessible high-quality early care and education for young children from birth to kindergarten entry, including a highly qualified and adequately compensated workforce that is consistent with the vision outlined in the 2015 report, Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation. The recommendations of this report are based on essential features of child development and early learning, and on principles for high-quality professional practice at the levels of individual practitioners, practice environments, leadership, systems, policies, and resource allocation. Table of Contents Front Matter Summary 1 Introduction 2 Landscape of Early Care and Education Financing 3 Current Financing for Early Care and Education: Financing a Highly Qualified Workforce (Principle 1) 4 Current Financing for Early Care and Education: Affordability and Equitable Access (Principle 2) 5 Current Financing for Early Care and Education: Ensuring High Quality Across Settings 6 Estimating the Cost of High-Quality Early Care and Education 7 A Vision for Financing Early Care and Education References Appendix A: Methodology and Policy Choices and Assumptions for Cost Estimation Appendix B: Cost Estimation Models Appendix C: Determining a Reasonable Share of Costs for Families to Pay Appendix D: Biosketches of Committee Members and Staff

Many young children in the United States are thriving and have access to the conditions and resources they need to grow up healthy. However, a substantial number of young children face more challenging conditions such as: poverty; food insecurity; exposure to violence; and inadequate access to health care, well-funded quality schools, and mental health care. In many cases, the historical origins of unequal access to crucial supports for children's physical, emotional, and cognitive development are rooted in policies that intentionally segregated and limited various populations' access to resources and create opportunity gaps that intertwine and compound to affect academic, health, and economic outcomes over an individual's life course and across generations. Closing the Opportunity Gap for Young Children, identifies and describes the causes, costs, and effects of the opportunity gap in young children and explores how disparities in access to quality educational experiences, health care, and positive developmental experiences from birth through age eight intersect with key academic, health, and economic outcomes. The report identifies drivers of these gaps in three key domains?education, mental health, and physical health?and offers recommendations for policy makers for addressing these gaps so that all children in the United States have the opportunity to thrive. In addition, the report offers a detailed set of recommendations for policy makers, practitioners, community organizations, and philanthropic organizations to reduce opportunity gaps in education, health, and social-emotional development. Table of Contents Front Matter Summary 1 Introduction 2 Opportunity Gaps in Early Care and Education Experienced by Children from Birth to Pre-K 3 Opportunity Gaps in the Education Experienced by Children in Grades K3 4 Opportunity Gaps in the Physical Health and Health Care Experienced by Young Children and Their Parents 5 Opportunity Gaps in the Social-Emotional Development, Well-being, and Mental Health Experienced by Young Children 6 The Economic Costs of the Opportunity Gap 7 Research, Policy, and Practice: Contexts and Efforts to Address Opportunity Gaps 8 Key Conclusions and Recommendations APPENDIX A APPENDIX B APPENDIX C COMMITTEE MEMBER AND STAFF BIOSKETCHES