Strengthening Children, Youth and Families

Pre-kindergarten

A pre-kindergarten program with high-quality standards is one key part of a comprehensive early care and education system that supports the learning and development of children from birth through the age of school entry. CLASP believes high-quality pre-kindergarten addresses the developmental needs of all children and includes: sufficient funding to attract and retain qualified teachers; comprehensive health services for families needing them, including developmental screenings and follow-up treatment; and infrastructure supports to ensure ongoing monitoring and quality improvement. It is also critical that pre-kindergarten initiatives support the needs of low-income working families. CLASP studies and promotes policies to support partnerships between states and local school districts, along with child care and Head Start programs, to offer pre-kindergarten in community-based settings. We encourage states to implement policies that integrate early learning program standards, including pre-kindergarten standards, into child care settings to support quality programs for all children.

In Focus

The Most Important Problem Facing Children in the US Today

In the early 1950's, polio crippled tens of thousands of people in the United States each year, shut down public facilities, and struck fear among parents everywhere. But thanks to a massive public health effort that reached into every community, by 1979 polio had been eliminated from the U.S.

What if we tackled child poverty with the same determination and commitment that we put into eliminating polio? At a time when one in five children lives in poverty, income inequality is growing, and the severe negative long-term consequences of childhood poverty are known, the analogy is not farfetched.

This week, the Academic Pediatric Association (APA) Task Force on Childhood Poverty declared that childhood poverty is "the most important problem facing children in the US today" and issued a Strategic Road Map for addressing it as a public health issue. The APA Task Force commits to raising the voice of pediatricians to build public support for policies that will both reduce childhood poverty and address the negative effects of poverty on children's physical and mental health and development. This builds on similar statements from the American Academy of Pediatrics.