This article focuses on the considerably lower proportion of Latino parents who select a formal preschool or child-care center for their three to five-year-old youngsters. The authors empirically focus on the influence of ethnicity, maternal education, family structure, and preliteracy practices on parents' propensity to select preschools and center-based programs.

An introduction to this special issue of the Teachers College Record that represents some of the most recent thinking on the conceptual and practical growth within the field of early childhood education and child care.

Child care and early childhood education should be fully integrated. The roots and consequences of the current separation are examined. A description is provided of the Kramer Project, a day care school. Obstacles to fully integrated day care and educational services are discussed.

After tracing the changing forms of work, family life, and child care in America, this article explores the benefits to family, home life, work place, parents, children, and child care workers afforded by a variety of current employer practices in child care services and support.

Buffalo's Early Childhood Centers, which grew out of court-ordered desegregation plans, are described and evaluated in this article in terms of student achievement, parental involvement, and racial balancing.

The change process surrounding the introduction of an all-day kindergarten program in a small suburban school district is examined in this case study. Implications for adoption and implementation of early childhood programs in other school systems are discussed.

A look at programs that reduce damaging outcomes for at-risk youth.

This article discusses the connection between the availability of day care and early childhood education and the future of the U.S. economy by examining three key elements in the relationship: the family, the individual, and the nation as a whole.

Two antithetical views of the sense-making potential of young children are explored: the Piagetian egocentric view and the sociocentric view. The article suggests that empirical research demonstrates socially construed perspective-taking tasks do not show the young child to be egocentric, but sociocentric.

Kindergarten programs in public schools generally have an academic/ formal orientation or an intellectual/experiential orientation. This article highlights the fundamental differences between the two approaches by examining current curriculum, policy and staffing, and administrative practice regarding kindergarten.

This article outlines key issues in early childhood education related to (1) identification and characterization of the populations to be served, (2) definition of the goals of services, (3) preparation of early childhood specialists, and (4) optimal settings for delivery of service.

This article discusses four reasons for advocacy activities related to early childhood education and child care: preserving existing programs; increasing capacity and quality of service; making early education more accessible, affordable, and equitable; and educating the public.

The author discusses some of the literature on the family as educator. The family is an arena in which virtually the entire range of human experience can take place. Warfare, violence, love, tenderness, honesty, deceit, private property, communal sharing, power manipulation, informed consent, formal status hierar¬chies, egalitarian decision-making—all can be found within the setting of the fam¬ily. And so, also, can a variety of educational encounters, ranging from conscious, systematic instruction to repetitive, moment-to-moment influences at the margins of awareness.

It is possible to combine all the individual and group consumption that goes on in the family unit into one "family consumption package" and, using economic theories designed for analyzing individual decisions, to make valid and useful statements about family activities.