Analysis of Federal Early Education Programs
GAO Report on Early Learning and Child Care
The Federal investment in early learning and child care is administered through 45 programs that provide or may support related services to children from birth through age five, as well as five tax provisions that subsidize private expenditures in this area. Among the 45 programs, 12 have an explicit program purpose of providing early learning or child care services. These programs differ in size, target population, and structure. For example, most of them obligated less than $500 million each in Fiscal Year (FY) 2012, while the largest program, Head Start, obligated approximately $8 billion in that year. The remaining 33…
