ABSTRACT
Schools that have expanded the scope of their efforts to include early care and education and other child and family support services demonstrate the feasibility of the approach and provide a glimpse of the potential inherent in school-based/school-linked services. The expectation that schools should assume a new or expanded role is not new. A related concern is that schools will give the task of teaching and caring for young children to teachers who are qualified to teach school-age children but not, necessarily, very young children. In response to criticism, the early childhood field has come to accept recently that neither the child-centered nor the academic approach is appropriate if practiced to the extreme, and the guidelines to developmentally appropriate practice have been revised. Opponents of school-based services also contend that schools, as relative newcomers in the provision of nonacademic support services such as child care, will put community-based organizations out of business.
