Merger of the state’s child care and early education bureaucracies to create the nation’s first consolidated Department of Early Education and Care in 2005;

Securing of more than $212 million in increased public investments in early education and care since 2005;

Creation in 2006 of the Massachusetts Universal Pre-Kindergarten (UPK) grant program, which annually serves more than 6,000 children, age 2.9 years to 5;

Expansion and funding of quality grants for full-day kindergarten, which have helped propel a doubling of the proportion of kindergartners in full-day programs from 38% in 2000 to 80% in 2011;

Creation of the Early Childhood Educators Scholarship Program, which since FY06 has awarded more than 5,000 scholarships to early educators to pursue college degrees;

Formal establishment of  UPK in state law in 2008 with unanimous legislative approval; and

Inclusion of early education provisions in “An Act Relative to the Achievement Gap,” signed into law in 2010 as the most comprehensive education reform effort in Massachusetts since 1993.