High quality early childhood education and preschool programs that implement best practices have been shown to improve school success and graduation rates for disadvantaged children. A new report by the Citizens Research Council of Michigan, Early Childhood Education, describes programs that invest in the “front end” of formal education: kindergarten, Head Start, and Michigan’s Great Start Readiness Program. It also describes research on brain development that helps to explain why investing in early education may be a more effective strategy than other strategies that are being pursued.