Building off his reporting on the importance of early brain development, Jon Cohn tackles the US day care system:
[T]here's a spectrum of shoddy care – from mediocre to poor to awful. The hard part is figuring out exactly how many kids fall into each category. And despite considerable research and consultation with experts, I came up with only two reliable sources. One was a study of day care in four states, by researchers in Colorado. The other was a more comprehensive national survey, by the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development. The results were similar: In the Colorado study, only 8 percent of day care centers were “good” or “excellent” while 40 percent were “poor.” The NIHCD study found that three out of four infant caregivers give only minimal intellectual and cognitive stimulation.
The Dish 