Addressing the nation's child care crisis: the school of the twenty-first century.

With nearly three-quarters of the nation's mothers in the work force, the issue of child care in America has reached crisis proportions. Despite attempts to deal with the issue over the past two decades, the United States remains without a national policy. This paper outlines the dimensions of the crisis and uses the established concept of the community school as the model for a plan that would provide high quality child care on a universal basis.