Excerpt from "Early care for infants and toddlers" : "In 1997, New York State became the second state in the nation after Georgia to enact universal prekindergarten (UPK) legislation, aimed at the provision of voluntary educational services to all four-year-old children. Although the development of UPK is part of an overall effort to strengthen the state's educational system and prepare children for success in kindergarten, relatively little attention has been given to the role UPK might play in the child care arena, or to its overall impacts on early care and education as a system of supports for children and families. Because New York is the second state and the first of the ten largest states to introduce UPK, a study of the broader impacts of UPK represents an unprecedented opportunity to inform early care and education policy and practice nationwide. With its diversity, New York's program offers insight into the challenges involved with designing early care and education systems both in the country's largest and most concentrated city and in rural areas."