The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the ideas and proposals in 10 papers commissioned by the National Center for Education Statistics to identify issues in early childhood education which have major relevance to public policy. Part I offers a brief overview of the context in which the issues were raised, focusing on current trends, information gaps, fragmentation of services, the low quality of out-of-home provisions, and the stability of effects. Part II gives particular attention to three interrelated questions: (1) Where are the children? (2) What is the quality of their experience? and (3) What impact does early out-of-home experience have? Question 1 is discussed in terms of identifying a sample of target children. Discussion of question 2 probes contrasts between home and out-of-home settings, indices of quality, perspectives from "above" and "below" and indices of quality, parameters of environments and indices of quality, structural characteristics of the setting, characteristics of adults and adult-child relationships, stability of relationships, issues in the continuity of experience, and language and linguistic usage. Question 3 is explored with regard to cultural appropriateness and continuity, staffing, and parent-school relations. Part III briefly summarizes the outcomes of the synthesis and makes recommendations for further research on four hypotheses included in the discussion. (RH)