In his State of the Union Address delivered January 2002, President Bush outlined the next critical step in education reform: to prepare children to read and succeed in school with improved Head Start and early childhood development programs. This report describes early childhood as a critical time for children to develop the physical, emotional, social, and cognitive skills they will need for the rest of their lives and presents the components of the Good Start, Grow Smart early childhood initiative of the Bush Administration. The three major areas addressed in the initiative are described: (1) strengthening Head Start through a new accountability system and a national training program; (2) partnering with states to improve early childhood education through the development of quality criteria for early childhood education to align the programs with K-12 state standards; and (3) providing information to teachers, caregivers, and parents through public awareness campaigns and through support of research to identify effective prereading and language curricula and teaching strategies. (KB)