Mayor Michael Bloomberg's emphasis on fighting poverty in New York City focused particularly on three populations: the working poor, young adults, and children from birth to age 5. As a part of the focus on young children, and in response to mounting evidence that investments in early childhood education are a cost-effective antipoverty measure, the New York City Administration for Children's Services (ACS) reorganized its system of contracted child care through an initiative called EarlyLearn NYC. The goal of the program was to maximize available funding streams for early childhood education while raising the quality of care and education provided. EarlyLearn also sought to improve the coverage of care across the city by shifting the supply of contracted slots to neighborhoods with the greatest economic need but fewest providers. Additionally, ACS aimed to increase the availability of child care for infants and toddlers. The implementation of this program brought rapid change to the city's contracted child care system. EarlyLearn successfully braided funding from child care, Head Start, and the State's Universal Prekindergarten (UPK) program in order to provide improved access and continuity for low-income children and their families. High program standards have improved the quality of contracted providers. Moreover, the redistribution of contracts across the city has increased the supply of care in targeted, high-need neighborhoods. At present, EarlyLearn serves approximately 37,150 children. This brief describes the context in which the EarlyLearn program was designed and implemented, and the timeline of the development and implementation of EarlyLearn. It also discusses the details of what this policy change has entailed. The brief concludes by detailing some of the successes of the program and ongoing challenges, highlighting potential paths forward under the new mayoral administration. This brief is based on interviews with current and past ACS staff members, EarlyLearn providers, early childhood advocates, and ACS reports and publicly available resources. (author abstract)