The article examines the relevance of compensatory education for educationally disadvantaged children of preschool age in Germany and beyond The article is a shortened, adapted and translated version of the paper Schmidt, T., & Smidt, W. (2014). "Kompensatorische Förderung benachteiligter Kinder--Entwicklungslinien, Forschungsbefunde und heutige Bedeutung für die Frühpädagogik." ["Compensatory education for disadvantaged children--lines of development, research findings and present significance for early childhood education"]. "Zeitschrift für Pädagogik," 60(1), 132-149. Beginning with its onset in the 1960s, key lines of the development of compensatory early childhood education in Germany are presented. Thereafter, significant national and international empirical findings on the effectiveness of compensatory early childhood education are identified. Based on that, the potential of this approach for the promotion of educationally disadvantaged young children in Germany and beyond is outlined.