Chicago Experience with an Early Childhood Program

Abstract

This research on 680 inner-city children, most of whom are Black, exposed to an extended period of 4 to 6 years of early childhood education, shows that benefits seem to have lasted for the girls but much less so for the boys. However, reading scores for these Black girls and boys, at the time they finished the early childhood education, were very similar to one another and were equal to local and national norms, indicating that the problems of inadequate performance can be remedied by enough early childhood education. Later inadequacies are due to deficiencies occurring in later school years, resulting from mainstreaming and adverse social forces in the community.