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May 27, 2005
The Abecedarian Project
It's always heartening to see follow-up to educational experiments. Joanne Jacobs provides a link to the the Carolina Abecedarian Project age-21 follow-up. The question - does early intervention with EDUCATIONAL pre-school do anything? The answer looks like "yes."
The problem I always see is that these are carefully designed, university-run day care centers. So how do you extend the "best practices"? By forcing day care workers to get education school certification? By requiring them to be literate? What? For every requirement you add you've just put your day care out of the reach of a lot of people. Are you going to make it free? With what pot of cash?
There's a really disturbing verb in the Executive Summary under "Policy Implications"
The Abecedarian study began treatment in early infancy, emphasizing the importance of providing a learning environment for children from the very beginning of life. my emphasis
"Treatment?" Oh, dear.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at May 27, 2005 8:51 AM