Background: Education plays a pivotal role in empowering individuals with the knowledge and skills needed for careers, economic progress, and societal engagement. Dropping out of school before achieving a qualification undermines these opportunities and has an impact on individuals and society (Audit Commission, 2010; OECD, 2023). International…

A central goal of the Portuguese compensatory education program--Territórios Educativos de Intervenção Prioritária (TEIP)--is the improvement of the academic performance of socioeconomically disadvantaged students. In this article, we seek to understand whether the schools involved in the program have been successful in reducing their academic…

Discusses the findings of the Westinghouse Report and suggests they be considered a limited and partial description of the effects of using Head Start to educate children. (DR)

A description of an experiment in early intervention designed to promote learning in deprived children. Postprogram tests shed light on the nature of gains. (ST)

Selected results from a study of compensatory reading programs sponsored by Title I and by other sources are presented and discussed. Various phases of the study included a questionnaire survey of a nationally representative sample of elementary schools, pre- and posttesting of students in grades two, four, and six of a subsample of the original…

The reauthorization of the Follow Through Program (FT), a program designed to reinforce gains made by low income children in preschool, is the subject of this hearing report. Testimony includes a rationale for reauthorizing the program; information and comments concerning the accomplishments and future prospects of FT; a brief historical…

Previous studies have reported that disadvantaged children tend to loose the skills and abilities they had acquired in special and/or intervention programs when they are placed in education settings which do not support their needs. Since the 1970 census data tended to indicate that the pupil composition of the schools had changed, it became…

Deprivation may take many forms: malnutrition, understimulation or overstimulation, limited language or social-emotional experiences, and others. The more extended the time of the deprivation, the greater the problem of amelioration. Research has shown that children who experienced deprivations do respond to early intervention and improve their…

This report summarizes a study conducted by Educational Testing Service and RMC Research Corporation, of compensatory reading programs sponsored by Title I as well as those supported solely by state and local funds. The results show that in schools which received compensatory funds, the students most in need of it received additional help in…

This study examined the effectiveness of intervention stategy in reducing poverty among children from low income families in an all-black community. Studied were 68 participants of a 1947 neighborhood project in Columbia, South Carolina. The project included an emphasis on language skills and intellectual growth, involvement of parents and…

Examines the recent history of early childhood intervention efforts; discusses principles that guided the formation of intervention programs in the 1960s and 1970s; describes the Head Start program and lessons learned from its development; considers issues in evaluating intervention programs; and presents suggestions for future directions in early…

The objective of the Adaptive Learning Environments Model (ALEM) is to establish and maintain school environments that ensure optimal learning success opportunities for most students through adaptive instruction. Modification of the environment to accommodate student differences has been an important design consideration in the development of the…

First grade children from two Head Start (HS) groups and one non-Head Start (NHS) group were administered a battery of tests for the purposes of (1) comparing the developmental status of HS and NHS subjects, (2) examing patterns of specific learning disabilities among HS and NHS children, (3) determining the stability coefficients of selected…

This document reviews evidence on the effects of early childhood intervention programs. A brief discussion of the issues surrounding the support and funding of compensatory education is presented and 10 preschool intervention programs (involving more than 2,000 children in various experimental and control groups) in which evaluation data were…

This paper reviews the efforts of 28 intervention programs designed to train parents to teach school-related skills to their young children. Programs reviewed range from the federally funded Home Start program to non-funded programs run locally by volunteers. Evaluations of the 28 programs, which were designed and carried out by the program…