Described is a program for the prevention of learning failure and its emotional and behavioral consequences initiated by the Learning Disorders Unit of the New York University Medical School with the cooperation of public schools in the lower East Side of New York City. This project involved the intensive individual examination of every child early in the first grade - psychiatrically, neurologically, psychologically, and educationally - to identify those children vulnerable to emotional decompensation and to learning failure. A program of appropriate intervention was designed for each child based upon stimulation of those specific areas of defect revealed by his perceptual and neurological profile. Results, extending over a 4-year period, show that these children can respond to an intervention approach. Surveys of the project schools revealed that at least one-third of all children in the first grades did not have the perceptual and neurological organization needed to learn to read. The pervasiveness of these problems highlights the need to provide early, school-based intervention to prevent learning failure and to interrupt the destructive influence of learning disability upon emotional development. (CS)