Effects of Preschool Curriculum Programs on School Readiness. Report from the Preschool Curriculum Evaluation Research Initiative

摘要

A variety of preschool curricula is available and in widespread use, however, there is a lack of evidence from rigorous evaluations regarding the effects of these curricula on children's school readiness. The lack of such information is important as early childhood center-based programs have been a major, sometimes the sole, component of a number of federal and state efforts to improve young at-risk children's school readiness (e.g., Head Start, Even Start, public pre-kindergarten). In 2005, nearly half (47%) of all 3- to 5-year-old children from low-income families were enrolled in either part-day or full-day early childhood programs. Institute of Education Sciences (IES) contracted to evaluate the impact of each of the 14 curricula implemented using a common set of measures with the cohort of children beginning preschool in the summer-fall of 2003. This report provides the individual results for each curriculum from the evaluations. Chapter 1 describes the Preschool Curriculum Evaluation Research (PCER) initiative and details the common elements of the evaluations including the experimental design, implementation, analysis, results, and findings. Chapters 2-13, respectively, provide greater detail on the individual evaluations of the curricula implemented by each research team including information on the curricula, the demographics of the site-specific samples, assignment, fidelity of implementation, and results. Appendix A presents results from a secondary analysis of the data. Appendix B provides greater detail regarding the data analyses conducted. Appendixes C and D provide additional information regarding the outcome measures.