Mental Health: A Report by the Surgeon General

The Carolina Abecedarian Project is an example of an early educational intervention for high-risk children that has been tested more rigorously than Head Start in well-designed, randomized, and controlled trials. It addresses the issue of the timing of the intervention, that is, when an intervention should begin and how long it should continue. Unlike Head Start, children were enrolled in this program at birth and remained in it for several years.

In the Carolina Abecedarian Project, children who had been identified at birth as being at high risk for school failure on the basis of social and economic variables were enrolled in a child-centered prevention-oriented intervention program delivered in a day care setting from infancy to age 5 (Campbell & Ramey, 1994 1). The preschool intervention operated 8 hours a day for 50 weeks a year and included an infant curriculum to enhance development and parent activities. At elementary school age, a second intervention was provided: the children, who were then in kindergarten, received 15 home visits a year for 3 years from a teacher who prepared a home program to supplement the school’s basic curriculum. There were significant positive effects from the two-phase intervention on intellectual development and academic achievement, and these effects were maintained through age 12, which was 4 years after the intervention ended.

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