This study attempted to determine whether attendance at a traditional preschool resulted in significant cognitive gains for young children over a 3-year period. The experimental group consisted of 59 children at four preschools. Each was matched with a nonattender on such variables as age, sex, intelligence, and family characteristics. The mean…

In the most narrow sense, compensatory education has failed; most Title I programs which seek to improve achievement have no discernible effect. This is apparently a result of the fact that the programs seek to provide for disadvantaged students more of the school resources which have never been found to affect the achievement of advantaged…

Most of the chapters in this book grew out of the Conference on the Academic Performance of Minority Children held at Cornell University in 1982. Six hypotheses about minority school achievement are presented. After a general introduction by Ulric Neisser, John Ogbu describes the effects of caste and argues that black school children are preparing…