The field of early childhood intervention, which strives to meet the needs of infants and toddlers with disabilities, has come of age, but interagency collaboration to provide family-focused multidisciplinary services remains more a goal than a reality. Issues in the development of multidisciplinary services include fragmentation of services,…

A study examined the effect of the Reading Recovery program on the reading achievement of first-grade students. Subjects, 60 third-grade students in a Chicago public school with 97% Hispanic and 3% White student population, completed the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. Test scores for the 30 students who were tutored using Reading Recovery lessons in…

The Education of the Handicapped Act Amendments of 1986 provide for early intervention services to children with special needs and their families. Part of the amendment requires that early intervention programs develop an Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP) for each child. These plans require that families participate in defining the child's…

Using an emergent literacy perspective, a qualitative case study examined a child who struggled to become a reader. The study was based on data gathered during a 33-month tutoring intervention extending from the end of repeated first grade to mid-fourth grade. Interviews and documents were used to reconstruct the child's literacy history prior to…

Protective factors that contribute to the development of resiliency in children, defined as "unusually good adaptation in the face of severe stress, and an ability of the stressed person to rebound to the prestress level of adaptation," are discussed. The biological, psychological, familial, and social factors related to disadvantages…

Even Start programs integrate early childhood education, adult literacy or basic education, parenting education and support, and parent and child time together to help break the cycle of poverty and illiteracy. This report describes the Even Start program in Colorado, including evaluation questions and methods. The report also presents evaluation…

This addendum to the Reading/Writing Immersion Literacy Development Project presents the results of the fourth teacher survey (which had not been administered at the time of the publication of the project's final report for year 1). The fourth survey dealt with report writing. The 2-year literacy development project was designed to assist grade 1…

This study examined the effect of prekindergarten attendance on first graders' academic achievement. A literature review reported the results of other studies on the effects of early educational experiences, such as Head Start, on at-risk students' elementary school achievement. In general, these studies indicated that early educational…

In the fall of 1990, and again in the fall of 1991, George Washington University invited a parent of a special needs child to assist in the teaching of a course on the dynamics of family intervention. The rationale for this action was to: (1) give students a personal experience with a parent of a special needs child; and (2) provide a model of the…

The methods and findings of studies of the effects and value of preschool education and compensatory education programs, such as Head Start, are reviewed. After introductory comments on ideological controversies and on terminology, section 1 focuses on evaluative studies of the immediate and long-term effects of preschool education and early…

Early Prevention of School Failure (EPSF) is a program designed to prevent children from failing academically. The program, which was introduced in the Wake County, North Carolina Public School System in 1986, identifies the developmental level of each participating kindergartner and recommends strategies to address each kindergartner's needs and…

This study was designed to determine whether the scores obtained from the Kindergarten Diagnostic Instrument (KDI) Test given to children prior to their enrollment in kindergarten would allow educators to identify those children who would eventually qualify for a first grade reading intervention program. A total of 346 children were randomly…

This study examined the feasibility of teaching phonemic manipulation skills (auditory rhyming, blending, or segmenting) to preschool children with disabilities. Forty-seven children, 4-6 years old, enrolled in a special education preschool, were randomly assigned to receive training in one of three categories of phonemic manipulation tasks…

Educational policy analysts have recognized the need for an educational policy that combines the merits of "top-down" mandates with "bottom-up" teacher discretion. This paper describes the Reading Recovery program as an example of an educational program that balances top-down direction and bottom-up discretion by: (1) providing an overall…

A study evaluates the effectiveness of the third year of the Reading/Writing Immersion (R/WI) project in Manitoba designed to assist first-grade teachers in becoming more effective at working with students who are at-risk of failing to develop the reading and writing performance expectancies the teachers had for them. Subjects, the six remaining…