An Evaluation of Two Preschool Programs for Disadvantaged Children: A Traditional and a Highly Structured Experimental Preschool

This paper presents the first year results of a study designed to evaluate through a battery of standardized tests the effectiveness of two preschool programs upon the long range school performance of comparable groups of children. One intervention program provided a traditional nursery school experience (N = 30) which worked in conventional ways to improve the personal, social, and motor development of the children; the experimental intervention provided a highly structured program (N = 30) which focused on specific learning tasks chosen from school related curricula, especially tasks designed to enhance language development and cognitive skills. The experimental program proved to be significantly more effective in promoting intellectual functioning, language abilities, perceptual development, and school readiness.