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Programs that Work

Carolina Abecedarian Project

Program Info Program Overview Program Participants Evaluation Methods Key Evaluation Findings

Probable Implementers Funding Implementation Detail Issues to Consider Example Sites

Contact Information Available Resources Bibliography Last Reviewed

Program Info

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Program Overview

The Carolina Abecedarian Project was a comprehensive early education program for young children at risk for developmental delays and school failure. The program operated in a single site, between 1972 and 1985, in North Carolina, and has undergone extensive assessments of its long-term effects on participants.

The Abecedarian program involved two components, a preschool intervention and a school-age intervention. The preschool program was essentially a day care service, the main goal of which was to create an educational, stimulating, and structured environment to promote growth and learning and to enhance school readiness. The curriculum was designed to enhance cognitive and linguistic development and to provide an enriched language environment that was responsive to children’s needs and interests. In addition, children received nutritional supplements and disposable diapers, along with pediatric care and supportive social work services. Infants began attending the preschool program between 6 weeks and 3 months of age, and continued until entry into kindergarten. Children attended the day care center 6 to 8 hours a day, 5 days per week, 50 weeks per year. After the children turned 3 years old, they received a more structured set of educational curricula, which increasingly became more similar to programs in the local public kindergartens as the children grew older.

The school-age intervention program began at kindergarten entry, and continued through the first three years of elementary school. A resource teacher was assigned to each child and family for the length of the program. The resource teacher prepared an individualized set of home activities to supplement the school’s basic curriculum in reading and math, taught parents how to use these activities with their children, tutored children directly, met regularly with classroom teachers to ensure that home activities matched the skills being taught in the classroom, served as a consultant for the classroom teacher when problems arose, and advocated for the child and family within the school and community. Resource teachers made approximately 17 school visits and approximately 15 home visits per year for each child. In addition, they offered children a variety of summertime support, including summer activity packets, help in arranging summer camp experiences, trips to the public library, and tutoring in reading skills.

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Program Participants

The Abecedarian Project targeted at-risk families with infants up to six months of age. At-risk families were referred to the project through local hospitals, clinics, the Department of Social Services, and other referral sources. These families were visited at home by a staff member, who explained the program to them and determined whether or not they met certain selection criteria. If so, mothers were invited to the Frank Porter Graham Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for an interview and psychological assessment. They were scored on a High Risk Screening Index, which included 13 sociodemographic factors associated with poor intellectual and scholastic progress. The scores on these factors were weighted and combined to arrive at a total for each family. If a family scored 11 or more points, that family was judged to be at elevated risk and eligible for inclusion in the study.

The families taking part in the evaluated program were low-income and predominantly African-American (98 percent). The majority of the families were headed by a single female parent (83 percent) with an average age of 20 years, an average IQ of 85, and a low level of education. Target children were predominantly firstborns and included slightly more females (53 percent) than males.

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Evaluation Methods

The Abecedarian Project was evaluated in a study in which children were randomly assigned to both preschool and primary school intervention conditions.

Admission to the study took place over a five-year period, from 1972 to 1977, with four groups of approximately 28 children each being admitted during that time span. Children and families were matched on the basis of High Risk Index scores and were then randomized to preschool intervention or control groups from birth to five years. The final base sample included 111 infants from 109 families, 57 of whom were randomly assigned to the intervention group and 54 to the control group. Four children withdrew early in the study, leaving 107 children in the initial analysis sample. Data for the initial analysis were collected at 6-, 12-, 18-, 24-, 30-, 36-, 42-, 48-, and 54-month intervals.

Children in the preschool intervention and control groups were further randomized into primary school intervention and control groups. Prior to kindergarten entry, pairs of children within the preschool intervention and control groups were equated on the basis of their 48-month IQ scores, with one of each pair randomly assigned to the school-age intervention group for the first three years of school and the other to the control group. This research design resulted in four separate groups for comparison. On admission to kindergarten 96 children remained in the study, and by the endpoint data on 92 children were available. The groups consisted of children who had undergone a total of:

• Eight years of intervention -- five in preschool and three in primary school (the experimental/experimental [or EE] group with 25 children)
• Five years of intervention in preschool only (the experimental/control [or EC] group with 24 children)
• Three years of primary school intervention only (the control/experimental [or CE] group with 21 children)
• No educational intervention at all (the control/control [or CC] group with 22 children).

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Key Evaluation Findings

Preschool Program Findings

The initial study of the Abecedarian Project (Ramey and Campbell, 1984) found that the preschool intervention group scored significantly higher than the control group on the following measures:

• The Bayley Mental Development Index at 18 months (but not at 6 or 12 months)
  
• IQ at 24, 36, and 48 months
  
• The McCarthy General Cognitive Index at 42 and 54 months
  
• The McCarthy Verbal Scale Index at 30, 42, and 54 months
  
• The McCarthy Perceptual-Performance Scale Index at 42 and 54 months
  
• The McCarthy Quantitative Scale Index at 42 and 54 months
  
• The McCarthy Memory Scale Index at 54 months (but not at 42 months).
  

• Differences in IQ scores over time between the intervention and control groups were significant even when the effects of maternal IQ and home environment were controlled.
  
• The positive impact of educational day care was especially pronounced for the children whose mothers scored lowest on maternal IQ.

• The Bayley Mental Development Index at 6, 12, and 18 months
  
• IQ tests at 24, 36, and 48 months
  
• The McCarthy General Cognitive Index at 42 and 54 months.
  

• Both the preschool intervention and the primary school intervention were associated with lower grade retention. Specifically,
  • 50 percent of the children who had received no intervention at either level (the CC children) and 38 percent of the children who had received no preschool intervention but had received the primary school intervention (the CE children) had failed at least one grade in school.
    
  • In comparison, 29 percent of the children who had received the preschool intervention but not the primary school intervention (the EC children) and 16 percent of the children who had received intervention at both levels (the EE children) had failed a grade.
    
  • With regard to average-risk peers, only 13 percent of the LPS group children had failed a grade by the end of their third year in school.
• When achievement test results in reading were compared, scores were shown to have improved with increasing length of time spent in the Abecedarian program intervention. That is, the group with no intervention (CC) exhibited the poorest scores (75 percent of the group was in the bottom quartile of reading scores), while the group with eight years of intervention (EE) demonstrated the best performance (44 percent of the group was in the bottom quartile of reading scores). In comparison, 17.6 percent of children in the LPS group had scores in the bottom quartile.
  
• Similarly for math scores, 50 percent of the CC group children scored in the lowest quartile compared with 28 percent of the children in the EE group, while the EC and CE groups fell somewhere in between.

• Significantly higher average Weschler Intelligence scores for the preschool intervention groups (EE and EC) compared with the preschool control groups (CE and CC) across time, i.e., at measurements taken at 60, 78, and 96 months
  
• Educational intervention that began during the primary school grades (i.e., without the preschool intervention) was not associated with positive effects on Weschler Intelligence performance.

• The preschool intervention, but not the school-age intervention, on children’s overall Weschler Intelligence score (verbal and performance intelligence combined).
  
• The preschool intervention on Weschler verbal intelligence (e.g., vocabulary, comprehension, arithmetic) but not on Weschler performance intelligence (e.g., picture completion, object assembly, mazes)
  
• The school-age intervention on performance intelligence but not on verbal intelligence.
  
• The preschool intervention on reading, math, knowledge, and written language scores. There were no significant effects found for the school-age intervention on these measures.
  
• Grade retention, with children from the preschool intervention group retained in grade less often. During the first seven years of school, 32 percent of EE students and 38 percent of EC students were retained in grade, compared with 52 percent of CE students and 57 percent of CC students. In comparison, 9 percent of LPS students were retained in grade during the first seven years of school.

• Higher Weschler intelligence scores over time were positively related to the preschool intervention. EE and EC students had overall average intelligence scores of 99.4 and 100.2, respectively, while CE and CC students had average scores of 88.9 and 93.1, respectively.
  
• The preschool intervention group earned significantly higher scores in both reading and mathematics than did the control group.
  
• Length of intervention (i.e., eight, five, three, or zero years) had significant effects on both reading and mathematics scores, with a stronger effect found for reading.
  
• Significantly fewer preschool intervention group students were retained in grade during the first ten years of school compared with the control group students (31.2 percent compared with 54.5 percent).

• No significant differences between the preschool group and no-preschool group on any measures of crime or arrests, including age at first criminal charge.

• The full-scale Weschler intelligence test and verbal intelligence test
  
• Math and reading scores
  
• Average years of education by age 21 (12.2 versus 11.6 years)
  
• Percent attending or having attended a four-year college (35.9 percent versus 13.7%)
  
• Percent having become teenaged parents (26 percent versus 45%)
  
• Percent self-reporting marijuana use within the past 30 days (18 percent versus 39%)
  
• Percent indicating they were regular cigarette smokers (39 percent versus 55%).

• The Weschler performance intelligence test
  
• Percent graduating high school
  
• Percent currently employed
  
• Conviction and incarceration rates
  
• Use of illegal drugs (other than marijuana)
  
• Binge drinking or use of alcohol in the past 30 days.
  

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Probable Implementers

Public and private child care programs and elementary schools

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Funding

Early phases of the research were primarily funded by a series of grants from:

• The Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Branch of the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development
  
• The Department of Human Resources of the State of North Carolina.

• The Maternal and Child Health Bureau of the Department of Health and Human Services
  
• The National Institute on Early Childhood Development and Education of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, Department of Education
  
• The David and Lucile Packard Foundation
  
• The Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center.

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Implementation Detail

Program Design

• The day care center operated from 7:45 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., five days per week, 50 weeks per year. Free transportation was provided to families if needed.
  
• Infants up to walking age were cared for in a nursery area, while toddlers and preschoolers were grouped in other areas according to age and developmental levels.
  
• Families were encouraged to participate in parent group sessions on topics related to parenting and family development.
  
• Social workers were available to provide assistance to parents with issues such as housing and social services as well as personal counseling.
  
• Pediatric care was provided by a team of on-site research nurses and pediatricians.

• The curriculum for the first three years of life was developed by Sparling and Lewis (1981). The curriculum consists of language, motor, social, and cognitive skill development, and these items were individually presented to each child. With increasing age, the curriculum was sometimes presented in small groups.
  
• After the age of 3, other standard preschool curricula were introduced in the day care center, such as the Peabody Early Experiences Kit (Dunn et al., 1976), Bridge-to-Reading (Greenberg and Epstein, 1973), the GOAL math program (Karnes, 1973), the My Friends and Me social skills program (Davis, 1977), and the Wallach and Wallach (1976) pre-phonics reading program.
  
• The preschool program focused on the development of communication skills, and each child was conversed with and read to daily. Derived from programs developed by Tough (1976) and Blank (1973), the program emphasized teachers’ informative and nondirective verbal interchanges with the children.

• No specific curriculum was used for the school-age intervention, as the content depended on the curricula used by the local public schools.
  
• The resource teachers met with classroom teachers to learn which concepts (in mathematics and reading) were currently being taught in school, after which they designed enjoyable and compatible home activities. The resource teacher discussed these activities with the children’s families and encouraged parents to use them with their children on a regular basis.
  
• In a typical year, approximately 60 different learning activities were designed for each child. The average amount of time parents reported working with their children on the activities was about 15 minutes a day.

• In the Abecedarian Project, the preschool staff included a director, 12 teachers and aides, and an administrative staff. Teacher-child ratios began at one-to-three in the nursery and gradually increased to one-to-six in the last preschool year.
  
• The teaching staff varied in their professional background from those with graduate degrees in early childhood education to paraprofessionals, but all had had extensive experience in working with young children.
  
• In-service training and technical assistance were provided to the educational staff through periodic on-site programs by educational, psychological, and pediatric consultants, and by teachers’ participation in local and national educational conferences and workshops.
  
• For the school-age intervention, the resource teachers were graduate-level teachers with backgrounds in primary education who worked with approximately 12 children each per year.
  

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Issues to Consider

This program received a "proven" rating. The evaluation of the program used rigorous standards, including a randomized experimental design and longitudinal follow-up, and the participants experienced significant and sizeable gains across most of the cognitive and academic performance outcomes.

Although the Abecedarian Project did not set out to select at-risk families based on race, 98 percent of the resulting group of children was African-American. In addition, 83 percent of the families included in the intervention group were female-headed and were otherwise characterized by extreme poverty, unstable employment, and low educational attainment for mothers and fathers. It is unclear whether similar results would be obtained with other types of families.

In addition, the experiment took place in a small, relatively affluent university town with a wide range of human services agencies including public hospitals, programs providing housing, fuel subsidies, food supplements, and job training. Thus, a relatively high degree of social, fiscal, and material supports were already available to participants (both intervention and control), and results may not be the same in cities with markedly different features.

Besides the main finding of significant effects for the Abecedarian program as a whole at enhancing long-term IQ and academic achievement, another important conclusion to be drawn from the evaluations is that five years of the Abecedarian preschool intervention is almost equally as effective as five years of the preschool program with a three-year primary school follow-up, and definitely more effective than the Abecedarian primary school intervention alone.

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Example Sites

The Abecedarian Project has been implemented in a single site in North Carolina.

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Contact Information

Frances Campbell, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist
Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center
University of North Carolina
Campus Box 8180
105 Smith Level Road
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-8180
(919) 966-4529
Fax: (919) 966-7532
Campbell@mail.fpg.unc.edu

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Available Resources

The Carolina Abecedarian Project homepage, from the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: http://www.fpg.unc.edu/%7Eabc/index.htm

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Bibliography

Blank, Marion, “Teaching Learning in the Preschool: A Dialogue Approach,”       Columbus, Ohio: Merrill, 1973.  

Burchinal, Margaret, Marvin Lee, and Craig T. Ramey, “Type of Daycare and Preschool Intellectual Development in Disadvantaged Children,”    Child Development,   Vol. 60, 1989, pp. 128–137.  

Campbell, Frances A., and Craig T. Ramey, “Cognitive and School Outcomes for High-Risk African-American Students at Middle Adolescence: Positive Effects of Early Intervention,”    American Educational Research Journal,   Vol. 32, No. 4, 1995, pp. 743–772.  

Campbell, Frances A., and Craig T. Ramey, “Effects of Early Intervention on Intellectual and Academic Achievement: A Follow-up Study of Children from Low-Income Families,”    Child Development,   Vol. 65, 1994, pp. 684-698.  

Campbell, Frances A., Craig T. Ramey, Elizabeth Pungello, Joseph Sparling, and Shari Miller-Johnson, “Early Childhood Education: Young Adult Outcomes from the Abecedarian Project,”    Applied Developmental Science,   Vol. 6, No. 1, 2002, pp. 42–57.  

Clarke, Stevens H., and Frances A. Campbell, “Can Intervention Early Prevent Crime Later? The Abecedarian Project Compared with Other Programs,”    Early Childhood Research Quarterly,   Vol. 13, No. 2, 1998, pp. 31–343.  

Davis, Duane Q.,   My Friends and Me,   Circle Pines, Minn.: American Guidance Service, 1977.  

Dunn, Lloyd M., Lillie T. Chun, Doris C. Crowell, Leota M. Dunn, Lynne Grossman Halevi, and Eleanor R. Yackel,    Peabody Early Experiences Kit,   Circle Pines, Minn.: American Guidance Service, 1976.  

Greenberg, Polly, and Bea Epstein,   Bridge-to-Reading: Curriculum for Pre-School, Kindergarten, and First Grade,   Morristown, N.J.: General Learning Corp, 1973.   

Horacek, H. Joseph, Craig T. Ramey, Frances A. Campbell, Kathleen P. Hoffmann, and Robert H. Fletcher, “Predicting School Failure and Assessing Early Intervention with High-Risk Children,”   American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry,   Vol. 26, 1987, pp. 758–763.  

Karnes Merle B.,   GOAL Program: Mathematical Concepts,   Springfield, Mass.: Milton-Bradley, 1973.  

Martin, Sandra L., Craig T. Ramey, and Sharon Ramey, “The Prevention of Intellectual Impairment in Children of Impoverished Families: Findings of a Randomized Trial of Educational Day Care,”   American Journal of Public Health,   Vol. 80, No. 7, 1990, pp. 844–847.  

Masse, Leonard N., and W. Steven Barnett,   A Benefit-Cost Analysis of the Abecedarian Early Childhood Intervention,   New Brunswick, N.J.: National Institute for Early Education Research, 2002.  

Ramey, Craig T., and Frances A. Campbell, “Poverty, Early Childhood Education, and Academic Competence: The Abecedarian Experiment,” in Aletha C. Huston, ed.;   Children in Poverty: Child Development and Public Policy,   New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 190-221.   

Ramey, Craig T., and Frances A. Campbell, “Preventive Education for High-Risk Children: Cognitive Consequences of the Carolina Abecedarian Project,”   American Journal of Mental Deficiency,   Vol. 88, No. 5, 1984, pp. 515–523.  

Sparling, Joseph, and Isabelle Lewis, “Learning Games for the First Three Years: A Program for Parent/Center Partnership,”      New York: Walker Educational Book Corp, 1981.  

Tough, Joan,   Listening to Children Talking,   London, U.K.: Word Lock Educational, 1976.  

Wallach, Lisa, and Michael A. Wallach,   The Teaching of All Children to Read Kit,   Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976.   

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Last Reviewed

August 2003

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