Cognitive Development, *Compensatory Education

The language, intellectual, and social deficits of economically deprived children are the targets of a 4-year study designed to follow the educational progress of a group of deprived children from preschool through grade 3. This document reports on the preschool year, the first phase of the longitudinal study, which investigated whether or not there is a significant intelligence test score difference between (1) children who attended a 9-month Head Start program and children who were eligible but did not attend, (2) children who attended the program and children who were not eligible, and (3) children before they attended the program and the same children after the program. The subjects for the 3 groups in this study were 108 rural, 4-year-old children (48 male, 60 female). The Head Start intervention emphasized language development, concept learning, socialization, and psychomotor development. The intelligence test used was the 1960 Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale. The children who attended the program scored significantly higher at posttest, than at pretest and significantly higher than both groups who did not attend the Head Start program. (MH