A Literature Review of Early Childhood Intervention Programs

With the ever-increasing educational demands in the United States, large discrepancies across socioeconomic classes in regards to early childhood development and academic achievement have become evident (Ramey & Ramey, 2004). The purpose of this project is to provide an overview of early childhood intervention programs that have been developed in an attempt to address these discrepancies. This literature review discusses the framework and outcomes measures of three programs that were implemented on a national or state-wide level: Head Start, the ABC Project, and Project CARE. Given that there have been dozens of initiatives rolled out to address early development deficiencies in the poor, this review serves solely as a brief outline of early intervention programs as a whole. To complete this literature review, an annotated bibliography consisting of 10-15 pieces of literature concerning early childhood interventions was created. From this bibliography, the various subtopics/themes found in the literature were organized to create an outline for the direction of the paper. Upon outline completion, the articles were studied further and summarized to produce a review of the early childhood intervention literature selected. The studies’ outcome measures provide evidence that participation in early intervention programs positively impacts children’s development and their parents’ ability to support their development so that they are more likely to enter kindergarten with the skills necessary to succeed on an academic and socio-emotional level (Puma et al, 2010; Ramey et al., 1985; Ramey & Ramey, 2004). These findings have implications that the constructive influence of early intervention programs reach beyond formal education to the general wellbeing of the families involved