Sac Bee

A10 Thursday, April 23, 1998 .....                                                                                                     12H

 

> NATION

Early-childhood aid praised.

Investment helps communities as well as kids, Rand study says

By Melissa Healy Los Angeles Times

 

WASHINGTON - In the most comprehensive study to date of programs designed to improve the lives of poor young children, the Rand Corp. has found that invest­ments in the first five years of childhood yield substantial and lasting benefits not only to the children and their families, but al­so to their communities.         .

 

Reviewing nine small-scale pro­grams, many of them short-lived, Rand found that most of them im­proved the participating chil­dren's subsequent academic achievement, and that several de­creased the likelihood the chil­dren would grow up to lead lives of crime. For every dollar spent on the early-childhood programs, so­ciety later saved several dollars on welfare, special education and criminal justice.

 

Some participants, Rand found, continued to benefit from the in­tervention decades after taking part in the programs. Positive ef­fects of the High/Scope Perry Pre-­school Project, operated in Ypsi­lanti, Mich., from 1962 to 1967, were still evident 27 years later.

 

The program of preschool and home visits, which targeted Afri­can American children with low IQs from low-income families, net­ted savings of $25,000 per partici­pant by increasing each child's later earnings (and tax contribu­tions) and reducing the govern­ment's spending on welfare, edu­cation and criminal justice.

 

Rand, based in Santa Monica, measured the programs' positive effects by comparing participants with similar children who did not receive the special services.

 

Another program, which in­volved 32 visits by specially trained nurses to the homes of low-income single mothers during a child's first two years, yielded close to $20,000 of savings per child. The Elmira Prenatal/Early Infancy Project ran from 1978-1982 in Elmira, N.Y., and has since been reproduced in Memphis, Tenn., and Denver.

 

"There are a number of proven models out there" that can be adapted to a community's circum­stances and needs, said economist Lynn A. Karoly, the study's princi­pal author. "The bottom line is, we believe there is much that is hope­ful in this area, but it is important to proceed with caution.

 

The Rand study suggested that early-childhood intervention pro­grams are most likely to yield savings when they target the neediest children.

 

Karoly said that the most suc­cessful programs appeared to share three traits: They offered intensive services to children ­and sometimes to their mothers as well - often over two or more years; they included a well-devel­oped curriculum that changed with a child's needs and. abilities; and they drew on highly trained staffs that were closely monitored.