The The Carolina Abecedarian Project was a controlled scientific experiment that was conducted in 1972 in North Carolina , United States , by the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute to study the potential benefits of early childhood education for poor children to enhance school readiness. It has been found that in their earliest school years, poor children lag behind others, suggesting the fact that they were ill-prepared for schooling. The Abecedarian project was inspired by the fact that few other early childhood programs could provide a sufficiently well-controlled environment to determine the effectiveness of early childhood training.
111 infants born between 1972 and 1977 participated in this project, 57 of which were given high-quality childcare while another 54 acted as a control group. 98% of the children who participated in this experiment were African-American , with the average age of participants being 4.4 months upon participation.
Follow-up assessment of the participants involved in the project has since been completed. Progress was monitored at ages 3, 4, 5, 6.5, 8, 12, 15 and 21.
The project concluded that high quality, educational childcare from early infancy was therefore of utmost importance.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Abecedarian Early Intervention Project.