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tion: "Policymakers should not assume that the widespread

enrollment of low-income children and families in early

childhood programs will enable children living in poverty

to perform later in school and life at the levels reached

by more advantaged [mainstream] children."68

Finally, Perry differed significantly from regular

preschool programs or what we could expect to see in uni-

versal preschool programs.  According to Zigler, "It is

very unlikely that a preschool program mounted in the typ-

ical public school will be of the quality represented by

the Perry Preschool Project."69   Large-scale programs tend

to have smaller effects than model programs, in part

because model programs have smaller classes, more educated

and enthusiastic staff, more staff members, and more

attention and supervision per child.70

The Carolina Abecedarian Project

The Abecedarian Project was launched in 1972 by

researchers at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development

Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  The project

involved 111 children deemed at risk on the basis of their

parents' income, education, and other factors.  The mean

age at entry was 4.4 months.  The infants were placed in

an eight-hour-a-day, five-day-per-week, year-round educa-

tional daycare center.  They received free medical care,

dietary supplements, and social service support for their

families.71  From ages five through eight, half of the

children from both the experimental and the control groups

were given extra help in school and at home by specially

trained teachers.72

At every age from one and a half to four and a half

years, children treated in preschool significantly

outscored the control group on measures of intellectual

development.73   At age eight, test data showed significant

positive effects of preschool treatment on intellectual

test scores.74   A follow-up test at age 12 showed that the

effects of preschool treatment on children's performance on

intellectual tests and on reading and mathematics tests

had been maintained into early adolescence.  As the

Abecedarian Project researchers note, "This represented a

longer maintenance of preschool intervention gains than has

typically been reported from previous projects concerned

with similar children and families."75

Most recently, researchers examined the children's

intellectual and academic performance at age 15 and found

that students who had received preschool treatment scored