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higher on reading and mathematics tests and had fewer

instances of grade retention and assignments to special

education than did the control group.76  The average IQ

score advantage for children treated in preschool was 4.6

points.77  The researchers hope that benefits from the pre-

school program will be retained through adulthood:

"Extrapolating from long-term outcomes of the Perry

Preschool Project, it is the hope of the Abecedarian

investigators that the benefits found through mid-adoles-

cence in our sample will eventually be reflected in better

life circumstances in adulthood."78

As with the Perry project, there is no consensus on

what components of the program were responsible for the

children's gains, although it has been suggested that the

early cognitive gains were associated with greater mastery

of academics, which led, in turn, to better performance

thereafter.79   The findings also provide support for an

intensity or duration hypothesis, which predicts that

longer, more intense programs result in the most advan-

tages for children.80

The project investigators conclude:

The long-term results from the Abecedarian

Project underscore the need for high quality

learning environments for impoverished infants,

toddlers, and preschoolers . . . these results

should not, however, be construed as proof that

out-of-home care was the key element. . . . It

is quite likely that this type of early intel-

lectual enhancement can occur in a variety of

settings. . . . The key factor is likely to be

that the environment was appropriately responsive

to the needs of the developing child and provid-

ed continuing experiences from which enhanced

intellectual development and literacy and mathe-

matics skills emerged.81

The Abecedarian Project has received a fair share of

criticism, most notably from Herman H. Spitz, former

director of the Research Department at the E. R. Johnstone

Training and Research Center in Bordentown, New Jersey.82

Spitz was concerned that the project personnel presented

certain results in ways that bias the findings in favor of

Abecedarian.  For example, by combining the IQ findings of

the four cohorts studied, the researchers concluded that

the intervention raised IQ.  However, they neglected to

report that scores improved only for two of the four

groups.  In fact, for the third and fourth cohorts, the

experimental group actually lost 3.68 IQ points more than