Success in Early Intervention: The Chicago Child-Parent Centers.

Arthur J. Reynolds

Abstract

Success in Early Intervention focuses on the Child-Parent Center (CPC) program in Chicago, the second oldest (after Head Start) federally funded early childhood intervention program.  Begun in 1967, the program currently operates out of twenty-four centers, which are located in proximity to the elementary schools they serve.  The CPC program’s unique features include mandatory parental involvement and a single, sustained educational system that spans preschool through the third grade.

Central to this study is a 1986 cohort of nearly twelve hundred CPC children and a comparison group of low income children whose subsequent activities, challenges, and achievements are followed through the age of fifteen.  The lives of these children amply demonstrate the positive long-term educational and social consequences of the CPC program.

University of Nebraska Press