The current study examines the organization of attention skills across the preschool year before kindergarten, and tests how distinct attention subcomponents predict early academic skills in a sample of low-income children (n = 99). Children completed well-validated attention tasks in fall at 4.5 years old and spring at 5 years old, capturing the…

Although research has shown fade-out of the cognitive benefits of classroom-based preschool interventions, less is known regarding the durability of social-emotional impacts. This study examines the extent to which the multicomponent Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP) intervention lowered risk of internalizing, externalizing, attention, and…

Based on theoretically driven models, the Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP) targeted low-income children's school readiness through the mediating mechanism of self-regulation. The CSRP is a multicomponent, cluster-randomized efficacy trial implemented in 35 Head Start-funded classrooms (N = 602 children). The analyses confirm that the CSRP…

Over 21% of children in the United States today are poor, and the income gap between our nation's richest and poorest children has widened dramatically over time. This article considers children's self-regulation as a key mediating mechanism through which poverty has deleterious consequences for their later life outcomes. Evidence from field…

The present study evaluated the efficacy of a multicomponent, classroom-based intervention in reducing preschoolers' behavior problems. The Chicago School Readiness Project model was implemented in 35 Head Start classrooms using a clustered-randomized controlled trial design. Results indicate significant treatment effects (ds = 0.53-0.89) for…

Research Findings: This study examines the theory of change of the Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP), testing a sequence of theory-derived mediating mechanisms that include the quality of teacher-child relationships and children's self-regulation. The CSRP is a multicomponent teacher and classroom-focused intervention, and its…

In this poster presentation, the authors examine the impact of Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP) on students' academic achievement in elementary school. First, they provide upper- and lower-bound estimates of the impact of CSRP on students' academic achievement, taking into account their subsequent nonrandom selection into higher versus…

Investments in early childhood programs are widely viewed as a promising strategy to improve the future educational achievement of disadvantaged young children. However, it can be difficult for teachers to maintain program quality if children in the classroom display challenging behaviors. For example, when some children act out aggressively or…

This paper investigates the socioeconomic contexts navigated by low-income children enrolled in the Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP), as they made the transition from preschool to elementary school. The authors focus on the following two questions. First, do families' exposure to poverty-related risks (i.e., low income, maternal…

Preschool teachers' job stressors have received increasing attention but have been understudied in the literature. We investigated the impacts of a classroom-based intervention, the Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP), on teachers' perceived job stressors and confidence, as indexed by their perceptions of job control, job resources, job…

This paper investigates the long-term impact of participation in the Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP) during the Head Start year on children's behavioral outcomes at the end of their Kindergarten year. The primary questions addressed in the paper are: (1) What is the experimental impact of CSRP on two-year change (from Fall Head Start to…

A primary aim of the Chicago School Readiness Project was to improve teachers' emotionally supportive classroom practices in Head Start-funded preschool settings. Using a clustered randomized controlled trial (RCT) design, the Chicago School Readiness Project randomly assigned a treatment versus control condition to 18 Head Start sites, which…

Past research on school-level factors that predict children's development has focused largely on associations between a limited number of characteristics, such as school size and school resources, and children's academic achievement. Few studies take a more comprehensive look at the measurement of school climate or examine its relationship to…

This paper examines complex models of the associations between family income, material hardship, parenting, and school readiness among White, Black, and Hispanic 6-year-olds, using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K). It is critical to test the universality of such complex models, particularly given their…

This report presents results from the Newark, New Jersey, site of the Foundations of Learning (FOL) Demonstration, an intervention and random assignment evaluation of a curriculum designed to target children's behavior and emotional adjustment through the training of preschool teachers. The demonstration adopted the model used by CSRP (formerly…