Previous research has demonstrated that attending center care is associated with cognitive benefits for young children. However, little is known about the ideal age for children to enter such care or the "right" amount of time, both weekly and yearly, for children to attend center programs. Using national data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal…

Reading is an important part of the modern child's environment. The number of things one must know about in order to understand this world has been enormously increased. No one can hope to learn of them all through first-hand experiences. Printed matter, which preserves and facilitates widespread distribution of knowledge, becomes a necessity. To…

There has been an explosion of knowledge over the last few years about how children's earliest experiences set the stage for success in learning to read and write. Most experts agree that children who reach kindergarten with certain characteristics--an interest in books, a fondness for conversation, a curiosity about the world--are more likely to…

Early literacy experiences play an important role in later literacy skills and school achievement. Communities offer early literacy experiences in a variety of venues to meet the diverse needs of families. The author of this article provides four vignettes illustrating community-based early literacy activities: (1) private group classes such as…

This study examined maternal racial identity and its relations to maternal depression, maternal age, maternal parenting behavior, and 5-year-old children's social and cognitive outcomes. Participants included 62 African American mother-child dyads enrolled in the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project. Mothers completed measures on their…

It has been acknowledged that children from poverty begin school missing many of the prerequisites for school success. The 1963 US initiative, Head Start, is the major federal program aimed at providing children in poverty the experiences necessary to start school on an equal footing with their same-age peers. This article uses data from the Early…

This bulletin is the first in a series of summaries of research conducted in reading from 1955 to 1960. The publication includes both published and unpublished research during the 5-year period. The published research has been compiled largely from studies reported in educational periodicals. The unpublished research was made available through a…