Designed to gather evidence on the effectiveness of an intensive year of specific curriculum intervention on a severely disadvantaged population, the study involved 10 groups of approximately 14 psychosocially disadvantaged 5-year-olds each, for whom Stanford-Binet IQ scores were 50-85. Over 3 years, three groups were exposed to a diagnostic experimental kindergarten curriculum, three groups to a nonexperimental kindergarten, and four remained at home with no formal program. The experimental program included an intensive, structured, cognitively oriented curriculum designed to remedy observed cognitive and affective deficits of individual children. Personal-social adjustment, language development, and motor development aspects of the program are detailed, including sample lessons. Results showed the experimental program more effective than the regular kindergarten in ameliorating effects of severe psychosocial deprivation among the subjects, with at-home residence least effective in improving intelligence level, language, personal-social adjustment, and motor skills. A 1 and 2-year followup of adjustment to regular school more often supported than rejected the hypothesis that experimentals would perform better than the regular group, which would do better than the at-home group, in all areas except motor skills. (KW)