Research studies that have focused on the educational effectiveness of "Sesame Street" are reviewed, and a summary and synthesis of research results are presented. Educational effectiveness is defined as effectiveness in areas related to beginning schooling and the early years of the child's formal education. From the more than 100 empirical studies of the impact of "Sesame Street," 16 were chosen because they collected data on individual children. On the whole, the studies with the strongest designs indicate that "Sesame Street" had a significant positive impact on the children in terms of the variables measured and relative to the children in other groups studied. In addition, the effect was large enough to have shown up in studies with very small samples. The research studies reviewed in this report indicate that "Sesame Street" has had a significant positive impact on the pre-reading and school-readiness skills of children in the United States, Australia, Canada, Israel, and Mexico. An appendix contains summaries of all 16 studies. (Contains 35 references.) (SLD)