New York University School of Medicine

The well-documented achievement gap for low-income, minority children is already present in kindergarten, with students who do not perform at grade level early on unlikely to catch up. ParentCorps is a family-focused, school-based intervention that aims to buffer the adverse effects of poverty on child development by engaging and supporting parents and teachers at school entry. An IES-funded cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) compared schools randomly assigned to implement ParentCorps...

Experiences during early childhood play a critical role in shaping the academic trajectories of students throughout elementary school and into middle and high school. For Latino students, who are at high risk for high school dropout, these experiences unfold within a unique cultural context defined by immutable factors such as country of origin and immigrant status. Yet within this context, culturally specific processes at the child, family and school levels, such as cultural socialization, ...

Ethnic minority students from schools in disadvantaged, urban neighborhoods are at high risk for problems in school including grade retention, academic underachievement, and school dropout. Prospective longitudinal studies indicate that behavior problems in early childhood, especially physical aggression, predict poor academic achievement. This suggests that prevention of aggression in early childhood may lead to higher academic attainment, yet experimental studies addressing this important ...

The purpose of this project was to test ParentCorps, a universal, preventive school- and family-based mental health program for pre-kindergarten children from poor, urban communities. The program aims to prevent conduct problems and improve academic achievement among children by promoting effective parenting and teaching strategies and parent-school involvement at the transition to kindergarten.