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A Study of Classroom Literacy Interventions and Outcomes in Even Start

NCEE 2008-4028
September 2008

Summary

Prior studies have established that Even Start does not have statistically significant impacts on children’s emergent literacy or on parent literacy. The CLIO study investigated whether the implementation of research‐based, literacy‐focused curricula would improve literacy outcomes for Even Start children and parents. Although there were positive impacts on some of the literacy supports in preschool classrooms, on time spent on child literacy in parenting education classes, on parenting skills, and on children’s social competence, there were no statistically significant impacts on children’s language and literacy. There was no evidence that the failure to find impacts on these core outcomes was due to a lack of fidelity in the treatment classrooms or cross‐over in the control classrooms.