ABSTRACT
This chapter reports on the results of a collaborative project conducted by the Consortium for Longitudinal Studies on the long-term effects of preschool educational programs. The Consortium was founded and was chaired by Irving Lazar, of Cornell, and the author was the member in charge of joint data analysis. In 1975, when the Consortium was started, the best-known study on the effects of preschool programs was the 1969 Westinghouse Report on Project Head Start. However, the author did find small but statistically significant indirect effects of the preschool programs on both simple employment and adapting to mainstream society. Thus the data do not support the contention that preschool programs are more valuable for one kind of child than for another. The Weikart project performed a cost-benefit analysis to assess whether the amount of help is great enough to justify the cost, and concluded that it was.
