The Discovery Kindergarten Program: A longitudinal comparison of the academic achievement, school adaptation, and social and emotional behaviors of two groups of high risk students

his research compares the long-term effects of two preschool curriculum models--a child-centered cognitive-developmental model and a didactic curriculum mastery model--on two groups of high-risk kindergarten students. At the beginning of the school year, all entering students participated in a comprehensive kindergarten screening. As a result of this screening 44 students were identified as "at-risk" of early school failure and randomly assigned to either the experimental group utilizing the cognitive developmental curriculum or to a regular kindergarten class utilizing a curriculum-mastery model. At the end of the intervention year, all students were post-tested and routine school procedure followed for recommended promotion or retention. No further interventions, other than year-end evaluations, were conducted for either group.;Thirty-six students (82% of the original sample) were located and data on them collected near and the end of each of the two follow-up years. Long-term program effectiveness was measured using three dependent variables: academic achievement, adaptation to a school environment, and social and emotional behaviors. The data from both follow-up phases were analyzed using three separate repeated measure ANOVA. No significant difference was obtained between the groups on the measure of academic achievement; however, the experimental group demonstrated significant academic growth (p...