The Challenge of the HighScope Perry Preschool Study

Abstract

HIGHSCOPE PERRY PRESCHOOL STUDY METHODOLOGY The HighScope Perry Preschool Study is a scientific experiment that has identified the short- and long-term effects of a high-quality preschool education program for young children living in poverty (Schweinhart et al., 2005). From 1962 through 1967, David Weikart and his colleagues in the Ypsilanti, Michigan, school district operated the preschool program for young children to help them avoid school failure and related problems. They identified a sample of 123 African American children living in poverty who were assessed to be at high risk of school failure. They randomly assigned 58 of them to a group that received a high-quality preschool program at ages 3 and 4 and 65 to a group that received no preschool program. Because of the random-assignment strategy, children's preschool experience is the best explanation for subsequent group differences in their performance over the years. Project staff collected data annually on both groups from ages 3 through 11 and again at ages 14, 15, 19, 27, and 40, with a missing data rate of only 6% across all measures. This study has followed the lives of 123 persons who originally lived in the attendance area of the Ypsilanti school district's Perry Elementary School, a predominantly African American neighborhood in a low-income part of town. Project staff identified a pool of children for the study sample from a census of the families of students then attending the school, referrals from neighborhood groups, and door-to-door canvassing.