As I mentioned, IMO, the best way to help disadvantaged kids would be to give them free nutritious food at school twice a day starting in kindergarten.
This sounds very nice and all that, but how about some back-up?
Google "malnutrition affects intelligence" or something similar on
Google or
Google Scholar.
Malnutrition In Early Years Leads To Low IQ And Later Antisocial Behavior, USC Study Finds. or
Effects of nutrition on learning One hit from Google scholar says a lot: "Many policymakers propose early childhood nutrition programs as a way to increase students’ academic achievement. This paper investigates the nutrition–learning nexus using a unique longitudinal data set that follows a large sample of Filipino children from birth until the end of their primary education. We find that better nourished children perform significantly better in school, partly because they enter school earlier and thus have more time to learn but mostly because of greater learning productivity per year of schooling. Our cost–benefit analysis suggests that a dollar invested in an early childhood nutrition program in a developing country could potentially return at least three dollars worth of gains in academic achievement, and perhaps much more." (Glewwe et al Journal of Public Economics 2000; 81:345).
There are reams and reams of studies supporting this idea. I also mentioned the importance of making high-quality prenatal care available to poor people.
A much larger study repeated the Abcedarian project and
found that early gains had been lost by age five in the target children (low birthweight). They also found a positive correlation with high-birthweight children, but it was after the fact, and they hadn't made this prediction when they started the study. Thus they probably didn't control for it properly during study design. I believe that this is a statistical no-no (could be wrong).
AFAIK, Abcedarian project wasn't a randomized study; I'm not sure. If it wasn't, there could have been a bias that affected the results (another statistical no-no). It was definitely small.
I'm not saying that early intervention isn't worthwhile. I'm just saying that the evidence I've seen doesn't support the dramatic claims that some people make.
Here's more information on both Perry and Abcedarian. [/quote]
