Study: Chicago early-ed program pays off

WASHINGTON — More than 20 years later, educational attainment is higher and felony arrests are lower for the alumni of a Chicago early-intervention program for low-income children.

The enrollees, now in their late 20s, are also less likely to describe themselves as depressed and more likely to have health insurance, according to a follow-up study released this week.

According to co-author Arthur Reynolds, a child-development professor at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, the gains in terms of reduced social-welfare costs have far exceeded the program's $5,000 per student, per year cost to the Chicago public-school system.

"By the time they're 65, a conservative estimate would be a 10-to-1 gain," Reynolds said, considering reduced societal costs for remedial education, health care and incarceration.

The findings, in the current issue of the Archive of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, a peer-reviewed journal published by the American Medical Association, are the first to affirm the long-term value of a large public early-childhood-enrichment program.

Since 1967, Child-Parent Centers in neighborhood schools have provided comprehensive education, health, job and family services throughout the school year for kids and their parents. Most children begin the program at age 3 or 4 and can receive help until they're in the second or third grade.

Its teachers have four-year college degrees and special training in early-childhood education, and parents are expected to participate in classrooms and on field trips.

The cost was about $2,000 more per pupil than the full-time regular kindergarten and federal Head Start programs that a comparable sample of kids attended, Reynolds said. All lived in the poorest school district on Chicago's West Side.

The survey of 1,539 Child-Parent Center alumni found them to be doing better in these ways:

• High-school completion: 71 percent vs. 62 percent for nonparticipants.

• Felony arrests: 17 percent vs. 21 percent for nonparticipants.

• Incarceration: 21 percent vs. 26 percent for nonparticipants.

• Full-time employment: 43 percent vs. 36 percent for nonparticipants.

• Self-described symptoms of depression: 13 percent vs. 17 percent for nonparticipants.

• Health insurance: 70 percent covered vs. 62 percent of nonparticipants.

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, a unit of the National Institutes of Health, paid for the study.