Closing the achievement gap with baby talk
(NPR): In the mid-1960s, Betty Hart was a graduate student in child development working at a preschool in Kansas City, Kan. The preschool was for poor kids — reallypoor kids. Many came from troubled housing projects nearby. But Hart was determined not to see their limitations, only their potential: Hart’s job was to teach these underprivileged kids how to speak like the children of her professors at the University of Kansas. For years, she and university professor Todd Risley worked tirelessly toward this goal, doing everything they could think of to expand the vocabularies of these 4-year-olds. The idea was that if the kids could speak with the fluency of their wealthier peers across town, they might go on to similar academic achievements. The problem, they realized, was that they weren’t getting to the kids early enough. Which led to this question: If age 4 was too late, when was early enough?
Category: Health
