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Re-visiting Perry preschool: The story behind the story

hanford.jpg Anyone involved in covering pre-kindergarten issues at some point hears a reference to the Perry Preschool study, which examined the lives of 123 African American children who were born in poverty. The study was the first of its kind to quantify the impact a high-quality preschool program had on the lives of children, and it is still widely quoted.
Over the years, EarlyStories has heard countless references to the study, but never really thought more deeply about what the actual experience was like for the people involved in it before listening to Emily Hanford’s excellent broadcast on American RadioWorks. Hanford’s “Early Lessons,” report should be required for any journalist — or anyone, really — with an interest in preschool.
Hanford, a producer at American Radio Works, acknowledges she didn’t know much about preschool issues, or about the Perry Preschool Project until she tackled the same question the study attempted to answer: Can preschool boost IQ scores and prevent children from failing in school?
In three visits to Yipslanti, Michigan, where the study took place, Hanford grew fascinated with both the history of the study and the profound questions it attempted to raise about equity in education. She learned a great deal about David Weikart, the Perry preschool founder who died in 2003. Weikart started the Perry preschool in 1958, according to Hanford, “in response to frustration with what he describes in his memoir as “the pace of needed changes in a small, local school system.”
Hanford tracked down at least three of the teachers at the school, who share stories about visits to apple orchards and other ways the children learned about the world around them. The Perry preschool, Hanford’s report notes, focused “on cognitive development – stimulating children’s brains, increasing their vocabulary, teaching them letters and numbers.”
Hanford’s piece is filled with powerful interviews and descriptions of what life was like at the school: “I would do whatever we needed to do,” former Perry teacher Evelyn Moore told Hanford, “to prove that this many African-American children were not retarded.”
Hanford noted in an interview with EarlyStories: “This is history that is going to go away soon. “The researcher is dead. The teachers will be gone — most are gone already — and even the kids are going to be gone, so it was a great thing to capture this history at a moment in time.”
Hanford had not heard of the Perry study before she began the project, made possible with support from the Spencer Foundation which investigates ways in which education can be improved around the world and believes research is part of the equation.
“I literally spent a month just reading and talking to people and trying to figure out what education research has had an impact on policy,” Hanford said. “I was more interested in the question of how research effects policy…and whether and how research informs public policy in a positive way. It’s an open question — sometimes research doesn’t do what it should.”
A transcript of Hanford’s project is available here, and the program can also be downloaded.


POSTED BY ON November 11, 2009
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Comments & Trackbacks (1) | Post a Comment

Ferko Ory MD, PhD
December 1, 2009
at 5:02 pm

Dear Madam/Sir,
The article/radio program by Emily Hanford is
very important to us in The Netherlands. We
have in Almere, a fast growing town with many immigrant children, the same poroblems as you had in 1960 in the Perry Preschool program. Unfortunately, the curriculum of the original Perry Preschool program is lost as the High Scope people have changed the entire program.
We would be very grateful to come into contact with the original teachers, such as Mrs. Evelyn Moore or Louise Derman-Sparks to learn from them what they actually did.
I would be most grateful to get a reaction from Mrs. Hanford or anyone whou could help us.
Thanking you in advacne,
with warm regards,
Ferko Öry Md PhD
Public Health pediatrician
TNO Quality of Life
Leiden, The Netherlands

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