C Cybele Raver - US grants

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The principal aim of the proposed research is to improve low-income preschool-aged children's school readiness by decreasing their risk for behavioral problems through a set of classroom-based interventions. The following studies will determine whether emotionally- and behaviorally-focused interventions in preschool have a significant long-term impact an children's academic achievement in 1st grade (as measured by standardized tests. school records, and teacher reports) as well as on short-term language, pre-literacy, emotional, and behavioral outcomes, in the preschool and Kindergarten years. In the proposed research, eight Head Start sites in Chicago, IL (with 640 children enrolled in 32 classrooms) will be randomly assigned to four conditions of varying levels of treatment intensity. Classrooms' current use of an emotions-based curriculum offers a low-intensity "control" condition against which mare programmatically intensive interventions will be tested. In a second, moderate-intensity "teacher training/classroom quality" intervention condition, teachers will receive extensive training in effective management of children's disruptive behaviors, while also learning the skills support lower-risk children in developing emotional and behavioral self-control (Webster-Stratton, at al, 2002). In a third, high-intensity "cumulative stress/mental health consultation" intervention condition, mental health consultants will be placed in Head Start classrooms for two days a week, so that children's risk of emotional, behavioral, and academic difficulty can be reduced through appropriate service delivery, support and referral within early educational settings (Donahue, at al. 2000). A fourth, lower-cost, "teacher's aide" control condition will also be included in the proposed study design, to more conservatively estimate the impact of mental health consultation from the additional staffing that such a model offers. In addition, it is expected that the intervention's effect sizes will be substantially affected by two moderating influences, including 1) family and community levels of cumulative risk, and 2) the degree to which programs are implemented, conceptualized as "dosage" of treatment administered in each setting. In short, which of these intervention approaches represents the best investment in young children's chances for later school success? Which offers the largest long-term benefits to young children's emotional and behavioral adjustment and later school readiness? The studies outlined in this application will answer these pressing empirical questions using direct assessments of children's emotional and behavioral adjustment, language and pre-literacy skills. This project's use of direct child assessments will be complemented by the inclusion of parent and teacher report, children's grades, use of special services, and standardized achievement test scores from preschool through 1 grade.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Center for Human Potential and Public Policy (CHPPP) plans to hold a series of three conferences each spring (May) from 2004 through 2006, focusing on child education, health and welfare in the context of economic disadvantage. The primary objective of this conference series is to establish a regular means by which talented scholars in multiple social and behavioral science disciplines may convene to share their expertise on issues related to child development, family processes, poverty and public policy. The CHPPP's multidisciplinary approach is anchored in the social and behavioral sciences, with core representation in economics, developmental psychology, and sociology. Scholars within these disciplines persistently identify co-morbidity of problems associated with poverty as a persistent threat to well-being and to the likelihood of positive outcomes for low-income families and their children. The more specific goals of the conference series are to identify currently existing models, across the social and behavioral sciences, for coherently analyzing these multiply determined processes. To accomplish these goals, the CHPPP conference series will focus on three specific policy topics within the context of poverty and child education, health, and welfare as a means of grounding innovative, emerging theory and research that will be shared at each meeting. Each of these conferences will include high-caliber scholarship within the social and behavioral sciences, focusing specifically on the topics of the Federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, the upcoming reauthorization of substance abuse and mental health legislation, and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996. The specific agenda for each year of the series is planned as follows: Year 1 (2004) - Poverty and educational equality: Developmental, Economic and Policy Perspectives on the Federal No Child Left Behind Act; Year 2 (2005) - Poverty, cumulative risk, and child well-being: Developmental, Economic and Policy perspectives on meeting the needs of "hard to serve" families through DHS/SAMHSA programs and initiatives; and Year 3 (2006) - Poverty, parental employment and parenting: Developmental, Economic, and Policy perspectives on TANF reauthorization, 10 years later.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Poverty-related risks may seriously jeopardize low-income children's opportunities for learning in school contexts. As many as 23% of low-income children in urban communities such as Chicago exhibit high levels of behavioral problems prior to school entry, and 24% of children enrolled in Chicago's public schools are at academic risk by 3rd grade (Li-Grining, Votruba-Drzal, Bachman, &Chase-Lansdale, 2006;Raver, 2002). Young children appear to be substantially underserved by community mental health services, with less than 1% of children receiving services prior to school entry (Yoshikawa &Knitzer, 1997). A central aim of the proposed plan of research is to examine the long-term impact of a classroom-based intervention designed to address these poverty-related disparities. This proposed plan of research seeks renewal of support for a project initially entitled "Emotions Matter" (renamed the Chicago School Readiness Project, or CSRP). The project was initially funded from 2003-2008 by the Inter-Agency Consortium on School Readiness. Using a clustered randomized control trial (or RCT) design, CSRP implemented a multi-component intervention targeting Head Start classrooms. Recent evidence from our research suggests that CSRP's universal and targeted services provided key regulatory support to children having behavioral difficulty as well as to those children demonstrating greater self-regulatory competence. Using a clustered, randomized design, CSRP results suggest that children in treatment-assigned programs showed significant academic and socioemotional gains as compared to their counterparts attending control-group assigned programs, with effect sizes ranging from d = .32 to d = .89. In the proposed follow-up study using a longitudinal, 2- cohort design, data will be collected from multiple reporters (including parents, teachers, and children's school records) across 6 waves of data collection. Our hypothesis is that the delivery of CSRP services in preschool has long-term social-emotional, and educational benefits for low-income, ethnic minority children as they make key, ecologically-salient transitions through elementary school. Specifically, in our final year of our current award, we are currently testing ways that preschool intervention may benefit children as they make the ecologically salient transitions into formal school contexts that pose increased behavioral and academic challenges (kindergarten and 1st grade). The 3rd and 5th grades arguably represent the next set of ecologically-salient points of developmental transition for CSRP-enrolled children, presenting them with a new set of behavioral and academic demands such as larger class size, high-stakes standardized testing, and placement decisions for middle or junior high school (Huston &Ripke, 2006). Most CSRP-enrolled children in cohorts 1 and 2 will be completing their 3rd grade year either in spring, 2010 or spring, 2011. The proposed plan of research aims to capitalize on this "window of opportunity," testing whether CSRP intervention services delivered in preschool have long-term benefit in helping children to successfully navigate these stage-salient behavioral and academic demands. In pursuing this aim, this project will test the efficacy of preventive interventions that can be implemented in social contexts of significant economic disadvantage, contributing to the public health mission of the NIH. We also hope to contribute to prevention research by understanding mediating mechanisms that may link intervention with children's outcomes and the ways that intervention may work similarly or differently for different groups of children. In addition, our findings are likely to contribute to fields of prevention science and public health research by examining ways that estimates of program impact may be substantially larger when programs'and families'propensities to participate in intervention are statistically taken into account. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Recent analyses suggest that the Chicago School Readiness Project, a multi-component, classroom-based intervention, confers clear benefits to young, low-income children by improving their school readiness. Our proposed 5-year follow-up study tests whether these benefits of the CSRP intervention are sustained from preschool through early elementary school. The revised plan of research proposes to test whether CSRP has a significant benefit for children's adjustment and early learning (as measured by standardized tests, school records, and reports from parents and teachers). It contributes to a growing area of research on poverty and preventive intervention in early childhood and sheds light on the steps that child-serving agencies can take to foster children's behavioral health and school success.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Poverty-related risks may seriously jeopardize low-income children's opportunities for learning in school contexts. As many as 23% of low-income children in urban communities such as Chicago exhibit high levels of behavioral problems prior to school entry, and 24% of children enrolled in Chicago's public schools are at academic risk by 3rd grade (Li-Grining, Votruba-Drzal, Bachman, &Chase-Lansdale, 2006;Raver, 2002). Young children appear to be substantially underserved by community mental health services, with less than 1% of children receiving services prior to school entry (Yoshikawa &Knitzer, 1997). A central aim of the proposed plan of research is to examine the long-term impact of a classroom-based intervention designed to address these poverty-related disparities. This proposed plan of research seeks renewal of support for a project initially entitled "Emotions Matter" (renamed the Chicago School Readiness Project, or CSRP). The project was initially funded from 2003-2008 by the Inter-Agency Consortium on School Readiness. Using a clustered randomized control trial (or RCT) design, CSRP implemented a multi-component intervention targeting Head Start classrooms. Recent evidence from our research suggests that CSRP's universal and targeted services provided key regulatory support to children having behavioral difficulty as well as to those children demonstrating greater self-regulatory competence. Using a clustered, randomized design, CSRP results suggest that children in treatment-assigned programs showed significant academic and socioemotional gains as compared to their counterparts attending control-group assigned programs, with effect sizes ranging from d = .32 to d = .89. In the proposed follow-up study using a longitudinal, 2- cohort design, data will be collected from multiple reporters (including parents, teachers, and children's school records) across 6 waves of data collection. Our hypothesis is that the delivery of CSRP services in preschool has long-term social-emotional, and educational benefits for low-income, ethnic minority children as they make key, ecologically-salient transitions through elementary school. Specifically, in our final year of our current award, we are currently testing ways that preschool intervention may benefit children as they make the ecologically salient transitions into formal school contexts that pose increased behavioral and academic challenges (kindergarten and 1st grade). The 3rd and 5th grades arguably represent the next set of ecologically-salient points of developmental transition for CSRP-enrolled children, presenting them with a new set of behavioral and academic demands such as larger class size, high-stakes standardized testing, and placement decisions for middle or junior high school (Huston &Ripke, 2006). Most CSRP-enrolled children in cohorts 1 and 2 will be completing their 3rd grade year either in spring, 2010 or spring, 2011. The proposed plan of research aims to capitalize on this "window of opportunity," testing whether CSRP intervention services delivered in preschool have long-term benefit in helping children to successfully navigate these stage-salient behavioral and academic demands. In pursuing this aim, this project will test the efficacy of preventive interventions that can be implemented in social contexts of significant economic disadvantage, contributing to the public health mission of the NIH. We also hope to contribute to prevention research by understanding mediating mechanisms that may link intervention with children's outcomes and the ways that intervention may work similarly or differently for different groups of children. In addition, our findings are likely to contribute to fields of prevention science and public health research by examining ways that estimates of program impact may be substantially larger when programs'and families'propensities to participate in intervention are statistically taken into account. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Recent analyses suggest that the Chicago School Readiness Project, a multi-component, classroom-based intervention, confers clear benefits to young, low-income children by improving their school readiness. Our proposed 5-year follow-up study tests whether these benefits of the CSRP intervention are sustained from preschool through early elementary school. The revised plan of research proposes to test whether CSRP has a significant benefit for children's adjustment and early learning (as measured by standardized tests, school records, and reports from parents and teachers). It contributes to a growing area of research on poverty and preventive intervention in early childhood and sheds light on the steps that child-serving agencies can take to foster children's behavioral health and school success.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Young children in poverty are more likely to be exposed to a range of poverty-related co- factors that place their chances for school success at substantial risk (Blair, 2002). A large number of cluster-randomized, classroom-based efficacy trials have been conducted to test multiple instructional processes that might serve as levers of change in improving low-income children's chances for later school success (Bierman, et al., 2008;Raver, et al., 2008;Diamond et al., 2007). While these studies have yielded preliminary promising findings, there remains a large gap in ways to successfully integrate these interventions into larger school contexts. Following the rapid transformation of early educational policies at state and local levels, preschools are increasingly co-located within school systems, on administrative, fiscal, and spatial fronts. The following proposed plan of research aims to capitalize on this rapid policy transformation. We aim to develop, pilot and test the feasibility of an innovative school-based intervention that targets both social-emotional and language/pre-literacy outcomes among young children at risk for school failure. Such an intervention would allow low-income children to experience early and intensive exposure to school- based intervention that could be sustained over multiple years. The proposed study, entitled "School Reform and Beyond (SRB): Pre-K to 1st grade" will be undertaken in four schools serving low-income children in a small, Mid-Atlantic, semi-urban metropolitan area (Long Branch, NJ) where a large proportion of students are English language-learners. The proposed intervention will embed a promising preschool intervention model within the evidence-based school reform model entitled Success for All, which has been employed in more than 1,200 schools in 47 states (Slavin &Madden, 2006). The proposed plan represents the opportunity to take bold new steps in the development of multi-component, multi-year school-based intervention. In turn, our aim is that such a bold approach may yield high payoff by supporting the behavioral health and preventing school failure among some of our nation's most economically disadvantaged children. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Our proposed research tests whether recent advances in early educational intervention targeting young children's social-emotional adjustment and language/literacy skills can be embedded within a well-known and widely implemented school-based reform effort (the Success for All model). It contributes to a growing area of research on poverty and preventive intervention in early childhood and sheds light on the steps that schools can take to foster children's behavioral health and school success.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Poverty-related risks may seriously jeopardize low-income children's opportunities for learning in school contexts. As many as 23% of low-income children in urban communities such as Chicago exhibit high levels of behavioral problems prior to school entry, and 24% of children enrolled in Chicago's public schools are at academic risk by 3rd grade (Li-Grining, Votruba-Drzal, Bachman, &Chase-Lansdale, 2006;Raver, 2002). Young children appear to be substantially underserved by community mental health services, with less than 1% of children receiving services prior to school entry (Yoshikawa &Knitzer, 1997). A central aim of the proposed plan of research is to examine the long-term impact of a classroom-based intervention designed to address these poverty-related disparities. This proposed plan of research seeks renewal of support for a project initially entitled "Emotions Matter" (renamed the Chicago School Readiness Project, or CSRP). The project was initially funded from 2003-2008 by the Inter-Agency Consortium on School Readiness. Using a clustered randomized control trial (or RCT) design, CSRP implemented a multi-component intervention targeting Head Start classrooms. Recent evidence from our research suggests that CSRP's universal and targeted services provided key regulatory support to children having behavioral difficulty as well as to those children demonstrating greater self-regulatory competence. Using a clustered, randomized design, CSRP results suggest that children in treatment-assigned programs showed significant academic and socioemotional gains as compared to their counterparts attending control-group assigned programs, with effect sizes ranging from d = .32 to d = .89. In the proposed follow-up study using a longitudinal, 2- cohort design, data will be collected from multiple reporters (including parents, teachers, and children's school records) across 6 waves of data collection. Our hypothesis is that the delivery of CSRP services in preschool has long-term social-emotional, and educational benefits for low-income, ethnic minority children as they make key, ecologically-salient transitions through elementary school. Specifically, in our final year of our current award, we are currently testing ways that preschool intervention may benefit children as they make the ecologically salient transitions into formal school contexts that pose increased behavioral and academic challenges (kindergarten and 1st grade). The 3rd and 5th grades arguably represent the next set of ecologically-salient points of developmental transition for CSRP-enrolled children, presenting them with a new set of behavioral and academic demands such as larger class size, high-stakes standardized testing, and placement decisions for middle or junior high school (Huston &Ripke, 2006). Most CSRP-enrolled children in cohorts 1 and 2 will be completing their 3rd grade year either in spring, 2010 or spring, 2011. The proposed plan of research aims to capitalize on this "window of opportunity," testing whether CSRP intervention services delivered in preschool have long-term benefit in helping children to successfully navigate these stage-salient behavioral and academic demands. In pursuing this aim, this project will test the efficacy of preventive interventions that can be implemented in social contexts of significant economic disadvantage, contributing to the public health mission of the NIH. We also hope to contribute to prevention research by understanding mediating mechanisms that may link intervention with children's outcomes and the ways that intervention may work similarly or differently for different groups of children. In addition, our findings are likely to contribute to fields of prevention science and public health research by examining ways that estimates of program impact may be substantially larger when programs'and families'propensities to participate in intervention are statistically taken into account. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Recent analyses suggest that the Chicago School Readiness Project, a multi-component, classroom-based intervention, confers clear benefits to young, low-income children by improving their school readiness. Our proposed 5-year follow-up study tests whether these benefits of the CSRP intervention are sustained from preschool through early elementary school. The revised plan of research proposes to test whether CSRP has a significant benefit for children's adjustment and early learning (as measured by standardized tests, school records, and reports from parents and teachers). It contributes to a growing area of research on poverty and preventive intervention in early childhood and sheds light on the steps that child-serving agencies can take to foster children's behavioral health and school success.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Poverty-related risks may seriously jeopardize low-income children's opportunities for learning in school contexts. As many as 23% of low-income children in urban communities such as Chicago exhibit high levels of behavioral problems prior to school entry, and 24% of children enrolled in Chicago's public schools are at academic risk by 3rd grade (Li-Grining, Votruba-Drzal, Bachman, & Chase-Lansdale, 2006; Raver, 2002). Young children appear to be substantially underserved by community mental health services, with less than 1% of children receiving services prior to school entry (Yoshikawa & Knitzer, 1997). A central aim of the proposed plan of research is to examine the long-term impact of a classroom-based intervention designed to address these poverty-related disparities. This proposed plan of research seeks renewal of support for a project initially entitled Emotions Matter (renamed the Chicago School Readiness Project, or CSRP). The project was initially funded from 2003-2008 by the Inter-Agency Consortium on School Readiness. Using a clustered randomized control trial (or RCT) design, CSRP implemented a multi-component intervention targeting Head Start classrooms. Recent evidence from our research suggests that CSRP's universal and targeted services provided key regulatory support to children having behavioral difficulty as well as to those children demonstrating greater self-regulatory competence. Using a clustered, randomized design, CSRP results suggest that children in treatment-assigned programs showed significant academic and socioemotional gains as compared to their counterparts attending control-group assigned programs, with effect sizes ranging from d = .32 to d = .89. In the proposed follow-up study using a longitudinal, 2- cohort design, data will be collected from multiple reporters (including parents, teachers, and children's school records) across 6 waves of data collection. Our hypothesis is that the delivery of CSRP services in preschool has long-term social-emotional, and educational benefits for low-income, ethnic minority children as they make key, ecologically-salient transitions through elementary school. Specifically, in our final year of our current award, we are currently testing ways that preschool intervention may benefit children as they make the ecologically salient transitions into formal school contexts that pose increased behavioral and academic challenges (kindergarten and 1st grade). The 3rd and 5th grades arguably represent the next set of ecologically-salient points of developmental transition for CSRP-enrolled children, presenting them with a new set of behavioral and academic demands such as larger class size, high-stakes standardized testing, and placement decisions for middle or junior high school (Huston & Ripke, 2006). Most CSRP-enrolled children in cohorts 1 and 2 will be completing their 3rd grade year either in spring, 2010 or spring, 2011. The proposed plan of research aims to capitalize on this window of opportunity, testing whether CSRP intervention services delivered in preschool have long-term benefit in helping children to successfully navigate these stage-salient behavioral and academic demands. In pursuing this aim, this project will test the efficacy of preventive interventions that can be implemented in social contexts of significant economic disadvantage, contributing to the public health mission of the NIH. We also hope to contribute to prevention research by understanding mediating mechanisms that may link intervention with children's outcomes and the ways that intervention may work similarly or differently for different groups of children. In addition, our findings are likely to contribute to fields of prevention science and public health research by examining ways that estimates of program impact may be substantially larger when programs' and families' propensities to participate in intervention are statistically taken into account. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Recent analyses suggest that the Chicago School Readiness Project, a multi-component, classroom-based intervention, confers clear benefits to young, low-income children by improving their school readiness. Our proposed 5-year follow-up study tests whether these benefits of the CSRP intervention are sustained from preschool through early elementary school. The revised plan of research proposes to test whether CSRP has a significant benefit for children's adjustment and early learning (as measured by standardized tests, school records, and reports from parents and teachers). It contributes to a growing area of research on poverty and preventive intervention in early childhood and sheds light on the steps that child-serving agencies can take to foster children's behavioral health and school success.

? DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In keeping with the missions of NIMH and NICHD, the proposed project offers to test innovative models of poverty-related risk and RCT early intervention targeting key health and mental health outcomes among low-income, ethnic minority youth. Overall, this application aims to advance our understanding of youths' trajectories of internalizing behavior and health risk across a salient life course transition (including 8th through 10th grade). Because the average age of onset for affective disorders, and the initiation of a broader array of health risk behaviors occurs in early adolescence, we plan to focus our efforts in predicting youths' health-risk behaviors and internalizing problems. Scientifically and clinically significant features of this project include an the opportunity to tet the role of key neurocognitive mechanisms that may alternately lead some youth to be at lower risk for these negative health and mental health sequelae, while other youth may face greater risk. Framed in this way, the proposed research strives to identify levers for policies and programs devoted to improving the health of adolescents in low-income communities. The specific aims of this application include the following. First, the proposed investigation will examine the long-term impact of the Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP), a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a preschool intervention designed to foster low-income preschoolers' self-regulation and mental health (#R01HD046160; n = 602). Treatment-induced gains in specific domains of self-regulation including emotion regulation (ER) and executive function (EF) are hypothesized to set youth on positive developmental trajectories into adolescence. The project's second aim is to test ways that youths' trajectories of health and mental health problems may be significantly jeopardized by a range of poverty-related risk factors, defined in terms of type of risk, the timing of risk exposure, and turbulence (i.e., volatility in risk). Analses will also test whether those key neurocognitive mechanisms of ER and EF mediate the impact of poverty and early intervention on individuals' internalizing and health risk, and whether these impacts are moderated by race/ethnicity, gender, and early regulatory profiles. Statistical approaches will include measurement modeling and advanced techniques that help to strengthen causal claims and to understand development over time.