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Daycare Effects on Preschool <br /> 10 <br /> DISC U SSIO N <br /> These results provide strong evidence that quality daycare affects both the level <br /> and the pattern of preschool intellectual development of poverty children. Comparisons <br /> of the overall level and trends over time of intellectual development exhibited within the <br /> three groups suggest that while high-quality, cognitively oriented daycare is most <br /> successful in preventing intellectual underachievement, Title X X daycare also positively <br /> changes both the overall level and trends across time of the intellectual development of <br /> poverty children. <br /> This study provides further evidence that quality daycare affects the overall <br /> preschool cognitive level of poverty children. Specifically due to random assignment the <br /> results show that university based cognitively oriented daycare leads to higher scores. <br /> This finding replicates the results of the Consortium for Longitudinal Studies (Lazar et <br /> al., 1982) of eleven early intervention programs which demonstrated that university- <br /> based cognitively oriented daycare has a positive effect on the intellectual and academic <br /> development of poverty children. In addition, this study replicates the results of the <br /> Golden et al. (1978) which suggested that poverty children attending quality com m unity <br /> daycare outscored their home-reared peers on preschool measures of intellectual <br /> development. Moreover, the current project extends the work of Golden et al. (1978) by <br /> documenting cognitive growth between 36 and 54 months. <br /> The legitimacy of drawing conclusions from the observed effects of university- <br /> based is supported by the random assignment of infants to either the experimental <br /> (university-based daycare) or control groups. However, the extent to which conclusions <br /> regarding the efficacy of corn m unity daycare can be drawn from the observed effects in <br /> this sample is limited by the degree of selection bias among families who self-selected <br /> daycare. The corn m unity: 0-11 group does appear to differ slightly from the corn m unity: <br /> 12-52 group on important variables such as mother's IQ. Nevertheless, the fact that the <br /> groups do not appear to differ on mean developmental scores until 24 months (see Figure <br />