Brian P. Gill, Jake Dembosky, and Jonathan P. Caulkins, RAND
2002
This report from RAND studies the effectiveness of the Early Childhood Initiative (ECI), a United Way-funded effort to provide "high quality early care and education" to at-risk children from birth through age five in the Pittsburgh area. It does not evaluate the program's impact on the kids themselves. (It notes that a separate study, prepared by S. J. Bagnato of Scaling Progress in Early Childhood Settings (SPECS), reports "favorable outcomes" for participating children.) Rather, it evaluates the implementation of ECI using data from 1996 and 2000, and extensive interviews with program stakeholders. That implementation, RAND found, was rife with problems including low enrollment, bureaucracy, and out-of-control costs. Demonstrating the inherent conflict between community control and central control and the danger of overly ambitious goals, ECI failed in part because its complex structure (designed to accommodate both the communities and the United Way) slowed planning and created power struggles. To avoid the disappointing fate of ECI, RAND suggests some lessons for future large-scale reform initiatives, including focusing on clear goals, tailoring the services, having a clear administrative structure, carefully considering supply, demand and incentives, and engaging in ongoing, independent review. This 32-page executive summary is available at http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1544.1/, where it may also be ordered in hard copy for $15. A PDF version of the 146-page report on which it is based can be found at http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1544/, and ordered in hard copy for $20.
