PHILADELPHIA -- Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education are developing a first-ever integrated curriculum for preschoolers in Head Start classrooms across the country.  It will encompass basic skills needed for reading and mathematics as well as both school- and social-readiness skills.

The project will be the first effort by U.S. educators to help disadvantaged children overcome academic challenges that can plague them for their entire academic careers.

"Head Start has never before benefited from an evidence-based, integrated curriculum," said John Fantuzzo, a psychologist in Penn GSE and the principal investigator in the study. "Head Start and other early-childhood-care programs have done well at addressing children comprehensive needs and giving them a sense of what school is about, and we're excited to add to that success by developing scientifically tested curricula that could help preschoolers get a leg up academically. These curricula could be around long after we're finished with this research project."

The integrated curriculum will be developed, tested and refined in partnership with researchers and preschool teachers.  Special attention will be paid to foundational approaches to learning and emotional development and to the family, classroom and neighborhood contexts within which children develop.

Fantuzzo is joined in the research by other Penn GSE faculty:  Douglas Frye, chair of the Psychology in Education Division; Vivian Gadsden, director of Penn's National Center on Fathers and Families; and Paul McDermott, an expert in statistics, assessment and testing.  Also participating is Dennis Culhane, an urban-demographics expert in the School of Social Work and director of Penn's Cartographic Modeling Laboratory.

Fantuzzo and Culhane have partnered previously on the Kids' Integrated Database System, a system linking the databases of Philadelphia's city administrative, social and health agencies. KIDS allows for efficient exchange of information about more than 250,000 of the city's children.

The $5.8 million project is funded through a number of sources and channeled through the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.