Current information about this program can be found under the Education Research program.

CFDA Number: 84.324A
Program Type: Discretionary/Competitive Grants

The purpose of the Early Intervention research program is to contribute to the improvement of cognitive, linguistic, social, and emotional outcomes of young children with disabilities or to prevent the development of learning disabilities by: (a) identifying curriculum and instructional practices that are potentially effective for improving cognitive, linguistic, social, and emotional outcomes of young children with disabilities; (b) developing new, or modifying existing, preschool curricula, including appropriate teacher professional development, to address the cognitive, linguistic, social, and emotional needs of young children with disabilities or at risk for learning disabilities; (c) establishing the efficacy of existing preschool curricula for or teacher professional development for teaching young children with disabilities or young children at high risk for learning disabilities; (d) providing evidence on the effectiveness of preschool curricula or teacher professional development implemented at scale that are designed to address the cognitive, linguistic, social, and emotional needs of young children with disabilities or at high risk for learning disabilities; and (e) developing and validating early assessment tools that can be used by practitioners to identify and monitor preschool children who are in need of intensive early intervention. Interventions appropriate for development and/or evaluation under this program are interventions intended to improve cognitive, linguistic, social, and emotional outcomes of children with disabilities or children at high risk for disabilities in pre-kindergarten or kindergarten. Interventions may be school-based interventions or home-based interventions that are integrated with a system for positive behavioral support intended to enable children's success in school. The long-term outcome of this program will be an array of tools and strategies (e.g., assessments tools, preschool curricula) that have been documented to be effective for improving the cognitive, linguistic, social, and emotional needs of young children with disabilities or at high risk for specific learning disabilities from pre-kindergarten through kindergarten.

(This program was run under 84.324E in 2006)