Research shows that children born in central city communities are significantly less prepared for school, and even with intervention at the kindergarten level, most never catch up.  These children also usually require a significant and costly concentration of K-12 resources to provide them with equal educational opportunities.

Educare builds on the foundations of Early Head Start and Head Start to create a model of excellence.  The Educare program grounds itself firmly in the results of scientific research on how infants and young children learn and grow and the most effective strategies for promoting school readiness.  It reaches children in poverty early, intensively and over time by strengthening early language and literacy, cognitive development and social and emotional skills in the earliest years of life.

Educare was the result of national research on early childhood education and also on the results from the Carolina Abecedarian Project.  High-quality early childhood programs like Educare can mitigate some of the effects of poverty and provide benefits not only to participating families, but also to society through higher lifetime incomes and reduced levels of delinquency and crime.

The model follows the belief that when early intervention meets the child’s developmental needs, it will lead to optimal preparedness for school and increase the likelihood of long-term success.  The Educare centers use a detailed logic model and multiple assessment tools to identify and track program success.