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Describes some of the ways in which the federal government has decentralized responsibility for national evaluations of federally-funded early childhood programs. Details the methods used in local evaluation studies, and the strengths and weaknesses of centralized and decentralized national evaluations. (Author/KB)

A comprehensive birth-to-kindergarten program was evaluated by classroom observa tions and teacher ratings of 132 participant children and 366 comparison children during fall and spring of the kindergarten year. The observations revealed significant advantages for the participants in both fall and spring on a majority of indices, particularly for behaviors categorized as social and use of time. The teacher ratings indicated few overall differences, with advantages for participants only in the fall on a prereading scale. A logistic regression model was used to adjust for possible effects of children's background characteristics; advantages for participants over comparison children were consistent across background characteristics. On the teacher ratings, the adjustments revealed significant interactions: advantages of participants over comparison children were found for subgroups traditionally associated with having difficulties in kindergarten. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]