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- Overview of BEEP
In 1972-73 the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York launched an innovative model of integrated service delivery to parents of young children, the Brookline Early Education project (BEEP). BEEP was grounded in the principle that health and education are intimately linked. Healthy children learn and develop more positively than children who are not healthy. BEEP also operated from a primary belief in the important role of parents in supporting children's optimal development.
BEEP was the first comprehensive school-based early intervention program in this country. Its primary goal was to reduce or eliminate health and developmental problems before children entered school. It involved a combination of services:
(1) periodic monitoring of children's health and development;
(2) parent education;
(3) early childhood education programs.
Over 200 children were enrolled initially in the project, representing two communities, the town of Brookline (a suburban community), and the city of Boston (an urban community). One third of the families were from backgrounds other than Euro-American. All participants in BEEP had the option of attending suburban public schools either as town residents or through the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO), a state-funded desegregation program.
The BEEP preschool program continues to function as part of the Brookline Public Schools. If you are interested in learning more about the current program,
click
here. If you are interested in a summary of findings from the BEEP Follow-up Study,
click
here.
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