Monday, March 28, 2016
Bloomberg-Sponsored Program to Bridge 'Word Gap' in Poor Children Gets Inconclusive Results
When former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his foundation was awarding $5 million to launch Providence's high-tech idea to improve the vocabularies of the city's youngest children, he said he hoped the pilot could take root in Rhode Island and spread across the nation.
Three years later, more than 500 families have participated in Providence Talks, which uses wearable audio recorders to count every word spoken by toddlers and their parents in low-income households.
But whether the pioneering program is a national model or just an interesting concept hasn't been settled. . .