The HighScope curriculum.

HighScope is one of the most quietly influential preschool curricula in the United States. Most parents have never heard of it by name. Most Head Start classrooms and a large share of public pre-K programs have used it for decades. It is built around one disarmingly simple routine — plan-do-review — and it is the rare early childhood curriculum with strong long-term research behind it.

Where it came from

HighScope was developed in the early 1960s in Ypsilanti, Michigan, by David Weikart and his colleagues at what is now the HighScope Educational Research Foundation. It began as the curriculum used in the Perry Preschool Project, a randomized study of low-income 3 and 4 year olds whose effects have been tracked into their forties and fifties. The Perry follow-up is one of the most-cited pieces of early childhood research in the world, and it is the foundation for federal and state investment in pre-K.

From those roots, HighScope became one of the curricula most widely adopted in Head Start and state pre-K. Many private centers also use it, often without leading with the name.

The central routine

The heart of HighScope is plan-do-review, a 45 to 60 minute block repeated every day. A child:

• Plans. Says out loud (or draws, or signs) what they intend to do during work time. "I am going to build a tower with the cardboard tubes and the blocks."
• Does. Carries out the plan for 30 to 45 minutes, with materials they chose. Teachers observe and occasionally extend.
• Reviews. Returns to the small group and reflects: what they made, what worked, what they would do differently.

Plan-do-review sounds modest. It is also one of the strongest scaffolds for executive function we have for 3 to 5 year olds — the ability to set a goal, hold it in mind, act on it, and reflect afterward. That is the skill the Perry follow-up appears to have nudged most.

Active learning

HighScope organizes the rest of the day around "active learning": children act on materials, talk about what they did, and learn through that interaction with adults who scaffold. The curriculum lays out 58 "key developmental indicators" (KDIs) across eight content areas (approaches to learning, social-emotional, physical, language and literacy, math, creative arts, science and technology, social studies).

Teachers do not lecture from the KDIs. They use them as a planning lens: when they set up the room, run small-group activities, or scaffold a child's play, they are reaching for specific developmental moves. This is the part that distinguishes HighScope from free play or from a loose "play-based" classroom — the framework is real.

A typical day

A HighScope preschool day usually includes:

• Arrival and greeting circle.
• Small group, planned by the teacher around a KDI (for example, a measurement activity).
• Plan-do-review block.
• Outside time.
• Large group (music, movement, story).
• Meals and rest.

The room is set up in clearly labeled interest areas (block, art, house, sand and water, book), with materials at child height. Children choose where to work; teachers move between areas observing and conversing. Documentation is anecdotal and KDI-coded, often in the COR Advantage assessment tool that HighScope publishes.

The research

The Perry Preschool follow-up found that low-income children who received the HighScope-based program, compared to a control group, completed more years of schooling, earned higher incomes, owned homes at higher rates, and were arrested at lower rates by their forties. The effect sizes are large enough that the program returns several dollars in public benefit for every dollar spent, according to the foundation's economic analyses.

Caveats: Perry was a small randomized study in one mid-sized Michigan city in the 1960s with serious-quality teaching. HighScope's developmental quality scales (the Program Quality Assessment) have been validated in many contemporary settings, but the long-term effect sizes have not been replicated at exactly the Perry magnitude. Still, no other early childhood curriculum has comparable evidence at this duration.

Where you'll find HighScope

HighScope is most common in:

• Head Start. A large share of Head Start classrooms use HighScope or a close adaptation.
• State and city pre-K. Many state-funded pre-K programs adopted HighScope in the 1990s and 2000s.
• Private centers. Some private daycares run HighScope or have HighScope-trained staff. They often mention it casually rather than naming it on the front page.

Tuition in private HighScope programs runs in line with high-quality play-based preschool in the same metro: roughly $1,200 to $2,400 per month nationally, with high-cost metros running $1,800 to $3,200 per month. Head Start and most public pre-K are free for eligible families.

Questions to ask on a tour

• Do your teachers use plan-do-review every day? Can I observe a session?
• What KDIs are you working on this month?
• How do you document children's growth? Do you use COR Advantage?
• How many of your teachers have HighScope training? How recent?
• How do you handle children who struggle with the "plan" step at first?

For a deeper tour script, see our daycare tour questions list. For a city-specific public pre-K read (where HighScope is common), start with the relevant hub — for example, Chicago, Atlanta, or Washington DC.

Bottom line

HighScope is an evidence-based curriculum built on plan-do-review and active learning. It is the dominant model in Head Start and many state pre-K systems, and it is one of the most quietly common curricula in private preschool too. If you are choosing between programs, ask directly whether HighScope is in use and how the staff is trained.

For the broader pillar, see daycare programs and philosophies. For adjacent reads, see play-based learning daycare and our emergent curriculum explainer.