Preschool is moving to the potty-training set.

Photos by PAUL S. HOWELL/Special Contributor

Williams Early Years Learning Academy in Houston is benefiting from a federal grant to test out preschool for low-income 2- and 3-year-olds in day-care centers. UT instructor Tricia Zucker works with Terraton Smith (left), Aniyah Bedford and Jaguar Howard. The toddler project will be tested at three Dallas sites to be determined.

Toddlers are shaping up to be the next generation of preschoolers, a pattern fueled by fears that poor children aren't ready to learn when their first school bell rings.

University of Texas researchers say the answer is to start younger. They are using a $6 million federal grant to test out preschool for poor 2- and 3-year-olds in Houston and Tallahassee, Fla., day-care centers.

Their next stop is Dallas, where the city's share of young children is soaring while its quality of child care lags.

"You tend to think as long as they're not wet or hungry and they're safe, that's a pretty good day," said Susan Hoff, a local child development specialist who will help carry out the toddler project in Dallas. "There's just so much more to it."

The goal is to train many tots' first teachers – child-care workers – to connect with the children in a way that boosts their chances of success in school.

Toddlers might not be ready to read or write, but they're old enough to learn how to respect authority, follow a routine and build a prolific vocabulary – all of which sets the stage for learning later on, UT researchers say.

Trouble is, poor children aren't soaking up those skills because sometimes the adults in their lives lack the means or motivation to teach them, research shows.

Poor children show up for kindergarten 18 months behind developmentally, while their wealthy counterparts arrive as much as 18 months ahead, according to studies by the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University.

"To send kids into school with a three-year gap and say, 'OK, school, fix this,' that's just not realistic," said Steven Barnett, the institute's director.

The statistics don't bode well for Dallas, whose population is getting younger while the rest of the country's is getting grayer.

Children younger than 5 made up the largest age group in Dallas County, at 9 percent of residents in 2006. A high birthrate among Hispanics fuels the trend, according to a study by the Dallas Foundation.

The study shows a disproportionate share of the county's children live in poor neighborhoods, a pattern that alarms some community leaders.

"We can re-engineer DISD and make it the best performing urban school district, but if the children aren't ready when they get to kindergarten, it just takes so much more," said John Castle, board chairman of the Dallas Foundation, a community group that manages funds set up by various donors. "The earlier you intervene, the less it's going to cost."

Mr. Castle has vowed to raise money for the UT preschool project, which will be tested at three Dallas child-care sites. The sites will be determined this year.

It could take years to know whether the project pays off. In some cases, child-care officials predict an uphill climb.

Low-paying child-care jobs create a revolving door of workers, many of whom didn't make it past high school. And the workers usually don't get benefits, said Ms. Hoff, president and CEO of ChildCareGroup, a Dallas nonprofit that focuses on child care for poor families.

Children have as many as 17 caretakers in their first five years of day care, Ms. Hoff said.

And some workers have low expectations of what kids can achieve.

Hope Wharton, who opened her first child-care center as a 20-year-old mother, said a day-care employee once questioned the purpose of a literacy event in South Dallas for children who "don't read" anyway.

"The care that you get in the South Dallas area compared to other parts of the city has not been at its best," said Ms. Wharton, 50, who runs Dallas Bethlehem Center, a child-care center on the south side.

And parents like Ashley Sophus say they need all the good role models they can get. Ms. Sophus is raising a 2-year-old son on her own in West Dallas.

"Boys in my neighborhood where I live, their pants sag, they talk slang, and some of them don't want to go to school," said Ms. Sophus, 22, who is studying to be a medical office assistant. "They think it's cool to be stupid. And I don't want him to be like that."

UT officials say the toddler project has shown anecdotal success in Houston, where it's being tested at nearly a dozen child-care centers.

Toya Terrell, a teacher at Williams Early Years Learning Academy, receives weekly lesson plans and a coach, who critiques her interaction with children at the child-care center.

Ms. Terrell, 24, now knows to deal with temper tantrums. Instead of whisking away screaming children to her mother, who runs the child-care center, she gently discusses the problem with them and offers a choice: Follow the rules or deal with the consequences.

Ms. Terrell also has turned playtime into teachable moments.

Instead of simply reading "Hey Diddle Diddle" aloud, for example, she turns the nursery rhyme's characters – a cat, a fiddle, a dish and a spoon – into puppets. She holds them up and asks, "Who knows what we use a spoon and a bowl for?"

"It took a while to adapt when you're used to doing things the same way," Ms. Terrell said. "But I'm learning something new every day."

UT's toddler project is a junior version of the Texas Early Education Model, a state-financed program for older preschoolers in private day-care centers, federal Head Start programs and some public school districts.

TEEM is expected to become the state's blueprint for preschools in spite of mixed results. A study released late last year found that despite a significant investment from the state, there was little proof that children fared better in TEEM than in traditional preschool programs. Last year, just under 27,000 children in 33 Texas communities participated.

Susan Landry, who launched TEEM at UT's Health Science Center at Houston, hopes the toddler version gains the same momentum.

"If you've got kids starting with this type of quality stimulation when they're 2 and go all the way into kindergarten, we're going to have phenomenal development in our low-income kids," she said.