TO STUDY THE EFFECT OF A 6-WEEK HEAD START PROGRAM ON THE SCHOOL READINESS OF 81 CULTURALLY DEPRIVED CHILDREN IN EAST BATON ROUGE PARISH, LOUISIANA, COMPARISONS WERE MADE BETWEEN HEAD START AND NONCULTURALLY DEPRIVED CHILDREN. IQ SCORES AND CULTURAL-SOCIOLOGICAL-ECONOMICAL STATUS INFLUENCE UPON SCHOOL READINESS WERE STUDIED. ALL CHILDREN INVOLVED WERE GIVEN THE PRIMARY MENTAL ABILITIES TEST (PMA), WHICH MEASURES VERBAL MEANING, NUMBER FACILITY, PERCEPTUAL SPEED, AND SPATIAL RELATIONS. PRETESTS AND POSTTESTS WERE GIVEN TO HEAD START CHILDREN. BOTH HEAD START AND CONTROL GROUPS WERE TESTED AT THE BEGINNING, MIDDLE, AND END OF THE FIRST SCHOOL YEAR. CONTROL GROUP I (28 MIDDLE AND UPPER CLASS WHITE AND NEGRO CHILDREN, MATCHED WITH THE HEAD START GROUP BY AGE AND GEOGRAPHICAL LOCALE) WAS USED TO SEE HOW WELL HEAD START CHILDREN COULD APPROXIMATE THE SCHOOL CAPACITY OR IQ OF THE NONCULTURALLY DEPRIVED. CONTROL GROUP II WAS MADE UP OF 126 CLASSROOM PEERS. HEAD START CHILDREN SHOWED AN INCREASE IN IQ MEAN SCORES (86.56 TO 99.53) FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE PROGRAM TO THE END OF THE FIRST SCHOOL YEAR. THE GREATEST GAINS, AS MEASURED BY PMA SUBTESTS, WERE IN THE AREAS OF PERCEPTUAL SPEED AND NUMBER FACILITY. DURING THEIR FIRST TERM IN SCHOOL, GAINS WERE IN THESE SAME AREAS. THEREFORE, HEAD START HAD A POSITIVE INFLUENCE ON SCHOOL READINESS, ALTHOUGH IT DID NOT ENABLE THE CULTURALLY DEPRIVED CHILDREN TO REACH THE SCHOOL READINESS LEVEL OF THE NONCULTURALLY DEPRIVED. ABOUT 100 PAGES OF THIS THESIS ARE DEVOTED TO A DISCUSSION OF CULTURAL DEPRIVATION AND PERTINENT EDUCATIONAL LITERATURE AND THEORIES. (MS)