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''Children attending nursery school programs scored consistently higher across the board,'' said Alison Clarke-Stewart, professor of social ecology at the University of California at Irvine. ''In terms of developmental differences, these children were six to nine months advanced over children in home care.'' Dr. Clarke-Stewart said: ''For reasons of economic and personal necessity, fully half of the mothers of preschool children in this country are already using some form of day care for their children. For these parents, the important question is not 'What is the effect of day care?' but 'How can we provide our child with the best possible day-care environment?' ''

As provost, Professor Richard will coordinate the university's budget and educational policies. She will oversee Yale's efforts to balance its $866.3 million budget, which is running a $14.8 million deficit this year. The university is cutting its faculty by 6 percent, and Professor Richard will face the challenge of balancing budget cuts with efforts to maintain and expand the university's programs. \"Departments will be coming to her with requests that she probably won't be able to fulfill,\" said Cynthia E. Russet, a history professor. \"It's a difficult post, since, among other things, one of the qualifications is being able to say, 'No.' \" The selection of Professor Richard continues Yale's trend of hiring insiders for its top posts. Dr. [Richard C. Levin]'s appointments from within the faculty have eased tensions between the faculty and administration that arose during a 1992 debate over budget cuts under Dr. Levin's predecessor, Benno C. Schmidt Jr.

\"Yes, there's been heat within the organization,\" said William A. Sahlman, a professor who oversees the business school's publishing activities, including the Review. \"Yes, certain people have left. Yes, there have been communications. Was it unresolvable? Was it something people were going to throw their hands up and give up on? No. The fundamental premise was '[Rosabeth Moss Kanter] is the person.' \" \"There is a very important role that everybody at the school thinks Rosabeth ought to play,\" he continued. \"She's exactly the kind of person you'd like to have on H.B.R. because she's extremely bright, articulate, well known and insightful in what I would call methods of management, entrepreneurial behavior and managing diversity. If you line up Rosabeth's area of expertise with the things you'd hope a magazine focused on management issues ought to have, she's it.\" Healthy Finances \"It's surprising that someone like her, who could tell you how to manage people, can't do it,\" said Lynn M. Salerno, an editor at the Review under Professor Kanter's three predecessors. \"Here's this person who wrote 'When Giants Learn to Dance' and she can't run this little place with about 30 employees, and the place practically runs itself.\"

Alison Joanne Graham, a daughter of Elizabeth P. Graham and Dr. Andrew J. Graham of Woodbridge, Conn., is to be married this morning to Prof. Robert Faggen, the son of Gilbert S. Faggen of New York and the late Anita A. Faggen. Cantor Keith Miller is to officiate at the Hotel Bel Air in Los Angeles.

''I know of no other professor who has made an acquisition proposal for an entire company,'' he said, ''but my business is in analyzing companies, not watching what other people do. By gaining control, you gain the ability to control the destiny of the firm and its ability to develop new marketing strategies.'' Traders Are Cautious ''That's pretty weak,'' said one arbitrager who thought it was premature to make any bets on the stock. ''Anybody can write that. It's not a buyer that strikes me as a having a great deal of credibility.'' ''The stock has been at the same price as it was in 1983,'' said Robert Holt, a portfolio manager for Luther King Capital Management in Fort Worth, who has sold his entire Duro-Test holdings. ''Management is old and doesn't seem to have a lot of initiative. We just sort of gave up on the stock.'' Improvements Planned

The market couldn't have agreed more. \"Customers told us they couldn't use it,\" recalled Mr. [William A. Sahlman], a finance professor who has presided over the school's publishing activities since 1991. \"They'd have to shut down their entire company for two weeks to absorb it all.\" The business school has not totally abandoned its earlier ambitions. Management still believes $100 million in revenues is within grasp, but not for another five years. \"I oversold what we could do in a short period of time,\" Mr. Sahlman said. Today, he is reluctant to sound too confident, but he sounds hopeful that the unit's worst missteps are behind it. \"The older I get, the less learning I intend to have,\" he said. THE apathy vanished in 1987 when Michael E. Porter, the school's strategy guru, was about to cut a lucrative deal with an outside company. Relenting, the dean, who by then owned a VCR, realized it would be folly not to get a piece of the action and put up $3 million of the school's money -- about what it costs to develop a new course -- to produce four trial videos. \"I didn't ever expect to get the money back,\" he said. \"As it turned out, we did.\"

\"What we're trying to do is facilitate a process,\" he said. \"A lot of my students have never been in the inner-city before, and now they're finding out there are entrepreneurs here to work with. That's what is going to solve this problem. Not some magic government solution. But lots of little connections that get built. I've watched nations grow, and they grow not in grand bursts, but in the slow way people connect.\" Making the Rounds While he won't rule out a Washington job some day, Professor [Michael E. Porter] says he is simply following his usual path of wanting to attack the big problems of his day. And the business owners whom he is helping seem grateful for the hours of free technical assistance and the connections. \"One of the great things Mike can do is bring light to this because of the respect he has out in the business community,\" said Darryl Settles, the owner of Bob the Chef's, whose \"glori-fried\" chicken specialties brings in sales of $1 million a year. \"A lot of people look at the inner city and see high crime and low income,\" said Mr. [Edwin Rivera], who plans to become a consultant after he graduates. \"Me? I wouldn't mind being a passive investor in a business like this. I've seen its operations, and I think it's a money maker.\"

Yet investors appear to have hardly noticed. ''I don't even look at it,'' said David Hawkins, a Harvard Business School professor who teaches an advanced course in the analysis of corporate financial reports. ''It really does not have a high information content. I'd be very surprised if I ever found anything in there that was useful for an investment decision.'' More controversial are the S.E.C.'s efforts to require two completely new features. One would mandate that the outside accounting firm assess management's description of the adequacy of its internal controls, a change that would give many accountants a good case for raising their fees. The second would require companies to disclose how they have responded to recommendations that their outside auditors may have made about improving the internal controls. ''That's a very controversial piece of this,'' said John Albert, the S.E.C.'s associate chief accountant in charge of the project. ''People hated that.'' ''It's a when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife approach,'' said Wes Walton, a securities attorney with the Chicago law firm of Keck, Mahin & Cate. He said that companies could unwittingly implicate themselves for prior misconduct if they avow that their internal controls needed beefing up. ''It's hard for me to see what purpose is served by requiring a statement that we've made significant changes in our internal control procedures because we were unhappy with them before,'' Mr. Walton said. Judging from nearly 200 comment letters that the S.E.C. has received, companies care for this latest regulatory plan only slightly more than they did for the last one. Few letters were quite as blunt as the one from the Kentucky Utilities Company in Lexington. ''One has only to review the reports of companies currently printing so-called management reports to understand that paper can be put to better use,'' wrote Fred Davis, the utility's controller.

''I've always kept up all my responsibilities,'' Professor [Rosabeth Moss Kanter] said about her personal choices in an interview Friday, taking a few moments out from a board meeting she was attending for the Nichols Institute, a West Coast operator of clinical laboratories. ''I'll take long weekends after working day and night all week, or some time off in the summer. That's been my pattern. But I've never dropped out.'' ''It's a terrible mistake,'' said David W. Ewing, a former managing editor of The Review. ''Rosabeth will help, but it's going to take a full-time editor for at least several years to get The Review turned around again.'' An Outspoken Professor She curtailed the consulting activities when she accepted the Harvard job, but her presence at conferences still commands fees of up to $25,000 a day, which puts her in the company of experts like Michael E. Porter, Harvard's leading business strategist. ''I can't deny I sometimes get that,'' said Professor Kanter, adding that her fees are in line with those of Thomas J. Peters, the consultant who co-wrote the book ''In Search of Excellence.''