What was the verdict on the effectiveness of the Head Start or later performance?

[astro]

If memory serves there were lot of studies done a few years ago on Head Start’s impact on later academic performance, but the results were inconclusive and (IIRC) most positive effects of Head Start enrichment pretty much petered out fairly quickly as kids started getting older.

What was the final verdict on Head Start, or was there one?

Head Start web site

Head Start and Early Head Start are comprehensive child development programs which serve children from birth to age 5, pregnant women, and their families. They are child-focused programs and have the overall goal of increasing the school readiness of young children in low-income families.

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HEAD START HISTORY

In 1964, the Federal Government asked a panel of child development experts to draw up a program to help communities meet the needs of disadvantaged preschool children… The panel report became the blueprint for Project Head Start.

Project Head Start, launched as an eight-week summer program by the Office of Economic Opportunity in 1965, was designed to help break the cycle of poverty by providing preschool children of low-income families with a comprehensive program to meet their emotional, social, health, nutritional, and psychological needs. Recruiting children age three to school entry age, Head Start was enthusiastically received by education, child development specialists, community leaders, and parents across the Nation. Head Start serves children and their families each year in urban and rural areas in all 50 States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Territories, including many American Indians and migrant children.

In 1969, Head Start was transferred from the Office of Economic Opportunity to the Office of Child Development in the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and has now become a program within the Administration on Children, Youth and Families in the Department of Health and Human Services. A well-established, though still an innovative program, Head Start has had a strong impact on communities and early childhood program across the country.

The program is locally administered by community-based non-profit organizations and school systems. Grants are awarded by the Department of Health and Human Services Regional offices, except for the American Indian and Migrant programs, which are administered in Washington, D.C.

I tried reading Head Start’s own evaluation but it’s difficult to make heads or tales of the report re any substantive identified differences.

National Impact Evaluation of the Comprehensive Child Development Program

[Kent_Clark]

I can’t speak to Head Start specifically, but I do know that recently completed long-term studies of four different early education programs for low-income children showed they did substantially better than their peers who hadn’t been in the programs.

Here’s one site, I’m sure you can google others.

http://www.mokids.org/publications/Early%20Childhood%20Development%20report_files/frame.htm

[Shagnasty]

I don’t have any of the studies in front of me now but I did study them ten years ago in graduate school. They showed just what you said. There is an increase in academic performance while the children are in Head Start but it drops off rapidly after they are out of the program until their is no detectable effect three or more years later.

[Queen_Tonya]

Wouldn’t that indicate success then Shagnasty?

The idea wasn’t to give an advantage, but bring at-risk kids in line with the average, right?

[astro]

@Queen Tonya

Wouldn’t that indicate success then Shagnasty?

The idea wasn’t to give an advantage, but bring at-risk kids in line with the average, right?

In this case I think the “no effect” result meant that academically, after a few years they were back down to the same level their non-head start economic peers were performing at, not the “average”.

[chique]

@Shagnasty

I don’t have any of the studies in front of me now but I did study them ten years ago in graduate school. They showed just what you said. There is an increase in academic performance while the children are in Head Start but it drops off rapidly after they are out of the program until their is no detectable effect three or more years later.

True.

The latest studies, however, show that while academic performance slacks off, Head Start participants are more likely to graduate from high school, attend post-secondary training, stay off drugs, stay off public assistance, blahblahblahallthatgoodstuff. There was a news article on just this topic not too long ago but damned if I can remember where. I have access to the study via my uni’s super-secret server; I’ll see if I can dig it up for you.