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This article talks about the effectiveness of Head Start, but like any program it needs some occasional revamping.

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This article talks about a study President Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services did with a group of children to see if the program was effective or not. They found the program to be a "waste of money"

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Head Start, the most sacrosanct federal education program, doesn't work.

That's the finding of a sophisticated study just released by President Obama's Department of Health and Human Services.

Created in 1965, the comprehensive preschool program for 3- and 4-year olds and their parents is meant to narrow the education gap between low-income students and their middle- and upper-income peers. Forty-five years and $166 billion later, it has been proven a failure.

Instead of throwing more dollars at this proven failure, President Obama might consider throwing his weight behind proven successes.

The bad news came in the study released this month: It found that, by the end of the first grade, children who attended Head Start are essentially indistinguishable from a control group of students who didn't.

What's so damning is that this study used the best possible method to review the program: It looked at a nationally representative sample of 5,000 children who were randomly assigned to either the Head Start ("treatment") group or to the non-Head Start ("control") group.

Random assignment is the "gold standard" of medical and social-science research: It gives investigators confidence that the treatment and control groups are essentially identical in every respect except their access to Head Start. So if eventual test performances differ, we can be pretty sure that the difference was caused by the program. No previous study of Head Start used this approach on a nationally representative sample of children.

When the researchers gave both groups of students 44 different academic tests at the end of the first grade, only two seemed to show even marginally significant advantages for the Head Start group. And even those apparent advantages vanished after standard statistical controls were applied.

In fact, not a single one of the 114 tests administered to first graders - of academics, socio-emotional development, health care/health status and parenting practice - showed a reliable, statistically significant effect from participating in Head Start.

Some advocates of the program have acknowledged these dramatic results, but suggest that it's not necessarily Head Start's fault if its effects vanish during kindergarten and the first grade - perhaps our K-12 schools are to blame.

But that's beside the point. Even if it's true, it means that Head Start will be of no lasting value to children until we fix our elementary and secondary schools. Until then, money spent on Head Start will continue to be wasted.

Yet the Obama administration remains enthusiastic. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius and Education Secretary Arne Duncan both want to boost funding for Head Start - that is, to spend more on a program that's sure to fail. That's after the president already raised spending on the program from $6.8 billion to $9.2 billion last year.

Instead of throwing more dollars at this proven failure, President Obama might consider throwing his weight behind proven successes. A federal program that pays private-school tuition for poor DC families, for instance, has been shown to raise students' reading performance by more than two grade levels after just three years, compared to a control group of students who stayed in public schools. And it does so at about a quarter the cost to taxpayers of DC's public schools.

Sadly, Obama and Duncan have ignored the DC program's proven success. Neither lifted a finger to save it when Democrats in Congress pulled the plug on its funding last year.

Perhaps it's unrealistic to expect national Democrats to end a Great Society program, even when it's a proven failure. Perhaps it's unrealistic to expect them to stand up to teachers' union opposition and support private-school-choice programs that are proven successes.

Of course, until last week, it seemed unrealistic to expect a Republican to win the Senate seat long held by Ted Kennedy. If voters get angry enough with federal education politics, national Democrats may start learning from their state-level colleagues who are starting to support effective policies like school choice. Or they may just lose their seats, too.

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Head Start, the most sacrosanct federal education program, doesn't work. That's the finding of a sophisticated study just released by President Obama's Department of Health and Human Services. Created in 1965, the comprehensive preschool program for 3- and 4-year olds and their parents is meant to narrow the education gap between low-income students and their middle- and upper-income peers.

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This article expresses that head start is not effective because of the difference in the children's lives at home.

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By Rebecca Bendheim

When it comes to government programs, people love to argue. Grumpy citizens delight in fighting over why this program didn't work because this politician made this mistake and wasted this much of their hard-earned money. What these people are really doing is bashing decisions that they know nothing about made by groups of professionals who have spent a great deal of time analyzing research and predictions to create an informed, and usually complicated, course of action. This is not the case for the claim that many psychologists have made that the national government's Head Start program is, and will always be, a failure.

When it comes to early childhood development, psychologists ARE the experts, and many have argued against it since the '60s, in the first few years after Lyndon B. Johnson launched Head Start as part of his War on Poverty in 1965, and the government began spending over seven billion dollars a year to provide preschool to around a million three and four year olds from low-income families (Klein, 2011).

Betty Hart and Todd Risley are the two main psychologists cited in studies of early childhood language development, and in 1967, just two years after the launch of Head Start, they created their own early childhood intervention program and soon realized that these programs are impossible to administer successfully. Hart and Risley created a language-focused preschool in Kansas City, where they had children from a low-income area attend along with children of University of Kansas professors. They found that while they could teach the low-income students new words, they could not speed up their vocabulary growth beyond the direct teaching of the words. They tested the children a year later, and found that while the professor's children's vocabularies were quickly expanding, the low-income children's vocabulary growth had slowed down considerably, reaching the level of other low income children who did not attend the preschool. After observing this failure, Hart and Risley went more in depth in their research by intensively observing the language use of families with young children in their homes. They found that by age four, children with parents on welfare have heard, on average, thirteen million different words while the average child of professional parents has been exposed to almost forty-five million words (Hart & Risley, 1995). Here is a graph illustrating their results:

According to these statistics, by the time an average child from a low income family turns four, the time when they would possibly begin attending a Head Start program, they already have the disadvantage of over thirty million words to their higher-income peers. Hart and Risley also found that children of professionals receive six encouragements to every discouragement from their parents while children with parents on welfare receive one encouragement for every two discouragements (Hart & Risley, 1995). In their final report, Hart and Risley wrote, "By age 3, an intervention must address not just a lack of knowledge or skill, but an entire general approach to experience" (Hart & Risley, 1995). In other words, no matter how much our government spends, there is no practical way to give our nation's lower income children an equal playing field because no two-year preschool can make up for inferior parenting. Psychologists have also proven correlations between higher socioeconomic status and a more authoritative parenting style, an effective style in which parents are sensitive to their child's needs but also discipline them appropriately ( Siegler, DeLoache & Eisenberg, 2011, p. 475).

Just recently, after ignoring numerous psychological studies, the government finally performed their own study of the effectiveness of Head Start and found what psychologists have been telling us from the very beginning. The Department of Health and Human Services randomly assigned children to Head Start and tested them against non-assigned peers, finding that the benefits of the program completely diminish by the time the children reach first grade ( U.S. Department of Health & Human Services , 2010). Therefore, we are spending over seven billion dollars a year for a portion of our low-income kindergarteners to know a few more words.

While the average American has little to no grounds to criticize the government's decisions, many of our nation's psychologists deserve to be frustrated. If our government wants what it claims to want, to get ahead in science, then they should think about listening to our nations psychologists, because with so little recognition and so many taxes, they may not stay here long.

By Meredith Sight

So, really, does Head Start do its job of preparing low SES students for kindergarten? YES! Head Start gives its students an academic preparation that they never would have because of their economic class. While upper- and middle-income students might be enrolled in private daycare or nurseries, poor children most often do not have such resources. Head Start addresses this inequality by creating a program with a sound curricular foundation.But how do we know if Head Start is really succeeding in this mission? In determining whether Head Start is successful in meeting its goal of preparing pre-school children for kindergarten, it is important to remember that test statistics alone are not the only criterion. Many studies show that students and their families coming from low-economic backgrounds benefit from measurable cognitive, social, and emotional advantages that Head Start gives them.

Within in twelve years after the program's launching, Mann, Harrell, and Hurt conducted comprehensive on-site studies in 1977 for a federally funded review of the program which confirmed that those graduating from Head Start programs entered grade school near to or at national standards of school readiness and maintained this advantage in the first years of school (Washington and Bailey, 1995, pp. 127-128). These studies indicate that when compared to other disadvantaged children, Head Start participants generally fare better as they enter their primary years. The program prepares these children who otherwise would have fallen behind noticeably in their first years of school.

Head Start's success is partially a result of its focus on active teacher involvement. Teachers take time in their Head Start classrooms not only to teach the basics, like colors, numbers and letters, but also to encourage social and emotional growth, which is critical. The more closely the teacher works with the student, the stronger the bond, and the more the students learn quickly (Conner, Knight, & Cross, 1997; Gauvain, 2001, p. 163). In addition, Head Start's innovative approaches have a positive impact on students' self-confidence and self-discipline. For instance, a seventeen-year studyindicated that, at the end of the Head Start year, program participants scored higher in self-esteem, achievement motivation, and social behavior (McKey et al., 1985).

Recognizing that teachers alone cannot address the students' needs and that parental involvement has a substantial impact on children's success (Parke & Buriel, 1998, 2006, p. 469), Head Start enlists the involvement and help of the students' parents. Walter Emmerich, a child development specialist, revealed in his 1973 study that those parents who participated were more aware of their children's social, emotional and intellectuals needs (Emmerich, 1973). Research documents that positive parent interaction enhances children's attitudes toward learning and themselves, which, in turn helps children develop a more positive outlook on life (Bradley et al., 1994, p. 314).

While Head Start takes pride in its successes, it is not without its critics, especially those who insist on measuring the program's effectiveness in addressing immediate improvement in school performance in black-and-white statistics.Head Start advocates counter the most prevailing criticism by pointing out that success is not only measured by exam statistics, but also measured by the social and emotional growth. There is, in fact, data to support Head Start's impact on the improved social and emotional well-being of its graduates. For example, Julius Richmond, director of Health Policy at Harvard Medical School, argued that long-term advantages of Head Start could be demonstrated as well. His data argues that fewer Head Start students were assigned to special education classes when they reached middle school age (14% for Head Start students; 29% for those non-Head Start students), fewer were retained from grade to grade (25% versus 31%), and increased achievement test scores in high school (Richmond, 1988, p. 311). Richmond also determined that Head Start students revealed encouraging social and emotional advantages. There was less teenage pregnancy (6.4% versus 11.7%) and crime (31% versus 51%) (Richmond, 1988, p. 312). These data confirm that Head Start students experienced fewer social and emotional challenges. While any one program can never completely eliminate the effects of poverty, these data offer evidence that programs like Head Start make significant headway in countering their damage.

It is obvious that any preschool intervention program cannot do away with the consequences of poverty, like inadequate housing, poor nutrition, and unsatisfactory health care. These are monumental problems, but there is reason to believe that Head Start does make a significant impact on students who are struggling with such issues. Evidence offered in criticism of Head Start neglects to take into consideration the program's significant contribution to the improved welfare of poor children who are enrolled in the program. The research on Head Start paints a much more comprehensive and encouraging picture. For poor children, Head Start marks a measurably significant change in their lives.

References

Emmerich, W. (1973). Preschool Personal-Social Behaviors: Relationships with

Socioeconomic Status, Cognitive Skills, and Tempo. US Office of Child
Development Disadvantaged Children and Their First School Experiences ETS-Head Start Longitudinal Study PR
Hart, B., & Risley, T. (1995). The Early Catastrophe: The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3 Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley. Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experiences of Young American Children (pp. 800, 638-3775). Baltimore: Brookes Publishing.

Klein, J. (2011, July 7). Time to Ax Public Programs That Don't Yield Results. TIME.com. Retrieved November 29, 2013, from http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2081778,00.html

McKey, R. H. (1985). The Impact of Head Start on Children, Families and

Communities. The U.S. Administration for Children, Youth and Families. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Richmond, M.D., J. B. (1988). Early Education. Bulletin of the New York

Siegler, R. S., DeLoache, J. S., & Eisenberg, N. (2006). The Family. How children develop (3rd ed., p. 475). New York: Worth Publishers.

Washington, V., & Bailey, U. J. (1995). Project Head Start: Models and

Strategies for the Twenty-first Century . New York: Garland Publishing Inc.

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Does Head Start Work? Two Perspectives based on Psychology

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By Rebecca Bendheim When it comes to government programs, people love to argue. Grumpy citizens delight in fighting over why this program didn't work because this politician made this mistake and wasted this much of their hard-earned money.

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This article talks about Head Start not being as effective in some areas as it could be, but there's still hope. Just because its not as effective as it could be doesn't mean they can make changes to make it better.

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The good news is that Head Start is already improving. Historically, programs applied for operating grants from the federal government and, once approved, continued to get them unless they committed a major violation of Head Start's rules. Thanks to a bipartisan change that Congress made in 2007 and that the Obama Administration has aggressively implemented, simply following the rules is no longer enough. Today, programs are judged based partly on observations of the quality of teaching in Head Start classrooms, which research has linked to later outcomes for kids. Programs with poor scores during the observations, or with other problems, now need to compete for their grants.

These changes are very important. The problem is that they're layered on top of Head Start's cumbersome existing rules. The program has 2,400 separate " performance standards," on topics from dental care to potty emptying to accounting. Programs that fail to meet these standards can face sanctions. Each standard has its logic, but collectively all these rules limit innovation and customization.

To take one example, the rules call on grantees to do at least two home visits for every student. But in some cases, it may make more sense to vary the visits depending on need. A really troubled family might be better off with three or more visits, even if this means more stable families receive only one. Programs are required to give parents information on a vast array of topics, even though behavioral research suggests that information alone doesn't do much good. And so on. The rules can be pretty nitpicky, too: In formal reports on programs' performance, federal monitors have cited programs for failing to properly label federal property or track volunteer hours.

For Head Start managers, these rules aren't just annoying. They distract from what they can and should be doing to make sure children are prepared to succeed in school. Head Start's commitment to engaging parents and developing the whole child contributes immensely to school readiness. But some requirements, like encouraging community advocacy, don't clearly relate back to child development. Head Start's learning framework includes 11 domains of learning, 37 subdomains, and more than 100 examples of what programs should do. Within that broad mandate, Head Start asks for progress in everything. In the process, it can end up limiting excellence in anything.

Conservatives think the solution to these problems is to hand Head Start over to the states. But while some states--including some conservative ones-have been truly committed to early childhood education, the overall record of states is mixed. Ten states do not have statewide pre-school programs at all, and many made deep cuts in childcare spending during the recent recession. Given the opportunity, some states would likely use federal money to replace funds they now spend on early childhood programs. That could mean fewer services overall.

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The good news is that Head Start is already improving. Historically, programs applied for operating grants from the federal government and, once approved, continued to get them unless they committed a major violation of Head Start's rules. Thanks to a bipartisan change that Congress made in 2007 and that the Obama Administration has aggressively implemented, simply following the rules is no longer enough.

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My 2 articles agains Head Start

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EDFO 420 Articles against Head Start.pdf

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Billions are spent on this program. It is an 8 Billion a year program. And since it was started in 1965 we have spent more than $180 Billion on this program. Is it worth it? Are our children getting the education they need or is there more issues than we know.

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'Twas the Friday before Christmas, and while most Americans were enjoying time with family and friends, the bureaucrats at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) were stirring quietly about, preparing to release its long-overdue evaluation of the Head Start program.

Head Start is an $8 billion per year federal preschool program, designed to improve the kindergarten readiness of low-income children. Since its inception in1965, taxpayers have spent more than $180 billion on the program.

But HHS' latest Head Start Impact Study found taxpayers aren't getting a good return on this "investment." According to the congressionally-mandated report, Head Start has little to no impact on cognitive, social-emotional, health, or parenting practices of its participants. In fact, on a few measures, access to the program actually produced negative effects.

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The HHS' scientifically-rigorous study tracked 5,000 children who were randomly assigned to either a group receiving Head Start services or a group that did not participate in Head Start. It followed their progression from ages three or four through the end of third grade. The third-grade evaluation is a continuation to HHS' first-grade study, which followed children through the end of first grade.

The first-grade evaluation found that any benefits the children may have accrued while in the Head Start program had dissipated by the time they reached first grade.

The study also revealed that Head Start failed to improve the literacy, math and language skills of the four year-old cohort and had a negative impact on the teacher-assessed math ability of the three-year-old cohort.

Based on this track record, HHS and Head Start devotees should not have been surprised to learn that the results of the third-grade evaluation were even worse. If the impacts of Head Start had all but disappeared by first grade, how could they suddenly reappear by the end of third grade?

Not only were the third-grade evaluation results poor, so was the department's handling of the study. HHS sat on the results for four years. All that time, taxpayers were kept in the dark while their tax dollars continued to fund a completely ineffective program.

HHS had finished collecting all the data in 2008. Despite persistent prodding by members of Congress, the Department did not make the report (coyly dated October 2012) public until the Friday before Christmas. The timing couldn't have been better if your goal is to get minimal attention.

Surely HHS was not eager to release yet another report showing that the feel-good Head Start program doesn't work. But numbers don't lie.

The third-grade follow-up study found that access to Head Start had no statistically measurable effects on cognitive ability, including numerous measures of reading, language and math ability.
The evaluation also examined the program's effect on social-emotional development. It found that children in the 4-year-old group actually reported worse peer relations in third grade than their non-Head Start counterparts.

There was also no statistically significant effect on teacher-reported, social-emotional development of children. Alarmingly, there was a negative effect on the 4-year-old cohort. Teachers reported "strong evidence of an unfavorable impact on the incidence of children's emotional symptoms." Moreover, Head Start also failed to improve the parenting outcomes and child-health outcomes of participants.

The bottom line: Washington's 48-year experiment with federal preschool has failed to deliver long-lasting, positive developments for its participants. Still, many in Congress argue that the way to fix this is to increase funding for Head Start.

And that's exactly what they did in the Hurricane Sandy relief bill. It contains $100 million in new funding for Head Start - ostensibly to provide funds to Head Start centers in the Northeast affected by the storm. According to the Senate appropriations committee, that $100 million will be divvied up among 265 centers-an average of more than $377,000 per center.

Head Start fails children and costs taxpayers exorbitant amounts of money every year. And it's just one of 69 federal preschool programs.

Head Start doesn't need more money. It needs to be put on the chopping block. If Congress remains intent on funding preschool, it should at least refrain from relegating low-income children to underperforming Head Start centers. Far better to let these kids take their "share" of Head Start funding to a private preschool provider of their own choosing.
Lindsey M. Burke is the Will Skillman Fellow in education policy at the Heritage Foundation.

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Head Start's sad and costly secret -- what Washington doesn't want you to know

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'Twas the Friday before Christmas, and while most Americans were enjoying time with family and friends, the bureaucrats at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) were stirring quietly about, preparing to release its long-overdue evaluation of the Head Start program.

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Every child needs a Head Start in life and this program gives them many ways to make a difference in there lives. Head Start is not just for the poor and should be available to all no matter of income and need.

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Our Work

Advocating for policies and programs that guarantee all children have a Head Start and a Strong Start in life.

CDF is committed to ensuring all children are guaranteed a Head Start and a Strong Start in life, which starts with access to a continuum of high-quality early learning and development opportunities from birth through age 5 that meet the needs of children and their families. This includes access to evidence-based, voluntary home visiting programs; Early Head Start and Head Start; high-quality, affordable child care; high-quality preschool; and full-day kindergarten.

Home Visiting

Supporting access to voluntary professional services and support for mothers and families with young children.

Early childhood home visiting programs provide voluntary, in-home services to expectant mothers and families with infants and young children. Nurses, social workers, early childhood education specialists, or other trained paraprofessionals, meet with families in their homes to advise them on the health and development their children and connect them to community services and supports. Evidence-based home visitation services produce such measurable outcomes for children and families, as improved health, school readiness, academic achievement, parental involvement and economic self-sufficiency, and reduced child maltreatment, injuries, and juvenile delinquency.

The Affordable Care Act established a federal funding stream for voluntary evidence-based home visiting programs in 2010; however, due to a lack of funding, only a limited number of children and families are able to benefit from the program. CDF supports expanding investments in quality home visiting to improve outcomes for vulnerable children and families.

Head Start and Early Head Start

Supporting increased access to, and quality in, comprehensive federal early childhood programs for infants and toddlers and young children.

Head Start and Early Head Start are federally funded, locally administered programs that provide quality, comprehensive early childhood development and learning services to preschool aged children, infants, and toddlers. Head Start supports development of the whole child, promoting school readiness by providing educational, health, nutritional and social services to enrolled children -- while also supporting their families. Despite serving over a million low-income children, fewer than half of eligible children are able to benefit from Head Start and less than 5 percent participate in Early Head Start.

CDF supports Head Start's mission of providing comprehensive, quality early childhood services to children and their families, and advocates for increased funding for the program so more eligible children and families can benefit.

Head Start has proven results. Children who participate are school ready, less likely to need special education, and more likely to graduate high school and go on to college.

Child Care

Ensuring working families and their children have access to safe, affordable and high-quality child care

Working families need access to high-quality, affordable child care that meets their children's developmental needs; however the high-cost of care creates a barrier to access for many families. While the federal government provides supports to families to help defray the cost of care, both through the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) and the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), these supports are not sufficient to meet the needs of all the families they are designed to serve. Fewer than 1 in 4 eligible children under 5 benefit from CCDBG and the non-refundable CDCTC provides no benefit to the families that most need help and minimal support to middle-income families who still struggle to pay for quality care. Additionally, a well-trained and competitively compensated workforce is necessary to provide the quality of care children and parents deserve, but child care workers are paid less than parking lot attendants in 30 states. CDF is committed to working with our partners to ensure that all children have access to affordable, high-quality child care that supports their early development and their parents' abilities to work.

Preschool

Promoting access to high-quality preschool opportunities for low-income 3-and 4-year-olds and others with special needs.

High-quality preschool programs for 3- and 4-year-olds improve school readiness and facilitate a range of positive outcomes in both school and life. These programs are especially beneficial for low-income children and other vulnerable children, including those who are homeless, in foster care, are learning English as a second language, or have disabilities. Unfortunately, access to preschool is often determined by parental income, and the lottery of geography and quality varies widely. While some states, such as Oklahoma, New Jersey, and Georgia have prioritized access to high-quality preschool, many other states serve fewer children with weaker quality standards. CDF is committed to working to ensure all children, especially the poorest and most vulnerable, have access to quality preschool programs that prepare them for school and life.

Full-Day Kindergarten

Ensuring that children receive the opportunity to attend full-day kindergarten before entering first grade.

Full-day kindergarten boosts children's cognitive learning, creative problem solving, and social competence, and helps sustain gains made in early childhood programs. Access to full-day kindergarten is not guaranteed for all 5-year-old children in the country. Only 11 states and D.C. require that their districts offer full-day kindergarten and five do not require any offering of kindergarten at all. In poor economic times, these programs not protected by statute can be targeted by districts for cuts to save money, particularly in states that do not fund full-day kindergarten at the same level as first grade. As momentum for investments in young children continues to build across the country; states and districts must ensure that they have full-day kindergarten in statute as part of their quality continuum of early childhood services so children do not miss the critical step between preschool and first grade.

Data and Publications

CDF publications relevant to early childhood development and learning.

The Child Care and Early Learning Coalition Letter to Congress
In this letter, the Child Care and Early Learning Coalition urges Congress to increase funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant by $2.9 billion in the FY 2018 appropriations bill as proposed by the Democratic leadership. This substantial investment in access to high-quality child care will help parents work, boost the well-being of children, and make our economy stronger.

February 5, 2018
Child Care for Working Families Act - Fact Sheet
The Child Care for Working Families Act provides help to families, ensuring every family who needs it can afford high-quality child care for their children. The bill recognizes children need a continuum of support in the earliest years of their lives and in addition to child care subsidies supports universal access to preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds and full-day, full year Early Head Start and Head Start for the poorest children.

September 5, 2017
The State of America's Children 2017
Millions of America's children today suffer from hunger, homelessness and hopelessness. Together, The State of America's Children® 2017 and corresponding state factsheets provide a comprehensive overview of how America's children are doing nationally and inform conversations about how we can do better.

December 14, 2017
Child Care Access to Resources for Early-Learning Act
High-quality child care that supports children's healthy development is crucial for working families. Quality early childhood development programs can help mitigate the negative effects of poverty and create lifelong benefits for America's most vulnerable children. Unfortunately, the high costs of child care can be prohibitive for many families.

March 2, 2016
2015-children-in-the-states-complete
State data released by the U.S. Census Bureau on September 17, 2015 reveal that child poverty in 2014 remains at record high levels in the states. Children are the poorest age group, and the poorest are children of color and those under age six.

October 28, 2015
Child Poverty in America 2014 State Fact Sheet
State data released by the U.S. Census Bureau on September 17, 2015 reveal that child poverty in 2014 remains at record high levels in the states. Children are the poorest age group, and the poorest are children of color and those under age six.

September 22, 2015
Child Poverty in America 2014 National Fact Sheet
Poverty data released by the U.S. Census Bureau on September 16, 2015 reveal that child poverty declined slightly in 2014, from 21.5 percent in 2013 to 21.1 percent in 2014. While child poverty rates declined for Hispanic, White and Asian children, Black children saw an increase and continue to have the highest child poverty rate. Despite some decreases child poverty among all children remains at shamefully high levels. One in five children - 15.5 million - were poor in 2014, and children remain the poorest age group in the country.

September 17, 2015
FY2016 House and Senate Budget Fact Sheet Ending Child Poverty Now
For the first time, this report shows that by investing an additional 2 percent of the federal budget into existing programs and policies that increase employment, make work pay, and ensure children's basic needs are met, the nation could reduce child poverty by 60 percent and lift 6.6 million children out of poverty.

January 28, 2015
Early Childhood Short Research Summary
Investing in Early Childhood Development and Learning is Key to the Success of Our Children and Our Nation's Long-Term Economic Growth

More Early Childhood Development and Early Learning Data

Child Watch® Columns

Contact us about Early Childhood Development and Learning

For information about Early Childhood Development and Learning, please contact: EarlyChildhoodDevelopment@Childrensdefense.org

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early childhood development and learning

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CDF works to ensure that every child has a Head Start and a Strong Start in life by ensuring access to quality early childhood and development opportunities. Children's brains are developing rapidly in their first 5 years as they build a foundation for all future outcomes in school and in life.

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Head start is one of the largest Federal Pre School programs and has increase health with children and high school completion.

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A growing body of rigorous evidence suggests that policy interventions aimed at early childhood bear fruit for decades. For example, reductions in air pollution in the first year of life and more experienced kindergarten teachers are associated with increases in later earnings, while childhood access to food stamps and Medicaid causes better health in adulthood. Across many studies of several programs, preschool attendance among disadvantaged children has been found to positively impact participants. Research has demonstrated strong long-term impacts of random assignment to high-quality preschool programs from the 1960s and 1970s, including Perry Preschool and the Abecedarian program. Head Start, the large-scale federal preschool program, has also been shown to improve post-preschool outcomes, including high school completion and health outcomes.

In this Economic Analysis, we investigate the impact of Head Start on a new set of long-term outcomes, extending landmark analyses further into adulthood and considering the effect of Head Start on participants' children. i Among the key takeaways of the analysis are:

Consistent with the prior literature, we find that Head Start improves educational outcomes- increasing the probability that participants graduate from high school, attend college, and receive a post-secondary degree, license, or certification.

Overall and particularly among African American participants, we find that Head Start also causes social, emotional, and behavioral development that becomes evident in adulthood measures of self-control, self-esteem, and positive parenting practices.

We find that Head Start participation increased positive parenting practices for each ethnic group and for participants whose mothers did not have a high school degree when compared with the outcomes of children who went to a preschool other than Head Start.

This study uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), a multiple-generation longitudinal survey with data on a wide range of important developmental, economic, and social topics. The NLSY began as a nationally representative sample of almost 13,000 men and women in 1979. Every child of the women in the NLSY is inducted into a second generation sample; almost 10,000 children have been interviewed at least once since 1986. When these second-generation respondents had children, they were interviewed about the third generation. These second-generation respondents are surveyed biennially until age thirty, and are subsequently surveyed every four years.

We adopt a standard, well-established method to identify the effect of Head Start, comparing children who went to Head Start with their siblings who either went to a different type of preschool or who did not attend any program. ii This approach allows us to avoid comparing individuals across different families whose dissimilar characteristics and experiences make it difficult to isolate the effect of Head Start. Instead, we adopt the approach preferred in the research literature in the absence of an experiment: comparing one sibling to another, effectively controlling for differences between families that are fixed. When siblings attend different types of preschool (or none at all), this approach allows us to compare the impact of Head Start attendance both to attending a preschool other than Head Start and to attending no preschool at all.

Because we do not have information about why some siblings attended Head Start and some did not, an important criticism of this method concerns the conditions under which it is appropriate to compare siblings. For example, if the sibling who attended Head Start was more likely to be the youngest child in the family, or was preschool age when the family had an unusually low income, or was enrolled in Head Start because the parents had concerns about the child's development, then the measured effect of Head Start may be confounded with these other factors. To assess how likely these other factors are to confound the estimates, previous studies have used available information about children, their mothers, and their families prior to attending preschool, to directly test whether these characteristics predict participation in Head Start. iii Implementing this test, we find that a wide variety of characteristics of the children, mothers, and households prior to enrollment do not predict whether a child enrolls in Head Start, preschool, or nothing at all (see the Appendix for details). This is evidence that our so-called quasi- experimental study design-comparing siblings who go to Head Start with those who did not-yields valid estimates of the causal effect of Head Start. Nonetheless, we cannot rule out the potential that unobserved characteristics influence which sibling attends Head Start and confound the estimated effect.

Using this approach, we investigate Head Start's impact on both its participants and their children, including participants' high school graduation rates; enrollment in and completion of higher education; social, emotional, and behavioral development; and how attendance in Head Start impacted participants' subsequent parenting practices.

Evidence demonstrates that early childhood education interventions have positive impacts on high school graduation rates. Figure 1 shows that early childhood education programs-whether Head Start or a model program like Perry Preschool-cause increases in high school graduation rates more than a decade later. Perry Preschool increases high school graduation by 20 percentage points, while the estimates of Head Start's impact are more modest. Our analysis-extending work done by David Deming of Harvard-shows that more recent cohorts of Head Start saw a slightly larger impact than earlier cohorts, and that the program had different impacts across different subgroups. For example, Hispanic children and children of mothers who did not have a high school credential were helped more by Head Start. iv

Participation in Head Start also increases a student's chances both of pursuing and completing higher education. In Figure 2, we display and report estimates from two prior published studies of the effect of Head Start on postsecondary education, followed by our calculations from more recent data, again building on Deming's work. We find that the likelihood of pursuing some higher education is increased between 4 and 12 percentage points by Head Start. v We further estimate the effect of Head Start not only on postsecondary education but also on completion of a post-secondary credential, defined to include a license or certificate, an associate's degree, or a bachelor's degree. Head Start increases postsecondary credential completion overall, including an estimated increase of 15 percentage points for Hispanic participants.

There is an increasing understanding that improvements on behavioral measures have positive effects on a variety of economic and social outcomes. In light of this, we study the impact of Head Start on measures of social, emotional, and behavioral development including self-control, self-esteem, and parenting practices-outcomes that to our knowledge have not been previously studied in this framework. To measure the effect of Head Start on self-control, we create an index of three scales that measures planning, problem-solving, and behavior-monitoring. vi As shown in the left panel of Figure 3, we find that attending Head Start increases students' self-control by 0.15 standard deviations relative to not attending preschool. The impacts are twice as large for African American participants. Children of mothers without a high school degree also saw significant gains from Head Start, but only relative to siblings who did not attend preschool.

Head Start also contributes positively to participants' self-esteem, as shown in the right panel of Figure 3. Across the whole sample, we find that attending Head Start increases later reported self-esteem by 0.14 standard deviations. These gains were especially prominent for African American students, as well as for those whose mothers did not complete high school when compared to siblings who did not go to any preschool.vii

Finally, we look at the effect of Head Start on the next generation through its impact on parenting practices. viii While Head Start has been shown to change the behavior of parents while the child is attending the program (see recent work by Gelber and Isen), nothing had been known about whether the program causes participants to change their behavior toward their own children decades later.

We find that Head Start causes participants to invest more in their own children years after their participation in the program. To measure these investments, we developed an index of positive parenting practices incorporating the frequency of a parent reading aloud to their child; whether the parent reported teaching their child numbers, the alphabet, colors, and shapes at home; whether the parent reported in the past week praising the child, showing physical affection, and spending time with the child doing one of the child's favorite activities; and whether the parent reported not spanking the child in the past week. ix As shown in Figure 4, across all subgroups studied, parenting practices were improved relative to siblings who attended non-Head Start preschool programs. Results were more mixed when Head Start attendees were compared to siblings who did not attend preschool, with statistically significant impacts overall and for African Americans but not for Hispanics, whites or children of mothers with less than a high school education.

There are two issues of note regarding the social, emotional, and behavioral analyses:

For each of the behavioral development analyses, the estimates of the effect of Head Start is larger when compared with their siblings who went to a different preschool than when compared with a sibling who did not attend preschool. While these data do not have measures of center quality, this finding does suggest that the preschool alternatives were of poorer quality than a seat in Head Start.

Although there are strong impacts of Head Start on Hispanics' educational outcomes (as shown in Figures 1 and 2), we find no statistically significant impact of Head Start on their measured self-control or self-esteem. Because the sample size is smallest for Hispanics, small effects would be difficult to observe. Regardless, more research is needed to better identify and understand these patterns.

The research literature is increasingly documenting that experiences during childhood can profoundly influence later-life outcomes, and that interventions during childhood can generate cost-effective improvements in life circumstances. This economic analysis extends what we know about the long-term impacts of Head Start, thereby contributing to the current debate about preschool policies. We find that Head Start not only enhances eventual educational attainment, but also has a lasting positive impact on behavioral outcomes including self-control and self-esteem. Furthermore, it improves parenting practices-potentially providing additional benefits to the next generation.

Appendix

As described in the text, in this analysis we compare siblings who went to Head Start with those who went to a different type of preschool and those who did not attend any program. The Appendix Table below shows a series of descriptive statistics. First, in the left panel we show how Head Start children are different from other children when compared across different families-an approach not taken in this analysis. Consistent with Head Start's mission to serve disadvantaged children, those who attend Head Start score significantly lower across a series of household characteristics including income, the quality of the home environment, and how many adults were in the household. They also have worse child-specific characteristics, including measures of birth weight and early childhood health.

In the right panel, we show descriptive statistics across siblings by their preschool attendance-that is, the approach taken in this study. Here we find small and not statistically significant differences across siblings. In other word, the sibling who attended Head Start was not systematically more (or less) disadvantaged in terms of measures of birth weight and early childhood health, nor did the mother or family exhibit different time-varying characteristics (such as educational attainment, or income level) when the Head Start participant was a child. This is strong evidence that the study design employed here is valid.

The bottom panel repeats the exercise with the children of the siblings impacted by Head Start, again finding strong cross-family differences but small and insignificant differences when the between-sibling comparison is done.
Editor's note: This piece originally appeared on The Hamilton Project website.

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Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach and Lauren Bauer

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The long-term impact of the Head Start program

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A growing body of rigorous evidence suggests that policy interventions aimed at early childhood bear fruit for decades. For example, reductions in air pollution in the first year of life and more experienced kindergarten teachers are associated with increases in later earnings, while childhood access to food stamps and Medicaid causes better health in adulthood.

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This article showed that students that were in Head Start had behavioral problems and did worse academically.

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In recent years, support for preschool education has grown by leaps and bounds. After all, who wouldn't want to help adorable little kids get an early jump on success?

But the enthusiasm for Pre-K dampened a bit with the release of two studies, one from 2012 which studied children in a Head Start program and another from 2016 which studied children in Tennessee's statewide preschool program. The Head Start study found that its children were more inclined to behavioral problems than those who did not participate. The Tennessee study, on the other hand, found that participants did worse academically several years into school than those who had not participated. We need to study the effects of preschool education more before we wholeheartedly commit to public Pre-K programs.

The news that these Pre-K programs may hurt rather than help was not received favorably by preschool advocates. And according to a recent Brookings Institute article by scholars Dale Farran and Mark Lipsey, Pre-K advocates have done their best to discredit these studies.

But as Farran and Lipsey explain, the attempts to dismiss these findings "are based on incorrect and misleading characterizations of each study."

For starters, the Head Start study is dismissed on the grounds that some participants ended up in the wrong study group. But according to Farran and Lipsey, such occurrences happen in many scientific studies, and as such, are controlled for in the final statistics. The authors caution that this does not change the fact that children who participated in the Head Start program exhibited more aggressive behavior, the most concerning factor of the study.

Secondly, Farran and Lipsey explain that the Tennessee study is dismissed on the grounds that it is not a "high-quality" program such as those in major cities like Boston and Tulsa. However, when sample sizes are taken from each of these programs, Farran and Lipsey note that there is no major difference between the academic outcomes of each program. In other words, because of the similarity in the outcomes, those who dismiss the Tennessee preschool program as being low quality must also dismiss the programs they hold up as models.

Given this information, does it seem we need to study the effects of preschool education more before we wholeheartedly commit to public Pre-K programs? Is it possible that young children would learn more and have greater long-term success if they weren't subjected to the classroom at such early ages?
Republished from Intellectual Takeout.
Annie is a research associate with Intellectual Takeout. In her role, she writes for the blog, conducts a variety of research for the organization's websites and social media pages, and assists with development projects. She particularly loves digging into the historical aspects of America's educational structure.

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Head Start Programs Are Setting Kids Up for Failure | Annie Holmquist

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Two studies, one from 2012 which studied children in a Head Start program and another from 2016 which studied children in Tennessee's statewide preschool program, found that children who participated had worse academic outcomes and were more likely to have behavioral problems.