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Established
in 1965 and currently serving some 900,000 children from
low-income families at an annual cost of about $10,000 per pupil, the
Head Start program is ostensibly intended to provide a boost—in
the form of education, nutrition, and health services—to
disadvantaged three-to-four-year-olds before they enter elementary
school.
From Head Start's inception through 2012,
American taxpayers spent a more than $180
billion
on the program.
But what are taxpayers—and
the children enrolled in Head Start—getting
in return for all this money? To find out, Congress in 2002
commissioned a scientifically rigorous, longitudinal analysis known
as the Head
Start Impact Study
to evaluate the program's effectiveness. The results, which were
released in 2010, indicated that Head Start had little to no effect
on the participants' cognitive abilities, socio-emotional
development, or physical health. Moreover, whatever meager benefits
may have been detectable while the children were actively
participating in Head Start “almost completely disappear[ed] by
first grade.” As
the Heritage
Foundation summarizes:
- For
the 41 measures of cognitive outcomes for the four-year-old cohort,
access to Head Start failed to have an impact on all measures.
- For
the 41 measures of cognitive outcomes for the three-year-old cohort,
access to Head Start had a harmful effect on teacher-assessed math
ability in kindergarten and failed to have an impact on the 40 other
measures
- For
the 40 measures of socio-emotional outcomes for the four-year-old
cohort, access to Head Start had only one beneficial effect and
failed to have an impact on the 39 other measures.
- For
the 40 measures of socio-emotional outcomes for the three-year-old
cohort, access to Head Start had only two beneficial effects and
failed to have an impact on the 38 other measures.
- For
the 10 measures of parent-reported health outcomes for the
four-year-old cohort, access to Head Start had only one beneficial
effect and failed to have an impact on the nine other measures.
- For
the 10 measures of parent-reported health outcomes for the
three-year-old cohort, access to Head Start had only one beneficial
effect and failed to have an impact on the nine other measures.
- For
the 21 measures of parenting outcomes for the four-year-old cohort,
access to Head Start had no effect on all of the measures.
- For
the 21 measures of parent-reported health outcomes for the
three-year-old cohort, access to Head Start had only one beneficial
effect and failed to have an impact on the 20 other measures.
Then,
in 2012, the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) published the
findings of another scientifically rigorous, landmark study that tracked some 5,000 three- and four-year-old children from the
beginning of their Head Start experience, through the third grade.
This analysis, which was commissioned by HHS, likewise concluded that Head Start had no measurable
impact on cognitive, social-emotional, or health-related variables.
On a few measures, in fact, access to Head Start had harmful effects
on the children. The researchers
summarized
their results as follows:
"[T]here were initial positive impacts from having access to Head Start,
but by
the end of 3rd grade there were very few impacts found for either
cohort in any of the four domains
of cognitive, social-emotional, health and parenting practices. The
few impacts that were
found did not show a clear pattern of favorable or unfavorable
impacts for children."
In its summary
of the findings of the HHS third-grade study, the
Heritage Foundation provides a number of specifics:
- For
cognitive development, the third-grade study assessed 11 outcomes for
the original three- and four-year-old cohorts. Access to Head Start
for each group had no statistically measurable effects on all
measures of cognitive ability, including numerous measures of
reading, language, and math ability.
- For
social-emotional development, the third-grade study assessed 19
outcomes for each cohort. For measures of parent-reported
social-emotional outcomes, access to Head Start for the
three-year-old cohort failed to affect four of the five measures. For
this cohort, Head Start failed to affect four measures of
parental-reported problem behaviors. However, access to Head Start
yielded a slight beneficial impact on children in the areas of social
skills and positive approaches to learning.
- For
the four-year-old cohort, access to Head Start failed to affect four
of the five parent-reported social-emotional outcomes. For the
four-year-old cohort, access to Head Start is associated with a small
decrease in aggressive behavior. However, access to Head Start for
this cohort failed to affect parental reports of hyperactive,
withdrawn, and total problem behaviors. In contrast to the finding
for the three-year-old cohort, access to Head Start failed to affect
children displaying better social skills and positive approaches to
learning.
- For
third grade, access to Head Start had no statistically measurable
effect on the 10 teacher-reported measures of social-emotional
development for the three-year-old cohort. However, for the
four-year-old cohort, out of 10 measures, access to Head Start is
associated with one harmful impact. Teachers reported “strong
evidence of an unfavorable impact on the incidence of children’s
emotional symptoms.” Access to Head Start for this cohort had no
beneficial or harmful impacts on the remaining nine teacher-reported
measures.
- For
child-reported measures of social-emotional outcomes, access to Head
Start had no statistically measurable effect on the four outcomes for
the three-year-old cohort.
On the other hand, access to Head Start for the four-year-old cohort
appears to have had one harmful impact—children in the third grade
with access to Head Start reported worse peer relations than their
counterparts.
- For parent-reported child health, the study
assessed five third-grade outcomes for each cohort. Access to Head
Start had no statistically measurable effect on all five health
measures for each cohort, including receipt of dental care, health
insurance coverage, and overall child health status ...
- For
parenting outcomes, the third-grade study assessed 10 measures for
both cohorts. Access to Head Start had no statistically measurable
effect on nine of the 10 measures reported by parents and the two
measures reported by teachers for the three-year-old cohort. However,
parents of children in the three-year-old cohort with access to Head
Start self-reported an improved authoritative parenting style (i.e.,
high control and high warmth) compared to their
counterparts.
- Similarly, access to Head Start had no
statistically measurable effect on nine of the 10 measures reported
by parents and the two measures reported by teachers for the
four-year-old cohort. Differing from the three-year-old cohort,
parents of children in the four-year-old cohort reported to have
spent more time with their children than their counterparts in the
control group.
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