1 March 3, 2010HS and EHS Research Update Research Demonstrating Head Start Works Ben Allen, Ph.D. National Head Start Association Pennsylvania Head Start Association Spring Conference April 21, 2010

2 Agenda Head Start Impact Study Findings Non-Head Start Impact Study Research Findings

3 Head Start Impact Study

4 About the Head Start Impact Study In the 1998 Reauthorization of Head Start, federal lawmakers mandated the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to fund a national study to determine whether Head Start works and for whom does it work. Nationally representative sample of 84 randomly selected grantee/delegate agencies and 383 oversubscribed Head Start centers. This study is a value-added study.

5 About Head Start Impact Study (Continued) Experimental random assignment research design. The study consisted of nearly 5,000 newly entering, eligible 3- and 4-year-old children who were randomly assigned to either (1) a Head Start group with access to Head Start services or (2) a control group that did not receive Head Start services. Parents of control group children could still enroll their children in other early childhood programs or non-Head Start early childhood services.

6 About Head Start Impact Study (Continued) The study separately examined two cohorts of children: newly entering three-year-olds and newly entering four-year-olds. Data collection began in fall 2002 and continued through 2006 following children through the spring of their first grade year.

7 Key Head Start Impact Study Findings

8 Key Finding Head Start Impact Study authors assert, “Providing access to Head Start has a positive impact on children’s preschool experiences. There are statistically significant differences between the Head Start group and the control group on every measure of children’s preschool experiences measured in this study.”

9 Program Quality  Head Start classrooms on average were rated as “good” in terms of quality using the ECERS-R, and these classrooms were of higher quality than classrooms in other center-based programs.  This finding is consistent with good quality ratings reported in a couple cohorts of the Family and Child Experience Survey.

10 Cognitive Impacts  In comparison to the control group, three- year-old children who had attended Head Start demonstrated modest gains in language, literacy, pre-writing, and math skills by the end of their Head Start year.  Three-year-old children with special needs had favorable math outcomes by the end of first grade.

11 Cognitive Impacts (Continued)  In comparison to the control group, four-year- old children attending Head Start demonstrated modest gains in language and literacy skills by the end of their Head Start year.  Four-year-old children with mild depressive symptoms had favorable language and literacy impacts at the end of first grade.

12 Socio-Emotional Impacts  Three-year-old children with special needs showed improvements in the socio-emotional domain at the end of first grade.

13 Socio-Emotional Impacts (Continued)  Three-year-olds who attended Head Start showed less hyperactive and problem behavior by the end of Head Start, favorable social skills and positive approaches to learning at the end of age 4, and less hyperactive behavior and increased social skills and positive approaches to learning by the end of their kindergarten year.

14 Socio-Emotional Impacts (Continued)  Parents of the three-year-old Head Start group children reported evidence of a closer relationship with their child and reported a more positive overall relationship with their child than parents of the control group children did by the end of first grade.  Children who attended Head Start as four-year- olds were found to exhibit less withdrawn behavior by the end of first grade than those in the control group.

15 Health Impacts  Three-year-old children attending Head Start were more likely to receive access to dental care by the end of their Head Start year and again at the end of their age 4 year.  In comparison to the control group children, these children were more likely to have access to health insurance at the end of their kindergarten year, an overall excellent/good health status by their end of their Head Start year, and care for an injury in the last month by the end of the age 4 year.

16 Health Impacts (Continued)  Four-year-old Head Start children were 15 percent more likely to receive dental care, more likely to have health insurance coverage by the end of kindergarten and first grade, and more likely to possess an overall excellent/good health status by their end of their kindergarten year.  Four-year-old children who were dual language learners were more likely to have health insurance coverage at the end of their Head Start and kindergarten years and were more likely to have access to dental care by the end of first grade.

17 Impacts on Parenting Practices  Three-year-old Head Start children were less likely to be spanked in the last week at the end of their Head Start year and kindergarten, less likely to have parents using an authoritarian parenting style with them by the end of the age 4 year and first grade, more likely to have parents read to them during their Head Start year, and more likely to have parents involving them in cultural enrichment activities by the end of their Head Start year.

18 Scientific Considerations Control group contamination. 60 percent of the control group participated in child care or early education programs during the first year of the study, with 13.8 percent of the four-year-olds in the control group and 17.8 percent of three-year- olds in the control group making their way into other Head Start programs during this year. Because of this contamination, it would be inappropriate scientifically to expect impacts to be equivalent in size to those of model programs, such as the Perry Preschool study.

19 Scientific Considerations (Continued) Dosage. Children in the Head Start group received 6 to 9 months of Head Start. Pre-Head Start Reauthorization Data. This study examines children who attended Head Start programs five years prior to Head Start’s reauthorization and does not reflect the quality improvements in Head Start that were authorized by federal lawmakers in 2007.

20 Scientific Considerations (Continued) Myth of the Fade-Out Effect. This study found relatively few favorable impacts when children who had attended Head Start finished first grade. However, this study is only one of numerous studies evaluating Head Start over the past forty-five years of Head Start’s history. Those studies found Head Start decreased criminal activity, child mortality rates, the need for special education, the need for children to repeat grades later in school, and increased achievement test scores, high school graduation rates, and immunization rates.

21 Non-Head Start Impact Study Research on Head Start

22 Head Start Is a Quality Program. Head Start quality has been observed to be consistently good over time (Family and Child Experiences Survey, 2000). Head Start programs are rated as “good” using the ECERS-R (Head Start Impact Study, 2005).

23 Head Start Fosters Parental Participation and Empowerment Head Start’s emphasis on parental involvement contributes to positive growth and the upward mobility of Head Start parents by helping to move them out of poverty (Oyemade, Washington, and Gullo, 1989). In Head Start and Early Head Start programs, 893,639 former or current Head Start or Early Head Start parents volunteer (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2008).

24 Head Start Provides Favorable Educational Impacts A meta-analysis of reliable studies reveal that Head Start children have increased  Achievement test scores and  Favorable long-term effects on grade repetition, special education, and high school graduation rates (Barnett, 2002; Ludwig and Miller, 2007).

25 Head Start Provides Favorable Health Impacts Head Start reduced the mortality rates for 5- to 9-year-old children that are 33 to 50 percent lower than for comparable children who were not enrolled in Head Start. These rates were reduced to the national average of mortality rates for all 5- to 9-year-old children (Ludwig and Miller, 2007).

26 Head Start Provides Favorable Health Impacts (Continued) According to an article in the May/June 2009 issues of the Journal of Pediatric Health Care, children in Head Start centers were more likely to receive health consultations and screenings than children in non-Head Start centers were. For example, more than 90 percent of Head Start centers screened for child health problems versus 65 percent of non-Head Start centers. (Gupta et al., 2009).

27 Head Start Provides Favorable Health Impacts (Continued) Children attending Head Start have increased access to dental care and have higher immunization rates than non-Head Start children do (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2005; Currie and Thomas, 1995).

28 Head Start Provides Favorable Economic Impacts Based upon their review of Ludwig and Miller’s 2007 Quarterly Journal of Economics journal article, Ludwig and Phillips (2007) conclude, “These impact estimates taken at face value would suggest that Head Start as it operated in the 1960s through the 1980s generated benefits in excess of program costs, with a benefit-cost ratio that might be at least as large as the 7-to-1 figure often cited for model early childhood programs such as Perry Preschool.”

29 Head Start Provides Favorable Economic Impacts (Continued) The preliminary results of a longitudinal study of more than 600 Head Start graduates in San Bernardino County, California, showed that society receives nearly $9 in benefits for every $1 dollar invested in these Head Start children (Meier, 2004).

30 Head Start Provides Law Enforcement Impacts Head Start has been shown to benefit participating children and society-at-large by reducing crime and its costs to crime victims (Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, 2004; Garces, Thomas, and Currie, 2002).

31 Head Start Provides Law Enforcement Impacts Head Start has been shown to benefit participating children and society-at-large by reducing crime and its costs to crime victims (Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, 2004; Garces, Thomas, and Currie, 2002).

32 March 3, 2010Early Learning Research Update Interesting Recent Research Using a summary index of six different young adult outcomes: high school graduation, college attendance, idleness, crime, teen parenthood, and health status, a researcher found that Head Start generates a significant impact on long-term outcomes of adults 19 years or older who attended Head Start. (Deming, 2009).

33 Interesting Recent Research (Continued) After some data analysis, Deming found that Head Start generates about 80 percent of the benefits of model preschool programs such as the Perry Preschool Project and Carolina Abecedarian at 60 percent of the cost. In other words, Deming’s data indicates that Head Start is more efficient as a program than these model preschool programs.

34 Conclusion Head Start works.

35 The End