Posted on 03/28/2010 2:18:19 PM PDT by Conservative Coulter Fan
Abstract: Recently released results from the Head Start Impact Study indicate that the benefits of participating in Head Start almost completely disappear by first grade. While other studies have previously assessed Head Start's effectiveness, this is the only study that used a rigorous experimental design. Given this strongly negative evaluation, Congress should reconsider spending more than $9 billion per year on a program that produces few positive lasting effects. Furthermore, instead of creating yet another new federal preschool program at a cost of $8 billion, Congress and the Obama Administration should focus on terminating, consolidating, and reforming existing preschool and child care programs to better serve children's needs and to improve efficiency for taxpayers.
The federal government spent at least $25 billion on federal preschool and child care programs in 2009,[1] but President Obama has pressed for significant increases in preschool spending. The Administration approved $5 billion in new early education and child care spending in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Congress may soon approve $8 billion in new spending on the Early Learning Challenge Fund in the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (H.R. 3221), which has already passed the House of Representatives.
Before Congress creates a new preschool program and increases spending on preschool and child care, it should evaluate whether the current programs are working. Topping the list of programs to review should be Head Start, which serves approximately 900,000 low-income children at a cost of $9 billion per year. A recently released experimental evaluation by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that Head Start has had little to no effect on cognitive, socio-emotional, health, and parenting outcomes of participating children. For the four-year-old cohort, access to Head Start had a beneficial effect on only two outcomes (1.8 percent) out of 112 measures. For the three-year-old cohort, access to Head Start had one harmful impact (0.9 percent) and five (4.5 percent) beneficial impacts out of 112 measures. Specifically,
Rather than create a new federal preschool program, Congress should focus on terminating, consolidating, and reforming existing programs to serve children's needs better and to improve efficiency for taxpayers.
Head Start, 1965-Present
Created as part of the War on Poverty in 1965, Head Start is a preschool community-based program funded by the federal government. By providing education, nutrition, and health services, Head Start is intended to provide a boost to disadvantaged children before they enter elementary school. Its goal is to help disadvantaged children catch up to children living in more fortunate circumstances. From fiscal year (FY) 1965 to FY 2009, Congress spent $167.5 billion in 2009 dollars on Head Start.[2] (See Chart 1.) From FY 2000 to FY 2009, the average annual appropriation for Head Start was $7.6 billion.
Despite Head Start's long life, the program had never undergone a thorough, scientifically rigorous evaluation of its effectiveness until Congress mandated an evaluation in 1998. The Head Start Impact Study began in 2002, and the results released in 2010 are disappointing. Overall, the evaluation found that the program largely failed to improve the cognitive, socio-emotional, health, and parenting outcomes of children who participated compared to the outcomes of similar children who did not participate. According to the report, "the benefits of access to Head Start at age four are largely absent by 1st grade for the program population as a whole."[3]
Background on the National Evaluation
The Head Start Impact Study began in 2002 as an ongoing randomized experiment based on a nationally representative sample of Head Start programs and approximately 5,000 children who applied to participate in Head Start.[4] The sample of children applying for Head Start was randomly assigned to intervention and control groups. The intervention group participated in Head Start services, while the control group was excluded from Head Start participation. The parents of control group children were free to enroll their children in other early education programs.
Determining the impact of social programs, such as Head Start, requires comparing the conditions of those who received assistance with the conditions of an equivalent group that did not experience the intervention. Experimental evaluations in which eligible participants are randomly assigned to either intervention or control groups represent the "gold standard" of evaluation designs. Experimental evaluations are widely acknowledged to have the highest degree of internal validity. The higher internal validity means that researchers can be more certain in answering the question: Did the program have an impact on the participants? Random assignment allows the evaluator to test for differences between the experimental and control groups that are due to the intervention, not to pre-intervention discrepancies between the groups.
The 2010 Head Start Impact Study
Is Head Start worth more than $7 billion per year? The 2010 Head Start Impact Study found that Head Start largely failed to improve the cognitive, socio-emotional, health, and parenting outcomes compared to the outcomes of similar children. The authors disappointingly concluded:
In sum, this report finds that providing access to Head Start has benefits for both 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds in the cognitive, health, and parenting domains, and for 3-year-olds in the social-emotional domain. However, the benefits of access to Head Start at age four are largely absent by 1st grade for the program population as a whole.[5]
While the results of the 2010 study have been known to officials within the Department of Health and Human Services since the end of the Bush Administration, Congress added $1 billion to the original $7.5 billion in FY 2009 funding for Head Start with the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
In the 1990s, Congress mandated an evaluation of Head Start's effectiveness. In 2010, the Department of Health and Human Services finally released the results of the impact evaluation of first-grade students. Overall, the evaluation found that the program largely failed to improve the cognitive, socio-emotional, health, and parenting outcomes of children who participated in Head Start compared to the outcomes of similar children. According to the report, "the benefits of access to Head Start at age four are largely absent by 1st grade for the program population as a whole." Head Start's disappointing results cast doubt over the effectiveness of federal preschool interventions and highlight the need to review the effectiveness of the federal government's current 69 preschool and child care programs.
These results should be of importance to Members of Congress and the Administration. However, the Administration has called for significant increases in federal spending on preschool, and the House of Representatives has already passed legislation to create an $8 billion preschool program.
Rather than create a new federal preschool program, Congress should focus on terminating, consolidating, and reforming existing programs to serve children's needs better and to improve efficiency for taxpayers.
I am NOT surprised in the least. I wonder what solid promotion/encouragement OF and grounding BY the traditional family would have done for those same students?
Another anti-Constitutional pogrom of the Feds that should go away. Would have saved $167 billion.
Sadly, the leftists will use this as proof that not enough money has been spent on this monstrosity.
It’s time to take back the country.
Liberals would gladly spend many times that (of other people's money) for the ability to posture themselves as great humanitarians on the cocktail circuit. That the program doesnt work is irrelevant to them. It's the appearance that they care that matters.
Hey, but it’s got a snappy name - that’s gotta be worth at least $100 billion.
“Another anti-Constitutional pogrom of the Feds that should go away.”
I think you meant “program”. But at the rate we’re going, pogroms are next!/s;)
Someone from Headstart/Child Focus came by my leasing office to drop off some brochures. After they left I took a quick look and decided that no one that lived here would even quilify to send their kids to these programs due to income guidelines. If they met the income guidelines for Headstart they couldn’t afford to live in our apartments. I threw the brochures in the trash.
It has never been, as claimed, about education, it’s about free babysitting for the Democrat voting base.
Who on earth didn’t already know that Head Start was simply a government day care program?
I was under the impression that public schools K-12 were government-run daycares.
Sounds like a good place to start cutting governemtn if it does no good. Why give welfare Moms free daycare so she can do nothing all day? Only those working or going to school should get any help at all.
C'mon. Get with the program. You're all confused.
Think of how much worse their scores would have been without the program.
The study notes the cost, but it is hard to measure the negative impact of sucking all that money out of the economy. Think how many of those multi-generational, government dependent, Obama voters would never have happened without this giant, waste of our resources.
Make work for teachers.
And an opportunity for early indoctrination.
Head Start, Pre-K and even Kindergarten are just babysitting ploys instituted by socialists.
I and every one of my siblings started school in the First Grade. That’s why it’s called First Grade.
These ridiculous social programs for children are just a waste of money.
But increased government spending on worthless government programs and the huge budget deficits that follow are exactly what Keynesian and neo-Keynesian libtards believe will cure the unemployment problem.
You can’t take a kid out of the ghetto, the kid must take himself out of the ghetto. If the kid has parents interested in helping him leave the ghetto, it is much easier, but if not and surrounded by peers who have no interest in leaving the ghetto the kid must be a very special independent self starter from a young age indeed. But all of those in the ghetto must learn that where you are in YOUR life is the sum result of all decisions YOU have made. I hate the phrase “It’s not my fault”, or “It’s not fair”. My nephews use these words all the time, and it absolutely makes my teeth itch. I try to pound that lesson into them, that they will never succeed until they OWN the consequences of their actions, and begin acting in a way that does not always lead to bad “unfair, not my fault” consequences. Right now, they seem to me to be whining 5 year olds, and from now on I shall be giving them christmas presents appropriate to their age of maturity.
I actually had to write some code for submitting and aggregating head start (amongst others) program stats in the 2003-4 time period. It would be cool if that contributed to the study.
but it’s the effort that’s the important thing... /sarc
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