Head Start's Broken Promise
AEI - Short Publications
Evaluating Head Start
The results of a large-scale evaluation of Head Start have recently been released. Under a congressional mandate, the study was commissioned by the Clinton administration as a 383-site randomized experiment (the gold-standard of evaluation) involving about 4,600 children. Confirming the findings of earlier, smaller evaluations, this new report found that Head Start has disappointingly small impacts on disadvantaged children.
For four-year-olds (half the program), only six of thirty measures of social and cognitive development and family functioning showed statistically significant gains. Results were somewhat better for three-year-olds, but most of the differences were not statistically significant.
For both age groups, the actual gains were limited, making them unlikely to lead to later increases in school achievement. For example, even after spending about six months in Head Start, four-year-olds could identify only two more letters than those who were not in the program, and three-year-olds could identify one and one-half more letters. No gains were detected in more important measures such as early math learning, oral comprehension (more indicative of later reading comprehension), motivation to learn, or social competencies, including the ability to interact with peers and teachers.
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