How does head start work

Head Start. What is Head Start? How does Head Start work? How does Head Start support families and children? How does Head Start support early childhood educators? How can you support Head Start?

Early Head Start and Head Start promote the school readiness of young children birth to five in local communities by providing a comprehensive approach that focuses on four major components: Education: Providing learning experiences to help children grow intellectually, socially, and emotionally.

Health: Providing health services and supports such as immunizations, dental, medical, and mental health, and nutritional services, developmental screenings and early identification of health problems. Parent Involvement: Involving parents in the planning and implementation of activities through policy councils and committees that make administrative decisions.

Parents also participate in classes and workshops on child development; and volunteer in the program. Social Services: Provide supports to families to address job training, housing and other needs expressed by families. 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.

Finally, we look at the effect of Head Start on the next generation through its impact on parenting practices. We find that Head Start causes participants to invest more in their own children years after their participation in the program. 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.

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.

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.

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.

The sample is limited to those respondents who were aged 28 or above in their most recent sample year and who did not attrite after the survey year. The sample is not restricted by age at response for the dependent variables. For the index of self-control as well as the self-esteem measure, the most recent response was taken and for the education outcomes and parenting index, the highest values across the survey waves were used.

Birth year fixed-effects are used in each specification and age at response is additionally controlled in the self-control and self-esteem regressions. Each regression also controls for gender and pretreatment characteristics, for which missing values were imputed. Using this dataset, this method was used by Currie and Thomas and Deming. Alternatively, Carneiro and Ginja use variance in program eligibility rules to identify the effect of Head Start.

To test whether there is bias arising from the differential treatment of siblings or from time-varying characteristics of the mother and family, Head Start and other preschool participation are regressed on indices of child, maternal, and household pretreatment characteristics Table 1. Estimates will be biased if the differential treatment of children by parents or maternal or family characteristics that change over time are related to participation in Head Start, and these characteristics are also related to the outcome.

This article originally appeared at TalkPoverty. The research shows that it clearly does. Decades of studies , including the most recent Head Start Impact Study , have found that at the end of Head Start, prior to kindergarten, the program shows wide-ranging positive effects on children and families from language and pre-reading abilities to parenting skills.

And even though Head Start dates back to , the latest research has proven its creators right about many basic principles. Head Start children receive medical and developmental screenings and subsequent treatment for identified concerns. They receive regular medical and dental care. And their families receive parenting education, health education and support services connecting them to education and jobs.

Current research tells us that this full array of services is what early education programs should offer to have a positive effect on vulnerable children. It has been the subject of intensive research for five decades and much of what has been learned has been incorporated into the program through quality improvement.

Program standards, monitoring, and professional development have all been revised based on research and evaluation. Most notably, the Congressional reauthorization of Head Start increased the focus on school readiness for children and established higher educational requirements for teachers. New assessment procedures require a review of teacher-child interactions, a critical component of any early education experience. Drawing on this history, researchers have taken a careful look at what about Head Start works and what can be improved based on the findings of the recent national impact study and the broader Head Start research.

The answer is simple—the impact study has been selectively mined for talking points. The study found that right after leaving Head Start, children did better than their peers.