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What Are the Long-Term Effects of Head Start? [PSMag.com]

 

Last year, researchers from Vanderbilt University’s Peabody Research Institute released a paper detailing their evaluation of the state of Tennessee’s pre-K program, focusing specifically on the state’s most disadvantaged four-year-olds. Their results came in contrast to most of the previousevaluations of early childhood education programs, which found impressive long-term results, but focused on very small, high-quality, expensive programs and relied on small sample sizes — the infamous Perry Preschool program, for example, cost over $17,000 (in 2006 dollars) per student.

The Peabody Institute’s evaluation was the first randomized, controlled trial of a large-scale, state-funded, pre-K program. And the results weren’t good. Children who participated in the program exhibited higher test scores at the end of pre-K and were described as “being better prepared for kindergarten work, as having better behaviors related to learning in the classroom and as having more positive peer relations,” the study found. But those effects disappeared entirely by the end of kindergarten; by second grade, the children who had participated in the pre-K program were actually performing worse in school and were rated by teachers as less well-prepared for school, possessing poorer work skills, and harboring more negative feelings toward school.

The study received a lot of press and provoked a lot of hand-wringing. In response, James Heckman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who conducted the Perry Preschool evaluations, counseled patience, pointing out that first-, second-, or third-grade test scores may not be the best metric by which to judge an early childhood education program:

Too often program evaluations are based on standardized achievement tests and IQ measures that do not tell the whole story and poorly predict life outcomes. The Perry Preschool program did not show any positive IQ effects just a few years following the program. Upon decades of follow-ups, however, we continue to see extremely encouraging results along dimensions such as schooling, earnings, reduced involvement in crime and better health. The truly remarkable impacts of Perry were not seen until much later in the lives of participants. Similarly, the most recent Head Start Impact Study seemingly shows parity at third grade while numerous long-term, quasi-experimental studies find Head Start children to attend more years of schooling, earn higher incomes, live healthier, and engage less in criminal behavior. Considering this, it is especially important that we see HSIS through before condemning Head Start.

Heckman, it turns out, may have been on to something.



[For more of this story, written by Dwyer Gunn, go to https://psmag.com/what-are-the...d552071de#.b1kv9ulf8]

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