Head Start Research

A week or so back I encountered a Science Daily report with Happy News about Academic gains, improved teacher relationships found among high risk kids in Head Start

A new study by Oregon State University researchers finds that Head Start can make a positive impact in the lives of some of its highest risk children, both academically and behaviorally.

That startled me; it sounded great, but I had already seen Timothy Taylor, the Conversable Economist, saying (I think about the same study) that Head Start is Failing Its Test

I am predisposed to favor programs that would help disadvantaged children early in life. Thus, I was delighted when Head Start announced some years back that it was going to carry out a randomized control trial--that is, to assign some preschool children randomly to Head Start and others not--so that it would be possible to do a statistically meaningful test of how well Head Start worked. I presumed that the test would provide ammunition for my pre-existing views.
But as the evidence has built up, Head Start is failing its test. The latest evidence appears in the "Third Grade Follow-up to the Head Start Impact Study: Final Report," which was released in December... Basically, the report shows that Head Start provides short-term gains to preschool children, but those gains have faded to essentially nothing by third grade.
To appreciate how depressing this conclusion is, you need to appreciate the high quality of the study....

So I went down the Science Daily report, and five paragraphs inwards found in summary that:

Analyzing the data on 253 children in non-parental care, they found the program had short-term positive impacts on school readiness, particularly in regards to early academic skills, positive teacher-child relationships, and a reduction in behavior problems.... "The impact we saw was modest, not huge, but statistically significant...

Okay, so there were modest short-term gains to preschool children, and that's that. The way I'll remember this is simple and doubly depressing: Head Start is failing its test, and Science Daily was minimally honest in presenting that.


Or then again, maybe not.