Launched in the mid-1960s as part of the federal War on Poverty, Head Start was based on precisely the idea that government schooling could compensate poor children for their disadvantage.
It hasn’t worked out that way.
More than a $150 billion and almost 50 years later, the program is a dud. A report from October 2012 is only the most recent of a long line of studies that show fleeting cognitive gains from Head Start. The rigorously designed study adds that there is little difference in the domains of “social-emotional, health and parenting practices” between third-graders who attended a Head Start program and those who did not.
More on President Obama’s proposal for universal preschool in USA Today.
I believe this is more a problem with familial custom. It is vitally important for parents to help form developmental cognitive skills to their children from an early. This requires responsible parents who do their research on how to nurture a child. There is a reason why home-schooled kids tend to perform better academically.
I feel Andrew O is on to something in regards to parents’ role in their childrens’ cognitive development. However, I feel that there has to be a way to ensure lower income children have access to some form of structured learning at an early age because there will be cases where the two parents are working several part-time jobs in todays economy and can’t devote as much time in this regards with their children. How you ensure this? Not sure what the answer is.
“Perry graduates have been followed for four decades and, compared with a control group with similar characteristics, they have been less likely to go to jail, become teen mothers and go on welfare; they’re also more likely to earn more money.”
This is no-brainer. Those kids with a strong foundation tend to be the ones with better outcomes when they grow older. Those less fortunate do have it a ittle bit harder, no doubt. However, it shouldn’t be up to a government program to solve this issue. How can families help this situation? Couldn’t they offer guidance and some early education that prepares them to future endevors? Families shouldn’t rely on government help, after all there is very little they have actually done in the past years.
Headstart has been a complete waste of taxpayers funds! Im completely disillusioned by the govt’s attempts to fix education!
“The other reason for the mantra “preschool works” is that it often does, for a year or two. Many programs, including some Head Start classes, do improve cognitive skills and school readiness. But by third grade, the positive effects fade away. The truth is that preschool can’t “work” unless kindergarten, first and second grade and all the other grades do. And so far they don’t.”
It seems as though, in order for Head Start to have a chance, we may need to reform the system students enter when they leave the program. I’m not even saying that this needs more money thrown at it, but I am wondering if Head Start is too narrow to possibly hope to overcome the disadvantages students face in poor school districts.
From the **conclusion** of the study the report cites:
“At the end of 3rd grade, the most striking subgroup finding was related to children from high risk households. For this subgroup, children in the 3-year old cohort demonstrated sustained cognitive impacts across all the years from pre-K through 3rd grade. At the end of 3rd grade, the Head Start children from high risk households showed favorable impacts on the ECLS-K Reading Assessment, the WJIII Letter-Word Identification, and the teacher-reported reading/language arts skills.”
Also,
“Among the 4-year-olds, the subgroups that demonstrated sustained benefits were children of parents who reported mild depressive symptoms, severe depressive symptoms, and Black children. Head Start children of parents reporting mild depressive symptoms demonstrated favorable cognitive impacts through the end of 3rd grade.”
And finally from the discussion:
“This study evaluated the Head Start program against a mixture of alternative care settings rather than against a “no services” condition. About 40 percent of the control group did not receive formal preschool education, and, for those who did, quality was generally lower than in Head Start.”
To sum it up, head start helped the kids that needed it most in virtually every educational metric the study used. The control group used for comparison was 60% private service institutions, and the report concluded the quality of the head start schools was higher and had statstically significant positive effects on, again, almost every metric of educational performance.
You argue the program has cost $150 billion over its 50 year existance, or about 3 billion dollars a year. President Obama has a solution:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-29/jet-tax-break-cited-six-times-by-obama-would-cut-debt-by-about-3-billion.html
Andrew O is right, delinquency correlates with any number of concomittance. Ultimately statistical significance lies with each family.
Oh Corey, how you make me laugh. The multi-million dollar taxpayer funded transport for the family dog was worth noting too. Or Lady Obama’s entourage? Spendy.
I would love to see the actual panel data on this survey. Bet you my paycheck there were external validation issues abound.. for headstart programs like this one my money would be on Interaction of Selection and Subject.
@Kyle
If the survey was flawed or inaccurate then the article arguing against Head Start has zero evidentiary basis.
If the survey was not flawed and should be accepted as the most recent evidence on the topic, as the article Dr. Goodman posted argues, then see my above post demonstrating that the article cherry-picked data from the study which concludes in favor of Head Start.
Pick your poison.
The first paragraph you wrote is a bit disconnected. I think you are trying to make an argument that the government spends money on silly things? This doesn’t seem very relevant to a discussion about the Head Start program. Typically when one wishes to determine if a thing is good or bad, one evaluates that thing rather than other, completely unrelated things.
I like what Cindy says. I read the Oct 2012 report and all positive effects disappear by 3rd grade with the exception of emotional intelligence. Perhaps the program is effective, we just need to fix the poor schools they enter after Head Start.
@Corey
From the article you linked, but apparently didn’t read. “Such a change would put $3 billion into the Treasury over a decade” or $300 Million / year for the mathematically-impaired. Product of Head Start by any chance?
Corey – read this link. Don’t know where you are getting your statistics from in your first comment.
Head Start
@Neil
Yes you’re right, ending the private jet tax exemption would not in and of itself pay for the Head Start program. While it would pay for at least one tenth of the program, that was just meant to be an example.
here are a few more:
CARRIED INTEREST. Preferential treatment for private equity, venture capital and other financial managers that lets them pay the 20 percent capital gains rate on much of their income, instead of the higher individual income tax rate on wages.
OIL AND GAS SUBSIDIES. Energy sector tax breaks including the oil and gas well-depletion allowance; the domestic manufacturing deduction on oil and gas, and expensing of intangible drilling costs.
LAST IN, FIRST OUT (LIFO) ACCOUNTING. An accounting technique used in some industries, especially oil and gas. Companies say this change would force them to revalue old inventory to higher prices.
PROFIT DEFERRAL. A deduction for interest expenses on foreign earnings for deferred taxes.
FOREIGN TAX CREDIT POOLING. A loophole that lets companies claim more in tax credits than would be paid in U.S. taxes by altering which of their foreign units pay out dividends.
INTANGIBLE PROPERTY. A tax break that allows U.S. companies to shelter overseas profits derived from intangible property, such as royalties from drug patents.
BUFFETT RULE. Named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett, a new 30 percent minimum tax would be applied on household adjusted gross income, phased in between incomes of $1 million to $5 million.
DEDUCTION FOR MOVING OVERSEAS. This provision would end the ability of companies to take tax deductions for costs associated with moving plants and jobs overseas.
Your head start joke was pretty funny, but I’m unsure if you are trying to make an argument in the larger context of this discussion beyond “3 billion over 10 years isnt 3 billion/year.”
@ Benedict
I couldn’t get that link to work. Is there a title of the study you could provide?
The quotes in my original post are from the study the USA today article references. The article contains a link to the study.
@ Corey, I was agreeing with your article post, it was not “disconnected.” The article was hypocritical due to Obama’s bureaucratic disutility of spending.
So I suppose I don’t have to pick my poison. Dr. Goodman was reposting a USA Today article, and nothing was mentioned on either post about the veracity of the study. This would be why I said:
“I would love to see the actual panel data on this survey.”
It is a greivous mistake to just assume that since no one in the room is talking about the study, then it must be kosher.
But whiskey.. that’s my poison. In case you were actually wondering.
Your original statement, “head start helped the kids that needed it most in virtually every educational metric the study used” is patently wrong. I direct you to the links below. The HHS, who has in interest in seeing the program funded, says that there is basically no effects by third grade of the program. That’s not to say children might or might not be worse off without Head Start.
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/01/head-start-impact-evaluation-report-finally-released#_edn14
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/head_start_report.pdf
I’m not going to bother wading into whatever war is going on here, but I will say this:
Whether or not the Head Start program works is completely irrelevant. Unless the rest of primary and secondary education is dramatically overhauled, no gains from any preschool programs will survive the cacophony of failure that is the U.S. public school system.
These “bright” third-graders will have had all of those Head Start preschool benefits beaten from them by the time they make it to high school.
I feel that for many of these kids coming from low-income families, having access to Headstart is better than the alternative, which is stay home an watch T.V. These are kids here, not investment portfolios, the returns should be view in the scope of long term as well as the alternative. That said, there is always room for improvement.
A lot of beneficiaries think of Health Start as just a form of free child care (which is probably how many parents think of K-12 education). The solution isn’t more pre-school; the solution is better parents. All the spending in the world on Pre-K won’t fix apathetic parenting.
@Benedict
Ok so here’s my beef. The heritage article you linked us to misrepresents the data. The data suggests significant benefits for children until the third grade, at which point the majority of those benefits dissipate (with the exception of the data on subgroups from the other study the original article references, which indicates very significant benefits past third grade for kids in high risk environemnts or kids struggling with depression). The Heritage article, however, cherry picks from the study by using the finding that most benefits dissipate by third grade and not at all discussing the immense benefits in the interim. The article then simply asserts that therefore it has been a waste of tax money without ever establishing any kind of definition of what constitutes legitimate expenditure. In fact, without any data or warranted argument to support the claim, the article simply jumps to the conclusion that Head Start should be converted to a state voucher program. Essentially, they have said “wow this government program works really really well until these kids get into drastically underfunded public schools, lets use that as an argument against the program, lets not discuss the immediate substantial benefits of the program, and then let’s propose a solution that doesn’t even decrease government expenditure and we have no reason to believe would be more effective.”
That Heritage article is ideologically charged charlatanism cloaked in the veneer of academia.