Head Start: Assessing Common Explanations for the Apparent Disappearance of Initial Positive Effects A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at George Mason University

HEAD START: ASSESSING COMMON EXPLANATIONS FOR THE APPARENT DISAPPEARANCE OF INITIAL POSITIVE EFFECTS Pete M. Bernardy, Ph.D George Mason University, 2012 Dissertation Director: Dr. David J. Armor Experimental design evaluations have consistently found children given access to early childhood services through the federal Head Start program experience better academic and social outcomes relative to comparable peers by the end of their participation, but this early advantage is not sustained through the early elementary grades. However, two studies of the long-term impact of Head Start have found the program to produce improved rates of high school completion. Given these seemingly contradictory findings, this research uses data from a recent nationally representative random assignment study of this program to examine whether there is evidence of enduring effects of Head Start participation: (1) when controlling for within-child variation; (2) for learning skills not previously analyzed in published reports; (3) for children with higher quality Head Start experiences; (4) for children with higher quality early elementary school experiences; and (5) compared to a counterfactual of no preschool participation. No evidence of initial positive effects enduring into kindergarten or first grade is found. 1 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION Policy Context The federal Head Start program has provided education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services to low-income preschool-aged children and their families since 1965. Grantees provide these services using various program models, including partial and full day programs carried out in centers, schools, family child care homes, and through visits to children’s homes. In addition to the more than 800,000 threeand fouryear-olds receiving services through Head Start each year, more than 100,000 pregnant women, infants, and toddlers receive services through Early Head Start. Evaluations of Head Start have consistently found that children granted access to the program demonstrate improved cognitive and social/emotional abilities by the end of their participation, above and beyond improvement that would be expected absent program participation (McKey et al., 1985). Recently, a nationally representative random assignment Head Start Impact Study found access to Head Start services to be associated with positive cognitive and social/emotional outcomes by the end of the program year (Department of Health and Human Services, 2005). Consistent with previous research on Head Start, this study found that these initial positive effects were not sustained through 1 The term “Head Start” is often used to refer to the Head Start and Early Head Start programs collectively. In this paper, the term “Head Start” is used to refer only to the Head Start program that targets threeand four-year olds and their families. 2 first grade (Department of Health and Human Services, 2010a; McKey et al., 1985). Some policy analysts cite the relative absence of detectable program effects in first grade as evidence that the more than $6 billion spent on the program annually should be diverted to uses believed to be more effective. This recommendation has been raised throughout the program’s history, including in the wake of a 1969 report from a national impact study that found children attending Head Start did not demonstrate better outcomes in early elementary school than a matched control group, with the exception of children that attended full year programs, who performed marginally better on select measures of cognitive development (Ohio University and Westinghouse Learning Corporation, 1969). Other analysts rebut this critique of the program’s effectiveness by critiquing the methods used by studies that have not found positive effects and citing studies that have found positive long term effects associated with Head Start participation; by suggesting the program has been improved since the period covered by the most recent evaluation and ongoing improvements will make it even more effective; by suggesting that improving the nation’s early elementary education system would enable initial program effects to endure; and by noting that a sizable proportion of children that make up the comparison group for evaluations of Head Start attend publicly funded preschool and other early childhood programs. It is important for policymakers to understand whether there is empirical support for these explanations of the evidence that initial positive effects associated with Head Start are not sustained through the early elementary years. Such an understanding is