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Key Findings
As a way to provide a context for understanding the estimated program impacts, this section begins with a description of the early experiences of children assigned to the Head Start and non-Head Start groups. The impact findings are then organized by the two overarching research questions: (1) overall national average impacts on children’s school readiness and parenting practices that support their development and (2) program impacts for particular subgroups of children and parents.
Within these two broad categories, results are organized by four outcome domains: (1) children’s cognitive development, (2) children’s social-emotional development, (3) children’s health status and access to health care, and (4) parenting practices. Within each domain, results are presented separately for children in the 3- and 4-year-old groups.
Children’s Early Experiences
There is clear evidence that Head Start increases the likelihood that low-income children will be enrolled in center-based child care. Specifically, Head Start group children were twice as likely as the non-Head Start group children to use a center-based program in spring 2003. Approximately 90 percent of children in the Head Start group in both age cohorts were using a center-based program compared to 43 percent of children in the 3-year-old non-Head Start group and 48 percent of the 4-year-old non-Head Start group. Head Start group children were also more likely than non-Head Start group children to be in a center-based environment in both fall 2002 and spring 2003 and to have been in their spring 2003 setting since the start of the 2002-03 program year.
Conversely, non-Head Start group children were substantially more likely than Head Start group children to be exclusively in parent care7 in spring 2003. Among children in the 3-year-old group, 39.2 percent of non-Head Start group children were in parent care as compared to only 6.8 percent of children in the Head Start group; among children in the 4-year-old group, the figures were 41.6 and 8.7 percent, respectively (see Exhibit 2).
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The rates at which children in the study used Head Start or other center-based care did not differ substantially by age group. This is a somewhat surprising finding because in the general population, 4-year-olds are more likely than younger children to be enrolled in center-based programs.
In addition to conducting a preliminary examination of the impact of Head Start on children’s use of early care arrangements, this report also presents findings on some initial quality indicators for the Head Start centers and other center-based programs attended by study children. These descriptive data provide some insight into the different environments in which Head Start and non-Head Start children are found when they attend centers, a difference that has important implications for understanding the impact of Head Start on children and parents. On the initial indicators assessed, children in the Head Start centers were in environments that more often (1) had positive interactions between children and teachers as measured by the Arnett Scale of Teacher Behavior, (2) used curriculum and activities to enhance children’s skills, and (3) had higher scores on the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale: Revised Edition.
Overall Average Impacts
Impact on Children’s Cognitive Development
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The impact of Head Start on children’s cognitive development was examined in five constructs based on direct child assessments: (1) pre-reading skills focusing primarily on letter recognition, an important stepping stone on the path to becoming a proficient reader; (2) pre-writing skills that address children’s ability at drawing shapes and writing letters; (3) vocabulary knowledge, which is indicative of children’s receptive language development; (4) oral comprehension and phonological awareness which assess the ability to understand spoken language, including the knowledge that spoken sentences are made of component words that, in turn, comprise syllables and sounds (phonemes); and (5) early math skills that are essential for the development of more advanced quantitative capabilities. In addition, parents were asked to provide their perceptions of their child’s emerging literacy and language skills.
As shown in Exhibit 3, the largest impacts were found for direct assessments of pre-reading skills and for parent-reported perceptions of their child’s emergent literacy and language skills. Somewhat smaller impacts were found for the direct assessments of pre-writing skills and vocabulary (see Exhibit 3). No overall positive impact was found in the areas of oral comprehension and phonological awareness, or early math skills.
With regard to pre-reading skills, the effect sizes of the impacts on the Woodcock-Johnson III Letter-Word Identification test scores were 24 percent of a standard deviation for children in the 3-year-old group and 22 percent for children in the 4-year-old group. The effect sizes of the impact on the Letter Naming task were 19 percent for children in the 3-year-old group and 24 percent for children in the 4-year-old group.
Comparing the skill levels of children in the Head Start Impact Study with those of the general population of 3- and 4-year-olds in the United States (including those who were not from low-income families) on the Woodcock-Johnson III Letter-Word Identification test showed that, after one year, the mean performance of Head Start children was still below the average performance level for all U.S. children, by about one-third of a standard deviation (about 5 points). However, at the end of one year, Head Start was able to nearly cut in half the achievement gap that would be expected in the absence of the program (as indicated by comparing the means for the Head Start and non-Head Start groups in Exhibit 4).
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Among children in the 3-year-old group, the impact of Head Start on pre-writing skills was apparent in their score on the McCarthy Draw-a-Design test, which was 0.15 points higher for the Head Start group than the non-Head Start group with an effect size of 13 percent. For children in the 4-year-old group, there was also a positive impact on pre-writing skills for the Head Start group with an effect size of 16 percent as assessed by the Woodcock-Johnson III Spelling test. Head Start children were again found to be closer than non-Head Start children to the national norm for early writing skills by 28 percent (see Exhibit 5).
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Statistically significant impacts on vocabulary knowledge were found, only for children in the 3-year-old group, with an effect size of 12 percent on the PPVT-III (Adapted) test. Thus, for this group only, Head Start children were 8 percent closer than non-Head Start children to the national norm on vocabulary skills (see Exhibit 6). No significant effects were found on vocabulary knowledge for the 4-year-old Head Start group.
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Impact on Children’s Social-Emotional Development
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The impact of Head Start on children’s social-emotional development was examined along three dimensions: (1) social skills and positive approaches to learning that deal with curiosity, imagination, openness to new tasks and challenges, and having a positive attitude about gaining new knowledge and skills, (2) the incidence of various problem behaviors, and (3) social competencies.
Among children in the 3-year-old group, the frequency and severity of problem behavior reported by their parents were lower for children in the Head Start group compared to children in the non-Head Start group (see Exhibits 7 and 8). With regard to the overall problem behavior, the incidence of parent-reported problems was lower for 3-year-old children in the Head Start group (an effect size of 13 percent), and the incidence of parent report of hyperactive behavior was also lower for 3-year-old children in the Head Start group (an effect size of 18 percent). No overall impact of Head Start was found on the parent-reported Social Skills and Positive Approaches to Learning scale or on the parent-reported Social Competencies Checklist, for children in both age groups.
These measures are based on behavior reports from parents. An important additional source of information on children’s social development—reports from children’s teachers and caregivers—was not available for all children at this stage but will be available in future years of the study, when the children are in elementary school.
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Impact on Children’s Health Outcomes
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Head Start had a positive impact on certain indicators of children’s health. The impact of access to Head Start on children’s health was examined for a few selected measures reported by parents at the end of the first program year: (1) the child’s health status, including parent’s report of the child’s overall health status, whether the child needs ongoing care for an illness or condition, and whether the child had an injury in the last month and (2) the child’s access to health care services, including whether the child has health insurance and whether the child has received dental care. No direct measures of children’s actual health status, or their receipt of health care services, were undertaken for this study. Instead, data are based on parent report.
For children in both the 3- and 4-year-old group, a positive impact was found on the receipt of dental care (see Exhibits 9 and 10). The impact was similar for children in both age groups (17 percentage points for the 3-year-old group and 16 percentage points for the 4-year-old group), with similar effect sizes as well (34 percent and 32 percent, respectively). For children in the 3-year-old group, a positive impact was also found on parents’ reported ratings of their children’s health status, with more parents of children in the Head Start group reporting that their child’s health was either excellent or very good (an effect size of 12 percent).
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Impact on Parenting Practices
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One of the hallmarks of Head Start is its focus on parents as their child’s first and primary teacher, recognizing that the involvement of parents is crucial for fostering children’s school readiness. Historically, Head Start programs have reached out to families in a variety of ways, by encouraging parent involvement in their child’s classroom, providing parent education to help strengthen parents’ childrearing knowledge and skills, and providing referrals to address family needs so that parents can be more effective in their role as caregiver.
The impact of Head Start on parenting practices was examined in three main areas for this report: (1) educational activities that parents do with their children, including parent-child interactions that involve talking, reading, teaching, and exposure to new experiences that are crucial for promoting language development and early literacy; (2) parental discipline that emphasizes establishing firm but fair expectations for child behavior and promotes the development of social understanding and skills necessary for positive relationships with peers and adults; and (3) safety practices--parents’ preventive efforts to safeguard the child’s environment that are crucial for children’s physical health and overall well-being.
For both age cohorts, Head Start had a small positive impact on the extent to which parents reported reading to their child (see Exhibits 11 and 12), with an 18 percent effect size for the 3-year-old group and a 13 percent effect size for the 4-year-old group. Positive impacts also were found for children in the 3-year-old group on the extent to which their parents exposed them to a variety of cultural enrichment activities such as taking them to a museum or a zoo (an effect size of 11 percent).
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For parents of children in the 3-year-old group, there is a lower use of physical discipline with children in the Head Start group compared to children in the non-Head Start group. A similar impact was not found on physical discipline for parents of children in the 4-year-old group. No statistically significant impacts were found on parents’ child safety practices at home, for either age group.
Variation in Program Impact
It is important to understand how the impact of Head Start may vary among different types of children, parents, and communities and in relation to children’s early childhood experiences. To fully understand these issues, it is necessary to assess both the difference in impact between subgroups (e.g., Does Head Start have larger effects on boys compared to girls?) and the impact of Head Start on the individual subgroups themselves (e.g., Does Head Start have an impact on boys?). To date, only an initial examination of sources of variation in program impacts has been undertaken; future reports will address this topic in more depth.
The analyses discussed in this report examine impacts on subgroups, and differences in impacts, for subgroups defined by the following child or parent characteristics: child gender, race and ethnicity; presence of special needs; and for only the cognitive outcomes, the child’s status at the time of entry into Head Start; parent’s marital status; age of mother at first birth; and primary caregiver’s depressive symptoms. Positive impacts were found for a variety of subgroups of children with a range of demographic and family characteristics:
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Child and home language: For children in the 3-year-old group whose primary language was English, positive impacts were found on a variety of cognitive outcomes, as well as on particular measures of social-emotional development, health, and parenting practices. Among children in this age group whose primary language was Spanish, impacts were found across several domains but were fewer in number. For children in the 4-year-old group whose primary language was English, positive impacts were found in all domains; for children whose primary language was Spanish in this age group, impacts were found only in the area of health.
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Race and ethnicity: For children in the 3-year-old group, race and ethnicity appear to influence the extent of Head Start’s impact, with particularly positive impacts noted in several domains for African American and Hispanic children. For the 4-year-old group, fewer impacts were found for minority children; observable impacts were particularly scarce for Hispanic children, a group found to have just one statistically significant impact (in the area of health).
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Primary caregiver’s depressive symptoms: For children in the 3-year-old group, cognitive impacts were found to decrease with increasing levels of primary caregiver’s reported baseline depressive symptoms. For children in the 4-year-old group, impacts were found to be sensitive to baseline depression for just one outcome, parent-reported child social competencies.
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Age of mother at first birth: In the 3-year-old sample, Head Start reduced the use of physical discipline when children misbehaved for mothers who had first given birth before the age of 19. In both the 3- and 4-year-old group, Head Start led mothers who had first given birth after the age of 19 to spend more time reading to their children, and to take them to a greater variety of cultural enrichment activities.
7 Exclusively in parent care is defined as being in no other non-parental setting for at least 5 hours per week. (back)
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