Third Grade Follow-up to the Head Start Impact Study (HSIS), United States, 2007-2008

Résumé 0

Since its beginning in 1965 as a part of the War on Poverty, Head Start's goal has been to boost the school readiness of low income children. Based on a "whole child" model, the program provides comprehensive services that include preschool education; medical, dental, and mental health care; nutrition services; and efforts to help parents foster their child's development. Head Start services are designed to be responsive to each child's and family's ethnic, cultural, and linguistic heritage. In the 1998 reauthorization of Head Start, Congress mandated that the United States Department of Health and Human Services determine, on a national level, the impact of Head Start on the children it serves. This legislative mandate required that the impact study address two main research questions: What difference does Head Start make to key outcomes of development and learning (and in particular, the multiple domains of school readiness) for low-income children? What difference does Head Start make to parental practices that contribute to children's school readiness? Under what circumstances does Head Start achieve the greatest impact? What works for which children? What Head Start services are most related to impact? The Head Start Impact Study (HSIS) addresses these questions by reporting on the impacts of Head Start on children and families during the children's preschool, kindergarten, and first grade years. The HSIS was conducted with a nationally representative sample of nearly 5,000 three- and four-year old preschool children across 84 nationally representative grantee/delegate agencies in communities where there are more eligible children and families than can be served by the program. The children participating were randomly assigned to either a treatment group (which had access to Head Start services) or a comparison group (which did not have access to Head Start services, but could receive other community resources). The HSIS data collection began in the fall of 2002 and ended in spring 2006, following children through the spring of their first grade year. Baseline data were collected through parent interviews and child assessments in fall 2002. The annual spring data collection included child assessments, parent interviews, teacher surveys, and teacher-child ratings. In addition, during the preschool years only, data collection included classroom and family day care observations, center director interviews, care provider interviews, and care provider-child ratings. The Third Grade Follow-up to the Head Start Impact Study builds upon the existing randomized control design in the Head Start Impact Study (HSIS) in order to determine the longer-term impact of the Head Start program on the well-being of children and families through the end of third grade. The data collection for the Third Grade Follow-up to the Head Start Impact Study was conducted during the spring of the children's third grade year (2007 and 2008). In addition to the child assessments, parent interviews, teacher surveys, and teacher-child-ratings used for the Head Start Impact Study (HSIS) data collection, a principal survey was added to collect school data, including school demographics, and characteristics and quality indicators for schools, teachers and classrooms. As part of the third grade child assessment, self-reported data also was collected on the child's perception of his/her academic and social skills. Both studies, for different grade levels, examined differences in outcomes in several domains related to school readiness: children's cognitive, social-emotional, health, and parenting outcomes (e.g., use of spanking, exposing children to cultural enrichment activities, and parenting styles). It also examined whether impacts differed based on characteristics of the children and their families, including the child's pre-academic skills at the beginning of the study; the child's primary language; whether the child has special needs; the mother's race/ethnicity; the primary caregiver's level of depressive symptoms; household risk; and urban or rural location.