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Placing the First-Year Findings of the National Head Start Impact Study in Context
This document provides a summary of the first-year findings of the Head Start Impact Study. It also aims to help policy makers, practitioners, and the interested public interpret the Head Start Impact Study’s first-year findings by placing the results to date in the context of other research on children’s development.2 The overview presented here applies to data collected after only 9 months of Head Start. Further information on the points below must await future reports.
Statistically significant effects of Head Start were consistently positive.
Evaluators tested 30 outcomes for each of the two groups targeted (3-year-olds and 4-year-olds who had entered Head Start that year). For each of the groups, the number of statistically significant effects found exceeded what one would expect by chance.3 When statistically significant effects occurred, they were without exception positive (increases in "good" outcomes, decreases in "bad" outcomes). These effects included: better skills in aspects of pre-reading and pre-writing, more access to dental care, better overall physical health, less hyperactivity, fewer behavior problems, and better parenting (more frequent reading to children and lower rates of corporal punishment). No impact of Head Start was found for either of the two age groups on oral comprehension, phonological awareness, early math, aggressive or withdrawn behaviors, social skills, or parental safety practices.
The positive effects of 9 months of Head Start were seen in multiple aspects of child development (cognitive, social, emotional and health) as well as in parenting practices.
The positive effects found did not cluster within a single aspect of children’s development, but occurred across several areas. Research in child development suggests that when positive effects of early childhood programs accumulate across important health and developmental areas, success in the longer term is also more likely.
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