![]() ![]() ![]() “Random assignment” was not always random.Īssignment to treatment and control groups was not fully random. While the Head Start Impact Study set out to meet two of these conditions―random assignment and no crossover between the treatment and control group―there were issues. We can look at a handful of criteria to see the extent to which a field experiment is meeting the lab experiment conditions: assignment to the treatment or control group must be random, whether or not the child was in the treatment or control group should be unknown to the Head Start center and the parent and child, and only the treatment group can receive the treatment. In a large field experiment that takes place in the real world, such conditions may not hold. In a lab, experimental criteria like double-blind random assignment (where neither the tester nor subject knows whether she is in the treatment or control group) can be controlled. The Head Start Impact Study was an experiment, but it was not a lab experiment. Let’s take a closer look at the problems with the experiment and what we can learn from the evidence in retrospect. New research reanalyzes the Head Start Impact Study and finds that Head Start does improve cognitive skill. Yet, these reports are not the final word on the Head Start Impact Study, in part because of the ways in which the experiment played out in the field. Due in part to these reports, some have concluded that while Head Start has some initial impact on kindergarten readiness, the fadeout in impact over early elementary school qualifies attempts to invest more in early childhood education. According to the 2012 HHS report on third grade follow-up, by the end of primary school there was no longer a discernible impact of Head Start. While this first report affirmed Head Start’s impact on school readiness, the final HHS report published in 2010 showed that by the end of first grade, the effects mostly faded out. In 2005, the first report about the Head Start Impact Study found that one year of Head Start improved cognitive skills, but the size of the effects was small. The study started in the fall of 2002 and continued to collect information on students through third grade, in the spring of 20. The Head Start Impact Study followed about 5,000 3- and 4-year-olds who were randomly assigned to a treatment group (in which they had a seat in Head Start) or a control group (in which parents made their own choice without the initial offer of a Head Start seat). Would these experimentally determined findings from model preschool programs be replicated in Head Start? Since 1969, the federal government has asked researchers to answer the question: Does Head Start work? In 1998, Congress authorized the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to contract an independent national random assignment study of Head Start to determine whether Head Start improved school readiness: the Head Start Impact Study. New research on the intergenerational effect of Perry Preschool by Nobel laureate James Heckman and Ganesh Karapakula finds that participants were more stably married, that their children were less likely to be suspended from school, and more likely to graduate from high school and be employed. Decades-spanning longitudinal studies of experimental preschool programs like HighScope/Perry Preschool and Abecedarian find those who participated in these early childhood educational interventions persist in education, have higher earnings and commit fewer crimes than the control group. The base of what we know about the effects of early childhood education on long-term outcomes is the result of experiments.
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