Of all the various and sundry government programs, one that seems to attract widespread support, in part because it seems intuitively helpful, is Head Start, the program that reaches children in preschool with introductory material related to readin', ritin' and 'rithmetic. Can't do any harm, right, and it just makes sense that it's got to do a little good.
Here's a link to the study (it's a PDF and 420 pp.) by the Health and Human Services Dept that tried to evaluate Head Start's impact over a broad range of local programs and a diverse student population. The study did find some immediate advantages to students but found that by the end of 1st grade those advantages disappeared and it was difficult to find significant differences between head Start and non-Head Start students. Specifically:
"the advantages children gained during their Head Start and age-4 years yielded only a few statistically significant differences in outcomes at the end of 1st grade for the sample as a whole. Impacts at the end of kindergarten were scattered and are mentioned below only when they appear to be related to the 1st grade impacts."
Well, give HHS credit for releasing the study. Wonder how widely it will be reported and how quickly Congress will move to eliminate Head Start and other programs that either don't work or deliver very little bang for lots of bucks.Read the rest of this entry »