A report card for Head Start

...Such a figure should gladden the heart of the most incorrigible Scrooge...

...One of the more recent evaluations reports on students who, starting as three-year-olds, participated in the Perry Preschool Project in Ypsilanti, Michigan, between 1962 and 1968...

...From kindergarten through third grade, teachers consistently rated them as higher in motivation and school potential...

...All participants were black...

...Report card for Head Start RICKI FLANDERS IT WAS NOT LONG AGO that Head Start, now included among the seven "safety-net" programs exempted from budget cuts, was a typical example that hard-nosed social critics liked to cite in demonstrating what was wrong with the Great Society and social intervention in general...

...the public school savings most particularly related to special education placement, grade retention, and specialized help...

...The amount of special education "required and re ceived" for Head Start children was half that of the control group...

...In the light of the real cognitive and social gains reported by Schweinhart and Weikart, the failure to maintain a significant IQ differential should not be too disheartening...

...At fifteen, the Head Start students tended in larger number to believe that all people should have at least a high school education, stated a preference for remaining in school to taking a "very good job," and believed that schooling was worthwhile even apart from its practical value...

...Children in the Perry Preschool Project attended school for twelve-and-a-half hours each week for thirty weeks during the school year...

...Furthermore, while the handling of school subjects is vitally important to the future of a child, the IQ test may not be the most appropriate measure of cognitive ability...

...But the outcome was something of a standoff...

...unskilled employment marked the rest, and half the families relied on welfare assistance...

...A lot of people could and did, once the results of the first national study of Head Start were published in 1969...

...All kinds of explanations have been advanced for the failure of poor black students to sustain initially higher IQ levels which result from preschooling...

...Since some environments, such as those associated with one's socio-economic status, are persistent if not permanent, their effects can indeed be long-term...

...that the average black person is genetically less endowed with "conceptual" intelligence to a variety of convictions about the most appropriate age at which to introduce a child to a richer environment...

...The March 1981 issue of Scientific American, in its "Science and the Citizen" column, briefly discusses another report, "Head Start: A Successful Experiment" by Bernard Brown and Edith H. Grotberg...

...solutions were likely to be "counter-intuitive...

...The contrast between the enthusiasm and good intentions that had launched Head Start and the minimal results reported in the national study seemed to support the case made by skeptical critics of planned social intervention...

...Later, the project began to include children in planning of activities and to "focus on learning directly from concrete experience and its expression in language...

...On the other hand, "Headstarters" were no more certain that they would actually graduate from high school than the control group members...

...In their eyes, a discredited social program was perpetuating itself by creating an uninformed but self-interested constituency-a case of whal David A. Stockman came to call the "social pork barrel...

...If there were people who had imagined that a one-year preschool program could effect a miraculous transformation, they had every reason for disappointment...

...Teenage employment during the school year was notice ably higher among the "Headstarters," with twenty-nine per cent of the experimental group and only sixteen percent of the control group currently working...

...The authors suggest a more sensible hypothesis...

...On a series of variables classified under the rubric ' 'Gen eral Social Patterns," there were no group differences found...

...The magazine says that the data indicate "long term positive effects . . . in both cognitive and noncog-nitive areas...

...It would be naive to suppose that the last word has been said on the effectiveness of Head Start...

...To which one might hasten to point out that the school environment, important as it is, is but one part of the child's total environment and that cognition does not develop solely through the school experience...

...Some follow the patterns of expensive private preschool nurseries more or less based on the learning theories of John Dewey and Jean Piaget and called "developmental...

...At first the program was oriented toward pencil-and-paper work and focused "on the alphabet, colors, and shapes...

...Like all programs lumped together under a general name, Head Start programs vary enormously across the country...

...The "Headstarters" exceeded the control group by twelve IQ points after one and again after two years of preschooling...

...Naturally defenders of Head Start complained that the evaluation was premature-the program was only a few years old...

...Preschool graduates had significantly fewer later school failures and, in conformity with the Perry School study, had significantly higher achievement orientation...

...Programs like Head Start should be subject to continuing examination, in any case...

...o Between the ages of seven and ten, children who had been in the preschool program did five to seven percent better on achievement tests than those in the control group...

...The study follows both groups through the age of fifteen...

...Two of five families were without an employed adult...

...Between and among these two are a variety of actual settings...

...IQ range of children was between seventy and eighty-five with a median of seventy-nine, an IQ lever* generally classified as "educable mentally retarded...

...Not only, were good intentions and the strong feelings that persuaded people to back special preschooling for the poor children not enough, they were apt to be misleading...

...and increased projected lifetime earnings...

...These included such items as self-concept, only slightly favor ing the "Headstarters," and parent-youth relationship, with no discernible effect except for the previously reported pa rental satisfaction with the Head Start children's schooling...

...Some are highly structured with "basic skills" and drill occupying the major portion of the school day...

...On eighteen items related to school behavior as rated by teachers and as reported by students, the Head Start students showed less deviant behavior than their counterparts...

...Much effort has been expended by Jensen and others in building a case against interventions which seek to improve cognitive ability...

...After one year of kindergarten this decreased to a six-point difference and finally leveled off by the end of second grade...

...On the use of leisure time by both students and parents, there was also no significant difference found...

...WHAT...

...A federally funded preschool program for disadvantaged children, Head Start was obviously begun, in 1965, out of praiseworthy motives...

...The estimated benefits for the lifetime of a child are $14,819 with the figure corrected for inflation...

...The estimated costs for the project were $5,984 per child for the two years of attendance...

...They range from the belief of Jensen et al...

...They are compared with a control group of like number and parallel social and intellectual characteristics who did not participate in the program...

...Who could oppose an effort to compensate for the materially and educationally impoverished home environments that had already affected many children by the time they reached kindergarten or first grade...

...Over half of the Head Start parents expressed satisfaction with their children's school performance by the time the chil dren were fifteen while a little more than one quarter of the other group's parents did so...

...On this last, the authors say that the projected marginal earnings of the Head Start group over the control group is $10,798 per person in 1979 dollars...

...By choosing randomly among children of the same age and in the same low socio-economic neighborhood for placement in either the experimental or control groups, the study emerged with two groups having the following equivalent characteristics: Median school of parents was 9.4 years...

...This summarizes and reviews data from many evaluations collected by the Consortium for Longitudinal Studies...

...Seventy-seven percent of this group said they had thought of going to college as opposed to sixty percent of the control group...

...Much needs to be learned about the different approaches to preschooling, and education at every level could profit from better conceptions of cognition and learning than are now prevalent...

...Family mobility was remarkably low with fifty percent having moved only once during the entire period under study, resulting in a very low attrition rate...

...Each child and mother were visited at home for another one-and-a-half hours each week...

...Head Start continued to enjoy public support, but among professional educators and policy-makers the fact that its results could be so hotly contested became another element in the general impression that Great Society programs had' 'failed.'' A decade later, however, many more studies have accumulated, and a significant number in the past few years-longitudinal evaluations, in particular-have shown long-term benefits for Head Start children...

...These days, that's no small matter...

...IN SUMMARY, did the evaluation find...

...The authors speculate, but to no persuasive conclusion, about this higher level of aspiration (going to college) than of expectation (graduating from high school...

...The Head Start group scored lower than the control group . on self-reported delinquent behavior ranged on a scale of less to more serious scale of legal offenses...

...Suffice it to say that the factors taken into account were the money value of the mother's released time...

...More than that, they went to work dissecting the methodology of the study and revealing its various shortcomings...

...It is not confined to the usual quantitative measures of IQ and achievement tests but extends to data on such vitally important questions as deviant school behavior, delinquent social behavior, effects on teenage employment, number of years spent in special education, school commitment and satisfaction (of both students and their parents), aspirations, use of leisure time, and self-concept...

...That study, carried out for the Office of Economic Opportunity by the Westinghouse Learning Corporation and Ohio University, showed that on a variety of learning readiness and achievement tests, plus some attitudinal assessments, children who had gone through a summer or a full year of Head Start were not much ahead of their peers by the time both groups reached second grade...

...Half the families were headed by a single parent...

...MO REPORT THESE days is quite complete without a hard look at something called "cost-benefits...

...The first thing to be said about the evaluation, done by L. J. Schweinhart and D. P. Weikart of the High Scope Educational Research Foundation Center for the Study of Public Policies for Young Children, is that it has been admirably designed...

...The fact that Head Start parents had become firm supporters of the program, assuring its continuation despite the negative reports, only reinforced these critics in their skepticism...

...The alternative challenge is to design educational environments that consistently stimulate and support children's cognitive growth" (emphasis added...

...This, the authors say, represents a 248 percent return on the original investment...

...They say that "cognitive ability is always under the influence of the environment, whether a preschool or elementary school environment or any other context in which one spends a great deal of time...

...Other potential benefits include a reduced delinquency rate, a decreased need for welfare assistance, and a lower rate of need for social services...

...At age eleven the difference dropped to two percent, but by fourteen the figure rose to eight percent...

...It would be exhilarating to think that people with the apparent conscience, experience, flexibility, and intelligence of the authors of the Perry Preschool Project study would design elementary and secondary school programs into which the beneficiaries of a good preschool program could enter so that such environmental advantages could continue for at least thirteen more years of schooling...

...But the reaction to these first results was wider...

...Social problems were "complex...

...The teacher-child ratio was one to five or six...

...Commitment to schooling, measured in the early years by teachers who rated student motivation and in the later years by fifteen-year-olds who made self-ratings on a list of items, appeared to be significantly higher among "Headstarters...

...The way in which these figures were calculated is far too complicated for adequate summary...

...THE IQ SCORES OF both groups improved every year, although showing an increase which was slower than that of age mates in more favorable environments...

...These days, that's no small matter.a real difference...

...The moderate but distinct benefits of preschooling reported in these studies do not, of course, support the idea of Head Start as a miracle drug that can suddenly and decisively counter the effects of poverty or social deprivation...

...However, the results do vindicate the comtnonsense conviction that a social intervention like Head Start can make a real difference...

...In fact, the authors of the national study had conceded its "very real limitations" and pointed to the questions it had nor addressed...