HEAD START - WHERE ARE THE HEADLINES NOW?
Rodgers, Harrell
In the early 1960s, American political leaders were looking for a panacea, a quick, easy solution for the embarrassing, even dangerous, problems of poverty, hunger, malnutrition, and explosive...
...A Review of Head Start Research since 1969...
...Robert D. Plotnick and Felicity Skidmore, Progress Against Poverty: A Review of the 1964-1974 Decade (New York: Academic Press, 1975), p. 51...
...For example, the Food Stamp program has greatly reduced hunger and malnutrition in America...
...The lack of emphasis on the success of Head Start programs has allowed funding to remain very modest...
...Some of the initial expectations had been optimistic to say the least, especially that three to four years of educational neglect could be compensated for in only one or two eight-week summer terms...
...The studies showed that the physical conditions of Head Start children tended to be considerably better than that of children from similar backgrounds who had not been in the program, but educational gains tended to be small, especially for children who had not participated in year-round programs...
...3Ada Jo Mann, Adele Harrell, Maure Hunt, Jr...
...In 1976 there was an average of 7.9 million children in families that received Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), some 10 million children in families below the poverty level, and 26 million children with working mothers...
...Clearly, the scope of existing programs is much too modest...
...The most critical of the studies, known as the Westinghouse Report, showed worthwhile gains for students in full-year programs but only minor gains from the eightweek program, which tended to fade as the child completed the first two years of public school...
...On achievement tests in reading, arithmetic, and language, more than half the program children scored at or above their expected level...
...As Bernard Brown of the Office of Child Development concluded, the studies provide "compelling evidence that early intervention works, that the adverse impact of a poverty environment on children can be overcome by appropriate treatment...
...less than 20 percent of the control group did so...
...In the early 1960s, American political leaders were looking for a panacea, a quick, easy solution for the embarrassing, even dangerous, problems of poverty, hunger, malnutrition, and explosive political alienation...
...Head Start was the perfect cure...
...Social Security has greatly reduced poverty among the aged, widowed, and disabled, and has allowed millions of citizens to retire with greater comfort and security...
...Thus, success for social welfare is not unusual, it is just not emphasized...
...All three papers were presented at the 1977 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Denver, Colorado, February 23, 1977...
...The studies showed that major educational gains do not generally fade out, and that there were even "sleeper effects" that surfaced several years after the program and helped Head Start recipients become more academically competent even into the junior high-school years...
...Children in the program were consistently superior to children in the control group in grades in reading, arithmetic, and language ability...
...Enthusiasm was so high that 561,359 were enrolled, many in hastily assembled programs...
...Like federally aided day-care programs, which serve only a little over a million children a year, Head Start could be a critical component of any strategy designed to alleviate poverty and help parents (mostly mothers) enter job-training, educational programs, or the job market...
...If the unlikely assumption is made that all the students enrolled in Head Start in recent years were from poverty families, only 15 percent of all those students qualified for Head Start by their family's income have been served...
...These highly positive results suggest the great value of preschool programs as a method of combating poverty...
...Launched in 1965, Head Start was broadly designed to improve the conceptual, perceptive, 234 and verbal skills of poor children, to increase their sense of dignity and self-worth, expand their curiosity, help them develop self-discipline, provide them with medical and dental care, and to develop in poor children and their parents a responsible attitude toward society...
...A recent symposium sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which evaluated 96 longitudinal studies of Head Start participants, reported particularly encouraging results...
...Most of the studies did not show the major impact on children that had been anticipated...
...2 Barbara Dillion Goodson and Robert D. Hess [Nashville Early Training Program], "The Effects of Parent Training Programs on Child Performance and Parent Behavior," p. 23...
...Notes 'Bernard Brown, "Long-Term Gains from Early Intervention: An Overview of Current Research...
...A fivefold increase in funding would be a major step toward alleviating poverty, and it would help millions of adults to realize their potential...
...Typical of program impact were those reported for the Nashville Early Training Program: At the end of third grade, 92 percent of the program children were receiving passing grades while only 60 percent of control children were...
...Only 3 percent of the program children had fallen more than a year and a half below grade level, compared with 32 percent of control children...
...During the fiscal years 1975-77 an average of $429.2 million per year was spent on Head Start, with only 349,000 students per year served...
...By 1969, however, the first evaluations of the educational impact of Head Start began to appear...
...The initial enthusiasm for the program continued for several years...
...Even highly flawed and severely underfunded programs such as AFDC significantly reduce the number of families who fall below the government's poverty threshold (in reality, of course, they may still be poor...
...However, as we know, bad news about social programs is generally trumpeted in the media and in political circles while good news is ignored, even suppressed...
...job-training programs have a solid record of helping individuals learn employment skills (they cannot, however, expand 235 the job market...
...By law 90 percent of all students in Head Start programs must be from poverty families, and 10 percent must be children with handicaps...
...Twenty-six percent of program children were at or above their expected grade level, compared with 8 percent for the control group...
...Total federal funding for day-care aid, Head Start, and other programs to help educationally needy children was only $1.8 billion in 1976...
...WHILE LITTLE HERALDED, studies in recent years have shown that the Head Start program has improved considerably...
...It was relatively noncontroversial, it was inexpensive, and it did not threaten traditional 'bases of political power...
...Initially, the program was designed to serve 100,000 children during the summer of 1965...
...In the fiscal years 1975-77, Head Start served only 349,000 children yearly, over 200,000 fewer than during its first year of operation...
...Medicaid has significantly reduced infant mortality among poor recipients...
...Plotnick and Skidmore's research showed that in 1972 welfare expenditures reduced the poverty population from 39.5 million to 23 million (a 44 percent reduction...
...The heavy emphasis on social-welfare program failure or limitations provide legislators with a rationale for skimping on program-funding or allowing programs to die...
...While the Westinghouse study was considered controversial from the beginning because of dissention within the research staff over some of the assumptions the research was based on and because of methodological problems involved, the negative findings were basically accepted at face value and cost Head Start much of its support in Congress...
...The earlier and the more exposure children had to Head Start, the greater the gains they tended to make and maintain...
...Education experts credit the improvements to experience-related innovations in teaching techniques in Head Start programs, and to the development of more sophisticated methodologies of measuring program impact...
...But despite the fact that social programs are rarely designed or funded at a level that would allow a thorough attack on social ills, many have very important positive impacts...
...All of the 96 studies showed that Head Start has significant positive impact on children...
...The studies showed that Head Start is very successful in cutting down the rate of school failure, in improving IQ scores and reading achievement, and in helping children gain selfconfidence...
Vol. 26 • April 1979 • No. 2
