

HHS study suggests Head Start programs have little effect by 3rd grade [pdf] - shawndumas
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/head_start_report.pdf

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hanleybrand
I was super surprised that the "key findings" section of the executive summary
in the actual report give a very different feeling of the contents of the
report than the summary provided by the Heritage Foundation researchers:

From the actual report:

Key Findings Looking across the full study period, from the beginning of Head
Start through 3rd grade, the evidence is clear that access to Head Start
improved children’s preschool outcomes across developmental domains, but had
few impacts on children in kindergarten through 3rd grade. Providing access to
Head Start was found to have a positive impact on the types and quality of
preschool programs that children attended, with the study finding
statistically significant differences between the Head Start group and the
control group on every measure of children’s preschool experiences in the
first year of the study. In contrast, there was little rd evidence of
systematic differences in children’s elementary school experiences through 3
grade, between children provided access to Head Start and their counterparts
in the control group. In terms of children’s well-being, there is also clear
evidence that access to Head Start had an impact on children’s language and
literacy development while children were in Head Start. These effects, albeit
modest in magnitude, were found for both age cohorts during their first year
of admission to the Head Start program. However, these early effects rapidly
dissipated in elementary school, with only a single impact remaining at the
end of 3rd grade for children in each age cohort. With regard to children’s
social-emotional development, the results differed by age cohort and by the
person describing the child’s behavior. For children in the 4-year-old cohort,
there were no observed impacts through the end of kindergarten but favorable
impacts reported by parents and unfavorable impacts reported by teachers
emerged at the end of 1st and 3rd grades. One unfavorable impact on the
children’s self-report emerged at the end of 3rd grade. In contrast to the
4-year-old cohort, for the 3-year-old cohort there were favorable impacts on
parent- reported social emotional outcomes in the early years of the study
that continued into early elementary school. However, there were no impacts on
teacher-reported measures of social- emotional development for the 3-year-old
cohort at any data collection point or on the children’s self-reports in 3rd
grade.

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protomyth
Head Start has long been known to be more positive for the parents than the
children. The real problem is Head Start is too late to find some of the
biggest problems. A physical problem that affects learning can be caught and
corrected earlier. Instruments such as the Denver Screening, ELAP, or LAP will
catch stuff in the 6 week to 3 year range. HS has a program in this range
(Early Head Start) which evolved from earlier efforts (e.g. CCDP), but it is
not common. 0-3 programs are better for kids long term, 3-5 year programs
benefit parents more.

Disclaimer - I have 5 years of data on a study program under my belt in this
area (0-3).

Advice - if you have a kid in the 0-3 range, get them screened often and get
any problems corrected. It will save you grief and taxpayers money later.

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sarah2079
Would you mind giving a quick summary of the types of screening you suggest?

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protomyth
I am most familiar with the three I mentioned, but check with your state
government. Hearing is critical and seemed to be the most common and costly if
not caught. When I get into the office I will see if I can find some of my old
files. Search "Denver Developmental Screening" and "Early Learning
Accomplishment Profile" to get a flavor of what I mean.

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protomyth
After the weekend weather, I got to work and cannot get any of the old files
(about 10yrs old now). So, I will go from memory.

We used the "Denver Developmental Screening" as an initial test. You probably
will remember it (or something very like it) by the use of a small bell rung
near the infant to get a reaction. It covers a number of little things to
check for problems.

Early Learning Accomplishment Profile or ELAP or E-LAP was use thereafter for
0-3 (LAP taking over from there). It is based on "Domains" and Skills. The
domains are Gross Motor, Fine Motor, Cognitive, Language, Self-Help, and
Social Emotional. Each Domain has a number of Skills (not the same number for
each Domain) number from 1 to N where 1 is the "simplest" and N is the "most
complex". An example skill would be "picks up spoon" in Fine Motor. As a child
develops s/he should be able to work their way through all the Skills in the
Domain.

Testing consisted of going through the skills until the child couldn't do a
certain number of skills (I think it was 3 of 5, but I cannot remember). At
which point a lesson plan was written (really, it was generated by a Visual
Basic program we wrote). The lesson plan was keyed to practicing skills that
the child couldn't do.

If the child fell behind what was age appropriate progress, a team looked at
what might be wrong or if some physical problem was preventing progress. The
amount of money that could be saved by taxpayers if just basic hearing
problems were dealt with is mindblowing.

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Uhhrrr
I am curious about this part. Why would outcomes be better for both non-
depressive 3-year-olds and depressive 4-year-olds?:

 _There is evidence that for some outcomes, Head Start had a differential
impact for some subgroups of children over others. At the end of 3rd grade for
the 3-year-old cohort, the most striking sustained subgroup findings were
found in the cognitive domain for children from high risk households as well
as for children of parents who reported no depressive symptoms. Among the
4-year-olds, sustained benefits were experienced by children of parents who
reported mild depressive symptoms, severe depressive symptoms, and Black
children._

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yummyfajitas
Data mining.

<https://xkcd.com/882/>

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chacham15
This sounds really interesting, but the pdf is huge. Is there a TL;DR of this?

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Daniel_Newby
This is not news. The whole purpose of Head Start is to recruit low IQ
children and keep them down. (It is illegal for Head Start programs to teach
reading, in order to skim off the few resources available and fritter them
away on meaningless feel-good activities.)

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protomyth
Oh, bullsh __\- it is not illegal for Head Start to teach reading. Also, Head
Start recruits on parental income level, not on a child's IQ.

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Daniel_Newby
Hmmmm... It appears to have changed. I swear they used to be forbidden to
spend money on things like phonics.

Parental income is highly correlated with child IQ.

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protomyth
> Parental income is highly correlated with child IQ.

I would need proof of that statement. I can see receiving a bad education, but
they are not inherently stupid.

