Sacramento Head Start Alumni Association

Head Start has not delivered much

Feb 04, 2003

Head Start

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The Untapped Potential of Baltimore City Public Preschools

Thanks to Dick Cheney, Head Start is back in the news. As his opponents cheerfully pointed out, Cheney voted against Head Start decades ago while representing Wyoming in the U.S. Congress. Cruel and heartless? Not according to Cheney, nor to the Abell Foundation, the Baltimore-based social policy group that published this report. What Cheney believed and what Abell's research shows is that Head Start has not delivered much educational bang for the buck. Neither, Abell says, has its counterpart in the Abell Foundation's hometown, the Baltimore City Public Schools' preschool program. Baltimore's preschoolers continue to arrive at kindergarten lacking basic skills despite years of significant expenditures on the two programs.

According to Abell, the national Head Start program suffers from a multitude of sins, a largely non-academic curriculum and under-trained staff being chief among them. The Baltimore City program, by contrast, has a decent curriculum and qualified staff, but does not reach children early enough. Abell recommends that Baltimore adopt a more academic preschool program, modeled on the French system, which exposes children to a more rigorous curriculum at an earlier age and for a longer portion of the day. Only then, Abell argues, can we hope to reduce the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children, by giving all children the early foundation so critical to their later success. Though tailored for Baltimore's education reformers, Abell's findings are relevant far beyond the Chesapeake Bay area. Read the report online at www.abell.org or contact the Abell Foundation at 111 S. Calvert Street, Suite 2300, Baltimore, MD 21202 to receive a free copy. -KSS

Into Adulthood: A Study of the Effects of Head Start

There's been a long-running argument about whether Head Start's effects last. Most studies indicate that whatever boost the program gives to the initial academic achievement of young children is dissipated within the first few years of school. This is partly a commentary on the crummy schools into which most Head Start alumni/ae are poured. It's also a commentary on the program's avoidance of a cognitive focus and curriculum! Yes, it's true: this Great Society effort to give poor kids a headstart on school has turned into a "child development" program that resists purposeful efforts to prepare them for reading, writing, and arithmetic.

For a long time, however, the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation of Ypsilanti, Michigan has argued otherwise. It has sought to show that Head Start graduates in general, and products of its very own High/Scope program in particular (which can be thought of as souped-up Head Start), fare better over the long haul than non-participants. This is part of a large campaign both to call attention to High/Scope and to press for universal preschool, and it must be said that the High/Scope folks are anything but disinterested observers.

They have a new report out on long-term effects. This is intricate, complicated stuff, requiring many statistical adjustments. Plus there is a fair amount of spinning of the findings, which would richly benefit from a close reading by technically competent (and truly disinterested) experts. If the High/Scope interpretation is to be believed, however, Head Start has modest lasting effects visible in such areas as high school completion rates and school grade-point-averages. Surely the authors are correct that the Head Start program itself should focus on higher education quality and a more purposeful curriculum than it has-though whether one would opt for the constructivist High/Scope approach or the "direct instruction" that they pooh-pooh is quite another matter.

Have a look, if you like. Be warned that it's 228 pages of pretty dense reading. The ISBN is 1-57379-089-3. You can obtain a copy from High/Scope Press, 600 North River Street, Ypsilanti, MI 48198-2898. Phone 800-40-PRESS or surf to www.highscope.org. -CEFjr

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