Fool’s Gold: Head Start is worthless

by David Safier

Have I ever told you never to take anything from Goldwater Institute at face value?

In case you missed me saying it before: Never take anything from G.I. at face value.

Latest exhibit: a G.I. Daily Email from Jay Greene, who has a blog Matthew Ladner posts on regularly.

Greene's email cites a recently released government study on the lasting effects of Head Start, based on an evaluation of students after they complete first grade. The study's conclusion is that the children got an initial bump from Head Start, but by the end of the first grade, there are few positive academic effects and no negative effects of participating in the program.

Greene's conclusion is that Head Start is worthless.

Greene loads his short email with statistical this and effect-size that which he takes from the study, but he leaves out a few things, like:

• The children in Head Start are compared to a control group of equivalent children who didn't participate. But 60% of the control group were in other child care or early education programs. So this isn't Head Start vs. nothing. It's Head Start vs. Other Types of Child Care and Educational Programs. That makes a very big difference. If children get more-or-less as much enrichment elsewhere, the question is, will all children be able to find an "elsewhere"? Head Start often provides a child care and enrichment program to children who otherwise would have nothing.
• The children in the control group attended elementary schools with higher average achievement scores than those in Head Start. The quality of the schools or the achievement level of the students in the control group's classes could easily have added to the achievement of those students, balancing out any boost Head Start gave to the other students.
• Some of the Head Start children, especially those at the lowest achievement levels, showed gains relative to the control group children.
• There were other lasting benefits from Head Start, including better parenting at home and less hyperactive behavior from the children at school.
• The study included Head Start programs rated as effective and others rated as not effective. The study didn't look at the children in the effective and ineffective programs separately to see if one group performed better than the other.

So here's a nuanced conclusion I draw from the study: Head Start doesn't have nearly as much effect on student achievement as we would like. As with so many other educational boosts children from poor families get when they're young, they tend to fade away over time due to all kinds of factors, including the lack of educational enrichment in the home and the poor quality of the public schools the children attend. Though the program is better than nothing, and fills a need to have children get a preschool experience and give parents a break from their kids, it needs to be improved, as do the schools the children attend in the future.

G.I., however, doesn't like nuance. It cites chapter and verse of the data that backs up its world view and ignores the rest.