One prediction I make confidently is that most responses to the new report on Head Start’s effects will be wrong. Advocates of Head Start will try to “kill the messenger” by attacking the study and rejecting any notion that Head Start needs serious reform. Opponents of Head Start will claim that the program has been shown to be a complete failure. People on both sides will claim that the report shows “fade out” and many will blame poor public schools.

I make another prediction that the Obama administration, with its theme of “Change,” will avoid these errors and chart a new course for Head Start based on what can be learned from this study and others. Confidence in this prediction is tempered by the knowledge that real policy change never comes easy, but I have high hopes. In what follows, I set out six key lessons from the findings, make three specific recommendations for change, and close with some good news.

My comments and recommendations are not based on the Impact Study alone. Science is cumulative. New studies don’t simply obviate everything that has gone before, and the Head Start National Impact Study has to be interpreted in light of the full body of research on Head Start, early care and education, and child development.

What did we learn?

(1) In this study, and in others, Head Start’s initial impacts are modest. Just how small they are is hard to say because many children in the control group attended other programs including preschools in the public schools. Taking into account that some children in the study crossed over (some assigned to Head Start did not go and some control group children found their way into Head Start), the estimated gains are larger, and accounting for other preschool programs attended by the controls would lead to even larger estimates. However, even with generous allowance for effects of other programs, it seems highly unlikely that Head Start produced gains as large as have been found for quality programs elsewhere. Most private preschool programs are lower in quality and less effective compared to Head Start. State-funded pre-K varies tremendously; some state programs are likely less effective, while the best are more effective.

(2) There is little evidence of persistent effects on children’s cognitive and social development. This is exactly what other studies would predict given small initial impacts. Our comprehensive meta-analysis of research on the effects of preschool indicates that after school entry, cognitive effects are only about half as large as initial effects. Given how small the advantages from Head Start access were to start with it is not a surprise that they are no longer discernible at the end of kindergarten or first grade. What will surprise many is that this is not “fade out,” but catch up.

(3) The Head Start Impact Study provides some very interesting graphs that show how fast children learn year by year and demonstrate that the lost advantage overtime is not likely fade out. With the exception of the PPVT (the one cognitive measure with some evidence of persistent gain), learning rates on cognitive measures are much faster in kindergarten than during Head Start. Neither Head Start nor control children made much progress during the Head Start year, which is the fundamental problem. By comparison, kindergarten greatly accelerated learning for both groups, and the acceleration is slightly greater for the control group so they catch up. Many other studies have found that the public schools devote tremendous resources to catching up children who enter school far behind; this is inefficient and expensive, but it works. When initial gains from early education are small, they can be swamped by the effects of more intensive efforts in kindergarten and the early grades.

(4) Head Start does not reach the same level of educational quality as large scale public pre-K programs found to produce much larger gains for children (for example, state-funded pre-K in Oklahoma, New Jersey, or California, or the Child-Parent Centers in Chicago). The quality ratings (ECERS-R) of Head Start reported by the Impact Study are completely at odds with what many other investigators find. The fact that these results are consistent with the Head Start FACES results for quality is hardly persuasive as it is likely the same procedures were used in the two studies. Now I am not saying that Head Start is of poor quality, but the Impact Study found that more than 70 percent of Head Start programs are good to excellent. Even allowing for the shortcomings of the rating system used as a measure of educational effectiveness, this is not credible. Nor is it believable that 30 to 40 percent of the other arrangements accessed by disadvantaged children who don’t have access to Head Start are good to excellent. Other studies find that Head Start’s educational quality is mediocre on average (some are very good, some are not so good), a level entirely consistent with the findings for Head Start effects.

(5) Even the small initial effects found for Head Start may be associated with important, if modest, gains later on in such real life indicators as staying on grade level, special education placements, and high school graduation. Small persistent effects that could lead to these are difficult to detect, and the amount of participation in other programs by the control group makes this doubly hard. Nevertheless, we should not kid ourselves. Any longer-term effects found will be unacceptably small.

(6) Other research studies find initial effects of higher quality preschool programs several times larger than those in the Impact Study. Although not all of the advantage is sustained after school entry, the achievement gains that remain are meaningful. The lack of persistent findings in the Impact Study does nothing to overturn or call into question these results from other studies. To the contrary, findings of long-term gains for other programs that have produced substantially larger short-term gains indicate that a reformed Head Start could produce persistent gains as well. However, Head Start will have to be changed to look more like those higher quality programs.

What should we do in response?

To redeem its promise as a highly effective early education program, Head Start will need to change. I have three suggestions to start.

(1) Require all Head Start teachers to become highly qualified and raise teacher pay in Head Start for highly qualified teachers to equality with local public schools. This might be partly or fully accomplished through reallocations of existing Head Start budgets; aside from dental care, it doesn’t seem that services outside the classroom are producing much. In my view, “highly qualified” begins with a BA and specialized training, not just any BA degree and training. We can pay for existing Head Start teachers who want to upgrade their qualifications to go back to school, but we should specify the core early childhood course work requirements. In addition, counseling should be provided to help them navigate higher education and get into and through good programs.

(2) Head Start should implement a streamlined system of “plan-do-review,” the core of which is assessment of teacher practice and children’s learning linked to on-site professional development.

(3) Head Start should “fire” programs with observably poor teaching that fail to produce strong learning gains for children year after year (note that good teachers from these programs will likely be rehired by the new program). This will require hard data on classroom practices and test results for children, but it does not mean testing every child; sampling works fine.

If doubt runs too high about these remedies, the first two at least can be rapidly tested in rigorous studies. (The state of New Jersey essentially conducted a “natural experiment” under court order testing this out, but Head Start could conduct a true experiment).

What’s the good news?

As part of its 2007 reauthorization, the Head Start program was already moving forward on a variety of reforms. In addition, the Obama administration has proposed sweeping changes in Head Start that will go a long away toward turning things around. These proposals include well-crafted approaches to some of the changes I suggested above and much more. They should be pursued with a high degree of urgency and in a partnership between Head Start and the U.S. Department of Education. Despite the greater successes of some state pre-K programs, Head Start is not the only public preschool program that needs reform, and plenty of state and local preschool programs may perform no better (or worse) than Head Start. You can read the details of the administration’s plans for Head Start reform at http://www.acf.hhs.gov/news/press/2010/head_start_roadmap.html.

Steve Barnett
Co-Director, NIEER

One of many fascinating articles by Roger Neugebauer at ChildCare Exchange provides a snapshot of how the top 50 for-profit child care companies are faring and their major concerns.

Like most of the rest of us, CEOs of the top 50 are most concerned about the state of the economy and the rising cost of health insurance. Economists are already looking at shifts from private schools to public as parents find themselves less able to pay for education. Out of work parents don’t qualify for child care subsidies and state’s will have a very hard time maintaining child care subsidies once the stimulus funds run out. Look for more and more states to press for additional help from the federal government for FY 2011 and beyond. Concerns about health insurance may be influenced by the pending health care reform legislation and its implications for businesses that do not currently provide insurance to their employees. Concerns about the pending legislation also tie into worries over state budget shortfalls as states worry about their future obligations for health care costs.

Number three on their list of concerns is competition from public pre-K in the public schools. A growing population has allowed for some noncompeting growth in both public and private sectors. However, in the long-run private child care should view public pre-K as an opportunity rather than a threat. For-profit as well as not-for-profit providers can be integral components of mixed delivery systems for high-quality public pre-K. States like New Jersey have shown that with firm adherence to standards, adequate funding, and a continuous improvement process, private providers can improve service quality, provide a better living for their workforce, and grow. They can reap substantial benefits from the supportive infrastructure that public education provides while bringing more choice and competition than the public schools alone would offer.

Seventh on the list of concerns for CEOs is lack of subsidies for middle-income parents. We share that concern. With most states looking at dire economic circumstances for the foreseeable future and Obama administration initiatives taking an approach primarily targeted to the poor, a broad swath of working families stand to lose access or face declines in the quality of early education.

Neugebauer points out another fact. The two largest providers, Knowledge Universe (founded by Michael Milken) and Learning Care Group, decreased their capacity somewhat in 2009. Far and away the largest for-profit providers, they account for a combined total of nearly 400,000 children served. No doubt this reflects the effects of the economic downturn on effective demand. However, we as a field need to think carefully about the advantages and disadvantages of such concentrations of market share. The quest for bigness that led these and other companies to embark on aggressive acquisition campaigns earlier in the decade can lead to big problems, and we don’t need to look to the financial sector to see them. In Australia, where the mega-chain ABC Learning Centres went into receivership, parents and communities across the country were left scrambling to keep local centers open. As of last month it looked as if the ABC story will have a happy ending, however. A new kind of non-profit social investment syndicate called GoodStart bought 678 ABC Learning Centres for a small fraction of the $3 billion market capitalization the company once had and promised to plow the profits back into services for children.

Benefit-cost analyses (BCA) — quantifying benefits of interventions, often expressing them in dollars returned per dollar invested — are key drivers of early education policy. They’re widely consulted when early education decisions are debated, but few who use them have much in the way of an understanding of how they come about. A booklet just off the press from the National Research Council goes a long way toward explaining the issues.

Strengthening Benefit-Cost Analysis for Early Childhood Interventions is a summary of a March 2009 workshop where leading practitioners of the discipline, including NIEER Co-Director Steve Barnett, talked about the challenges of generating dependable BCAs and ways to strengthen them. Their discussions provide a window on the science — and art — of conducting BCAs. Here are some key issues:

• BCAs depend on rigorous program evaluations. Of course, the gold standard in rigor is the randomized controlled trial — a method that is not always available. Complicating matters is the fact that the control condition against which interventions are evaluated are seldom composed of kids who had no exposure to early childhood programs. These days, most kids in the general population attend a program of some type. These issues weren’t much of a factor in the era of the Perry Preschool Program — something that makes data from that era all the more valuable.

• Arriving at true program costs is a challenge. Budget figures gathered in advance of program implementation often don’t portray true costs and total costs may not be completely accounted for, particularly when programs involve matching or braided funding. Analysts often end up estimating cost using comparable market costs or deriving other measures such as “shadow prices.” For example, in many developing economies observed wage rates overstate the true marginal cost of labor while observed interest rates understate the true cost of capital. Accurate estimation of cost is one of the most neglected aspects of this work. All too often, cost receives little attention and the cost estimate used has no scientific basis at all. Yet, cost is just as important for arriving at a good decision as benefit.

• Assessing program value is arguably the area where researchers have the most work cut out for them. Some benefits of programs like greater socio-emotional development or better health behaviors are inherently more difficult to put a value on and have probably been under-estimated in the past. Manifestations of their value often don’t occur for years, even decades, in the future. In lieu of very long-term studies we must build on other research, linking pre-K to outcomes—grade retention, behavior problems, achievement, dropout—that other studies in turn link with later education, earnings and employment, mental and physical health, crime, and civic participation.

• Maintaining the integrity of study samples and having robust data available for long-term studies is a growing concern due to degradation of contact information and the growth of privacy concerns.

The presenters pointed to work done in other fields that has the potential to inform BCAs in early childhood education. In health economics, for instance, analysts are measuring the quality and length of lives saved by a health intervention in terms of a Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY). Researchers now estimate the value of detecting and medically treating lead poisoning at $1,300 per QALY gained. When they factored in the additional cost savings from remedial education not needed when lead poisoning is prevented, they found the intervention was a sound investment.

Other recommendations the group discussed include more standardization of economic measures such as discount rates that analysts apply over time and developing more standardized practices for research procedures in the field.

Children’s math scores at fourth and eight grade haven’t progressed appreciably in most urban school districts over the last two years, says the most recent report from U.S. Department of Education. Only four of the 11 urban districts the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has been tracking since 2003 showed significant gains. That doesn’t mean progress hasn’t been made. Urban districts, with their higher proportion of minority children and English Language Learners, represent the nation’s biggest education challenge and if we go back to 2003 when NAEP began, the urban districts have made some progress.

Nevertheless the leveling off suggested by the current report should be cause for concern because it tells us more needs to be done to move the needle toward continuing progress in these districts where the achievement gap between blacks and Hispanics and whites remains shamefully wide. We wish an urban New Jersey district were in the report because districts in cities like Newark and Camden have had the benefit of the state’s high-quality Abbott Preschool Program for a number of years. NIEER’s long-term research on the Abbott Program shows children who had two years of the program achieved gains in a variety of math measures including applied problems, calculation and math fluency through second grade.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who ran the Chicago public schools, champions high-quality preschool education as a prerequisite to success in school. That is also a key recommendation in a compelling new report titled “A New Deal for Urban Public Schools” authored by Andrew J. Rotherman and Sara Mead in the Harvard Law & Policy Review. When Secretary Duncan and I released the findings from the State of Preschool 2008 yearbook at the Oyster-Adams Bilingual School in the District of Columbia earlier this year, we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar to a class of enthusiastic kids who shouted out each part of the story as we came to it. We need a lot more of that in urban districts as well as teachers skilled at recognizing and extending the math and science lessons in the caterpillar’s culinary exploits.

Steve Barnett
Co-Director, NIEER

When Michigan’s leaders finally settled on a FY 2010 budget, it looked as if the cuts to the Great Start Readiness Program (GSRP) weren’t so bad, considering the dire condition of the economy there. The part of GSRP that’s formula-funded received the same $88.1 million allotted to it in FY 2009. The portion that is competitively funded was reduced from $15 million to $7.5 million. That’s a big hit, especially considering those funds had gone to Head Start and other providers serving kids most at risk of school failure. Still, total state pre-K allocations appeared to have dropped by about seven percent — less than many had feared.

Or did it? Upon closer inspection, one finds the budget enables districts to opt out of providing formula-funded GSRP altogether and apply the pre-K funds to shortfalls in K-12 education. That will be a temptation for many districts since they received a $292 per-pupil reduction in K-12 funding. Districts that never started pre-K classes this year because of funding uncertainty may be especially tempted to make up their K-12 cuts by sacrificing pre-K. School districts must apply to the state superintendent if they choose to take this route and they must prove they are using the GSRP funds to plan some form of school reform or consolidation. They are not required to implement the plan, simply create one. Districts have until December 1 to tell the Department of Education what they will be doing with their pre-K funds.

The decision by Michigan’s leaders to include this provision was intended to provide districts flexibility in difficult circumstances. In early education circles, however, it looks more like a “stealth incentive” to chip away at a respected state pre-K program that achieves 8 out of 10 benchmarks on NIEER’s Quality Standards Checklist and serves 18 percent of the state’s 4-year-olds. That’s because Michigan school districts have little latitude when it comes to making up funding shortfalls. As a result of the 1994 tax reforms, school funding is essentially state-controlled. Districts have had to make up funding cuts by cuts in spending or dipping into their fund balances when they have them. Thus, the new wrinkle regarding GSRP funds stands as a new addition to a very short list of options.

The uncertainty all of this creates for those charged with providing early care and education is enormous. Lindy Buch, Director of Michigan’s Office of Early Childhood Education and Family Services says that 20 long-standing agencies have already lost funding and cut programs. Getting a handle on the number of districts intending to apply for flexibility is proving difficult because of the time needed and cost of re-programming the state’s electronic grants system to include this information. Parents and others concerned about early education, should try to get at least a rough idea of district plans sooner rather than later in order to forestall “penny wise and pound foolish” attempts to cut pre-K at the local levels.