Heritage highlights government report on Head Start’s failure
January 15, 2013 at 3:26 pm in News by Dustin Siggins 13 Comments
On January 10, The Heritage Foundation published an Issue Brief about a new report on the effectiveness of Head Start. According to the report’s authors, Lindsey Burke and David B. Muhlhausen, Ph.D., the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) provided yet more evidence Head Start should be reconsidered, if not eliminated entirely:
Now that the report has finally been published, the findings of the scientifically rigorous evaluation that tracked 5,000 three- and four-year-old children through third grade should inform federal policymakers who allocate billions of dollars annually to Head Start. Moreover, Congress will soon vote on a supplemental aid package to Hurricane Sandy victims that includes $100 million in additional Head Start funding. The Senate Appropriations Committee notes that 265 Head Start centers will receive the funding, which equates to more than $377,000 per center.
And later:
In 2010, HHS released the findings of the Head Start Impact Study, which tracked the progress of three- and four-year-olds entering Head Start through kindergarten and first grade….
For the four-year-old group, compared to similarly situated children not allowed access to Head Start, access to the program failed to raise the cognitive abilities of participants on 41 measures.[4] Specifically, the language skills, literacy, math skills, and school performance of the participating children failed to improve.
Alarmingly, access to Head Start for the three-year-old group actually had a harmful effect on the teacher-assessed math ability of these children once they entered kindergarten. Teachers reported that non-participating children were more prepared in math skills than those children who participated in Head Start.
Head Start also had little to no effect on the other socio-emotional, health, or parenting outcomes of children participating in the program. For the four-year-old group, access to Head Start failed to have an effect for 69 out of 71 socio-emotional, health, and parenting outcomes….The three-year-old group did slightly better; access to Head Start failed to have an effect for 66 of the 71 socio-emotional, health, and parenting outcomes.
Like other federal education programs, Head Start has been expensive and yet ineffective. Burke and Muhlhausen note there has been $180 billion spent on the program since 1965 ($8 billion last year alone), yet the results are clearly not worth this “investment.” It is long past time for the federal government to leave education and the majority of spending authorized by Congress to the states, where it constitutionally and logically belongs.
The only advantage I can see to the Head Start program, and I did have 2 granddaughters who participated in the program, was that the mother or other caregiver got a half-day break from dealing with the child. My other 2 grandchildren were not involved and they were reading either before or one month into kindergarten. It probably has a more positive effect on children whose parents are not so involved with their child’s learning. I don’t know what the study may or may not have shown about parental involvement. All in all, it is apparently an expensive baby-sitting program.
Research from the tea party is hardly something that warrants any credibility.
…and yet, some in the public can’t even understand that the report was from the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) and it was merely relayed by the Heritage Foundation, and further distributed by the Tea Party Patriots. Guess they must have gone to our public education system.
in other words, the typical government approach, “what we are doing is a failure so we must do more of it”?
Obviously, you didn’t read the link. GOVERNMENT REPORTS ON HEAD START’S FAILURE. Heritage merely pointed it out, because gov’t has buried the report for 3 months.
I have to agree. what is the Federal Govt. doing messing with the schools any way.
Education is one of the powers reserved for the states, 10th Amendment of the Constitution. Education is not mentioned but it is implied, since the Constitution does not mention any activity of the federal government regarding education
My granddaughter is in Head Start. It has helped her eductionally and socially, and is preparing her for the controlled environment she will face in public schools.
Then according to the study, your granddaughter is unusual in having benefited from the program. The point is that we’ve spent $180 Billion, there should be consistent gains. Having on average no benefit compared to those not in head start of similar backgrounds is not good enough for that kind of money. I hope she continues to do well.
in short maybe giveing money to your grandaughter would be a better investment so she can pay her share of the debt
Hi Vicki,
My daughter graduated with a degree in Early Childhood Education four years ago. She informed me back then that studies had shown children attending pre-school had a significantly higher chance to go on to and graduate from college than kids who went to Head Start. The study also showed that kids attending Head Start had a better chance of attending and graduating from college than kids attending neither. Interestingly, the real difference between the three groups was how much family valued education. My conclusion is your granddaughter is benefitting because you and your family value education. Wouldn’t it be better if our government was taking less of our money so we and our families could pay for a pre-school of our choice?
Throughout the history of man, there is one common thread, the societies that used a nuclear family, one father, one mother, nurturing their offspring, have been successful.
Those societies that take a village to raise a child normally have very poor villages and very poor children.
Those societies that practice polygamy and, or, multiple fathers, tend only to succeed in a tribal or primitive environment.
When the tax-burden is such that the mothers are driven from the homes, that the earnings of the father cannot sustain a home, that society will decline, and while our government insists upon using the department of agriculture to fund low income jobs by providing food stamps, low rent housing, welfare etc, lets call it what it is, subsidies for entry level employers.
Government services are services, and they are a net sum loss to the society at large. Due to the fact that the government employee provides service and consumes goods, money is a means of exchange, first a government steals the labor of producing the good–then prints script to procure the good-then wonders why the money keeps losing value, go figure.
The point I am trying to make is that we are getting mothers into the workforce because, at that point of their lives, they need the money, Head start is an advanced, soviet style, babysitting program, never worked there and doesn’t here.
Amen