Health and Human Services, “Improving Head Start." HHS.gov. n.p., n.d. Web. 3 Feb. 2011.
Puma, Michael, Stephen Bell, Ronna Cook, and Camilla Heid. “Head Start Impact Study Final Report.” 2010. PDF file.
I became curious in my last post as to whether or not Health and Human services had conducted a more recent survey. So I went on to the Health and Human Services web site and found an entire section devoted to Head Start. I also found that most everything that had to do with the survey had not been updated since 2003. I was unable to access many of the pages because they were out of date and no longer existed at their previous URL. The one link that was active was to the presidential web site where President Obama briefly talks about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act gave an additional 1 billion dollars to Head Start and 1.1 billion to Early Head Start in 2009. That is three years after Heath and Human services most recent study. They had to have updated the site at one point if there was a link from 2009. I Googled it and found a whole new section of their website that had final reports from 2010. Here I found a ton of information.
The study done by Health and Human services was actually a mandate from congress in 1998 to “determine on a national level the impact of Head Start on the children it serves” (9). This study took 5,000 eligible kids between the ages of 3 and 4 years old and randomly assigned them to either Head Start or the control group. Those in the control group were not able to access the facilities offered by Head Start for the sake of the study, but still were involved in early childhood programs. They then began collecting data in 2002. They continued collecting the same data until 2006. This allowed them to follow students through the spring of their first grade year. The three and four year olds were studied separately incase their results varied.
The study had four different rating categories; cognitive development, social and emotional development, heath status and services, and parenting practices. They found that the benefits for the 4 year old group were mainly within the cognitive development category. They showed improvement in language and literacy especially. They also improved in health and dental care. For the 3 year old group they found that they improved in all four categories. I find this interesting but not surprising. The younger age group defiantly got more benefit from the program. Although this study may not be accurate as to the effectiveness of Head Start it certainly gives an insight into the effects of learning in different age groups.
I now realize why this study had not been updated and why it is considered to be so accurate. A lot of time and effort was put into this study, almost 8 years of it. They just barely released their final results in 2010. Unfortunately obvious changes have been made since 2006. The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is a great example of this. It is sad that it is so outdated. The statement final product itself is 35 pages long. This does not include solutions, suggestions, and the like. However it does allow us to see that early education has a stronger impact on younger students. I wonder what kind of impact it has on those who have been involved in Early Head Start as well. It would be great if there were a study on the effects of Head Start here in Idaho. If there is perhaps it will be more recent and include the Early Head Start program as well.
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