2-126 - Head Start, Alternative Child Care, and Parent Outcomes: Re-analyzing Data of Head Start Impact Study (HSIS)

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

As the largest federally-funded preschool program in the U.S., Head Start aims to improve low-income children's school readiness as well as their parents' engagement in children's schooling, childrearing skills, and their own educational progress. The Head Start Impact Study (HSIS), the only large-scale randomized experiment in Head Start history, reported short-term benefits of Head Start in the initial year, few of which were sustained to kindergarten, first grade, or third grade.

Using data from the HSIS, this symposium aims to unpack the effects of Head Start by comparing it to alternative child care settings and focusing on parents' education and employment. The first paper combines a principal stratification framework with a random effects hierarchical model to stratify children into latent subgroups defined by the pair of childcare settings each child would experience under the randomized offer of Head Start and under no such offer. The second paper uses an approach of principal score matching and weighting to identify subgroups of children in the treatment group who, without the intervention, would have had care arrangements similar to children in the control group. The third paper examines the effect of being offered access to Head Start (intent-to-treat) and the effect of receipt of Head Start services (treatment-on-the-treated) on parents' education and employment. These studies find sustained effects of Head Start when compared to home-based care and significant effects of Head Start on parents' educational attainment in the three-year-old cohort.

The symposium is multidisciplinary and includes psychologists, economists, statisticians, political scientists, and demographers.

Sub Unit

• Methods, History, Theory

Chair

• Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Columbia University

Discussant

• William T. Gormley, Jr., Georgetown University

Individual Presentations

• Compared to What? Variations in the Impact of Early Childhood Education by Alternative Care-type Settings - Avi Feller, Harvard University Department of Statistics; Todd A Grindal, Abt Associates Inc; Luke Miratrix, Harvard University Department of Statistics; Presenting Author: Lindsay C. Page, University of Pittsburgh School of Education

• Head Start and Children's Growth Trajectories through Third Grade: A Comparison to Alternative Child Care Arrangements - Presenting Author: Fuhua Zhai, Fordham University; Jane Waldfogel, Columbia University; Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Columbia University

• The Influence of Low-Income Children's Participation in Head Start on Their Parents' Education and Employment - Presenting Author: P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, Northwestern Univ; Terri Sabol, Northwestern University