Head Start

Backed by strong congressional and public support, Head Start has served more than 15 million children at a total cost of $31 billion since it began 30 years ago. Although an extensive body of literature exists on Head Start, it does not reveal whether today's Head Start is making a positive difference in the lives of participants who live in a society that differs vastly from that of the 1960s and early 1970s. GAO recognizes the difficulties of doing impact studies of such programs as Head Start, but it believes that research could be done that would allow Congress and officials at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to know with greater certainty whether the $4 billion federal investment in Head Start is making a difference. GAO recommends that HHS include in its research plan an assessment of the impact of regular Head Start programs.

GAO noted that: (1) although an extensive body of literature exists on Head Start, only a small part of this literature is program impact research; (2) this body of research is inadequate for use in drawing conclusions about the impact of the national program in any area in which Head Start provides services such as school readiness or health-related services; (3) not only is the total number of studies small, but most of the studies focus on cognitive outcomes, leaving such areas as nutrition and health-related outcomes almost completely unevaluated; (4) individually, the studies suffer to some extent from methodological and design weaknesses, such as noncomparability of comparison groups, which call into question the usefulness of their individual findings; (5) in addition, no single study used a nationally representative sample so that findings could be generalized to the national program; (6) failing to find impact information in existing research, GAO examined HHS' research plans for Head Start; (7) planned research will focus on new or innovative service delivery strategies and demonstrations but will provide little information on the impact of regular Head Start programs; (8) HHS' planned research includes descriptive studies, studies of program variations, involving new and innovative service delivery strategies and demonstration projects, and studies of program quality; (9) HHS officials, in explaining the agency's research emphasis, stated that early research has proven Head Start's impact; (10) such research, however, conducted over 20 years ago, may no longer apply to today's program because of program changes and changes in the population served; (11) HHS also noted some ethical and methodological difficulties of conducting impact research, especially studies that would produce national estimates of program effect; (12) neither ethical nor methodological issues present an insurmountable deterrent to conducting research on Head Start's impact; and (13) moreover, the size and cost of the program appear to warrant an investment in such research.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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