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Recognizing that young children’s developmental needs extend beyond education, one of the most successful early childhood education and intervention programs in the United States, Project Head Start, was created by the federal government to provide economically disadvantaged children with nutritional, health, and educational services during their early childhood years, prior to kindergarten (Ramey & Ramey, 1998). Parents of Head Start children also receive assistance, such as education about child development, vocational services, and programs addressing their emotional and social needs (Zigler & Styfco, 2004).

Over the past four decades, a great deal of research has been conducted on the effectiveness of Head Start. The most common finding is that Head Start improves cognitive performance, with gains in IQ and achievement scores in elementary school (Zhai, Brooks-Gunn, & Waldfogel, 2011). Compared with children who do not participate in Head Start, those who do so have greater parental involvement in school, show higher math achievement scores in middle school, are less likely to be held back a grade or have problems with chronic absenteeism in middle school, and are more likely to graduate from high school (Duncan, Ludwig, & Magnuson, 2007; Joo, 2010; Phillips, Gormley, & Anderson, 2016). Head Start is associated with other long-lasting social and physical effects, such as gains in social competence and health-related outcomes, including immunizations (Huston, 2008). Yet some research has suggested that the cognitive effects of Head Start may fade over time such that, by late childhood, Head Start participants perform similarly to control group low socioeconomic status children who have not participated in Head Start (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services & Administration for Children and Families, 2010). Early intervention may not compensate for the pervasive and long-lasting effects of poverty-stricken neighborhoods and inadequate public schools (Schnur & Belanger, 2000; Welshman, 2010). At the same time, long-term advantageous effects of attending Head Start include higher graduation rates and lower rates of adolescent pregnancy and criminality for low-income children who attend Head Start compared with their control group peers (Duncan & Magnuson, 2013). Despite these findings, only about one third of poor children are enrolled in Head Start, and this proportion has shrunk over the past decade, as shown in Figure 7.7.

Children who attend Head Start programs have early educational experiences that improve cognitive and social skills and prepare them for kindergarten and elementary school.

David Joles/Zuma/Corbis

Additional evidence for the effectiveness of early childhood education interventions comes from the Carolina Abecedarian Project and the Perry Preschool Project, carried out in the 1960s and 1970s. Both of these programs enrolled children from families with incomes below the poverty line and emphasized the provision of stimulating preschool experiences to promote motor, language, and social skills as well as cognitive skills, including literacy and math. Special emphasis was placed on rich, responsive adult–child verbal communication as well as nutrition and health services. Children in these programs achieved higher reading and math scores in elementary school than their nonenrolled peers (Campbell & Ramey, 1994). As adolescents, they showed higher rates of high school graduation and college enrollment, as well as lower rates of substance abuse and pregnancy (Campbell, Ramey, Pungello, Sparling, & Miller-Johnson, 2002; Muennig et al., 2011). At ages 30 and 40, early intervention participants showed higher levels of education and income (Campbell et al., 2012; Schweinhart et al., 2005).

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Figure 7.7 Number of Children (in Thousands) Enrolled in Head Start and Early Head Start, and Children Enrolled as a Percentage of Children in Poverty, 2006–2014

Source: Child Trends Databank (2015).

The success of early education intervention programs has influenced a movement in the United States toward comprehensive prekindergarten (pre-K). Young children who participate in high-quality pre-K programs enter school with greater readiness to learn and score higher on reading and math tests than their peers (Gormley, Phillips, Adelstein, & Shaw, 2010). About one half of states offer some form of state-funded pre-K without income restrictions (Barnett, Carolan, Squires, Clarke Brown, & Horowitz, 2015). A few states, including Oklahoma, Georgia, and Florida, provide universal pre-K to all children, and many more states are moving in this direction (Williams, 2015). Beginning in the fall of 2017, New York City initiated a city-funded “3-K for all” program of free full-day preschool to all 3-year-olds (K. Taylor, 2017). Although some research suggests that half-day and more intense full-day programs do not differ in academic and social outcomes, full-day preschool incorporates the benefit of free child care to working parents that is likely of higher quality than they might have otherwise been able to afford (Leow & Wen, 2017). Funding public preschool programs is daunting, but the potential rewards are tremendous.