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Infants & Young ChildrenVol. 18, No. 1, pp. 16–24c© 2005 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Inc.

Head Start’s Lasting BenefitsW. Steven Barnett, PhD; Jason T. Hustedt, PhD

The benefits of Head Start are under increased scrutiny as Congress debates its reauthorization.How effective is Head Start, and how can it be improved? We provide a current overview and crit-ical evaluation of Head Start research and discuss implications of this research with an eye towardinforming debate. There has been a good deal of controversy over whether Head Start produceslasting benefits, dating back to its early years. Our review finds mixed, but generally positive, evi-dence regarding Head Start’s long-term benefits. Although studies typically find that increases in IQfade out over time, many other studies also find decreases in grade retention and special educationplacements. Sustained increases in school achievement are sometimes found, but in other casesflawed research methods produce results that mimic fade-out. In recent years, the federal govern-ment has funded large-scale evaluations of Head Start and Early Head Start. Results from the EarlyHead Start evaluation are particularly informative, as study participants were randomly assignedto either the Early Head Start group or a control group. Early Head Start demonstrated modestimprovements in children’s development and parent beliefs and behavior. The ongoing NationalHead Start Impact Study, which is also using random assignment, should yield additional insightinto Head Start’s effectiveness. We conclude with suggestions for future research. key words:early education, Head Start, long-term benefits, policy

HEAD START is our nation’s foremost fed-erally funded provider of educational

services to young children in poverty. Since1965, more than 21 million children have par-ticipated in this comprehensive child develop-ment program (U.S. Department of Health andHuman Services, 2003a). As a comprehensiveprogram, in addition to its educational ser-vices, Head Start also provides social, health,and nutritional services to children and theirlow-income parents. When Early Head Startwas established in 1994, the program was ex-panded to serve even younger children (frombirth to age 3) and their families. By 2002,the Head Start program reported fundingmore than 910,000 children with a budget of$6.5 billion (U.S. Department of Health and

From the National Institute for Early EducationResearch, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey,New Brunswick.

We extend our thanks to the anonymous reviewers ofthis article for their helpful suggestions.

Corresponding author: W. Steven Barnett, PhD, Na-tional Institute for Early Education Research, Rutgers,The State University of New Jersey, 120 Albany St,Suite 500, New Brunswick, NJ 08901 (e-mail: [email protected]).

Human Services, 2003a). However, Head Startremains a promise unfulfilled. Nearly 10 yearsafter Congress authorized full-funding, HeadStart’s budget is still insufficient to serve alleligible children or deliver uniformly high-quality services to all enrolled.

As one of the most prominent educationaland social programs in the United States,Head Start has attracted both proponentsand detractors. How effective is Head Startas an early education program for disad-vantaged children? What are the long-termbenefits associated with participation inHead Start? These are questions that arereconsidered in each authorization cycle,when the program’s benefits come underincreased public scrutiny. Head Start wasmost recently reauthorized by Congress in1998 and was scheduled for reauthorizationagain in 2003, although this process has notyet been completed. This article criticallyreviews the research on Head Start andother early education programs for at-riskchildren. We also discuss the implications ofthis research for issues that are likely to ariseduring reauthorization. Finally, we presentrecommendations for future studies of HeadStart.

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Head Start’s Lasting Benefits 17

THE WESTINGHOUSE STUDY

Controversy over the benefits of HeadStart dates back to its earliest years, whena study by Westinghouse Learning Corpora-tion and Ohio University (1969) reported thatthe program produced few sustained effects.This was the first prominent effort to inves-tigate Head Start’s impacts over time. For-mer Head Start children identified in first,second, and third grades were compared toschoolmates within the same grades who hadnot participated in Head Start, with a focuson cognitive and social-emotional develop-ment. Children from the Head Start and com-parison groups were matched within gradeson other important characteristics includingethnic group, gender, socioeconomic status(SES), and kindergarten attendance.

The Westinghouse study was immediatelyand widely criticized on methodologicalgrounds (Condry, 1983). However, no one ap-pears to have noticed at the time the most se-rious methodological flaw. The post hoc se-lection of the 2 groups literally equated thechildren on grade level. This biases between-group comparisons to the extent that differ-ences in grade retention rates and special ed-ucation placements truncated the samples,thereby eliminating the higher percentageof lower performing children from the com-parison groups. The most obvious evidencethat the comparison group does not repre-sent comparable cohorts is that an increas-ing age gap is found moving across the gradeswith children in the third-grade comparisongroup significantly older than the third-gradeHead Start children. Despite this and other evi-dence of methodological problems, the West-inghouse study continues to be cited in pol-icy debates as evidence that Head Start doesnot produce sustained educational benefitsfor children in poverty.

FINDINGS FROM SHORT- ANDLONG-TERM STUDIES OF HEAD START

Since the publication of the Westinghousestudy, Head Start has continued to draw re-

searchers’ attention. A number of longitudi-nal studies have followed former participantsover time to gather more information aboutthe benefits associated with Head Start. Thisresearch can be divided into 2 general cate-gories: short-term and long-term studies. Forthe purposes of this review, we consider stud-ies with immediate outcome measures andlongitudinal studies with outcome measurestaken earlier than third grade to be short-termstudies, and consider studies with outcomesmeasured in third grade or later to be long-term studies.

A brief summary of the key findings fromthe short-term studies follows, since ourprimary interest is in Head Start’s long-term benefits. Evidence of short-term ben-efits of preschool programs including HeadStart has been thoroughly reviewed elsewhere(Barnett, 2004; McKey et al., 1985; Nelson,Westhues, & MacLeod, 2003; Ramey, Bryant,& Suarez, 1985; White & Casto, 1985). Studieshave generally shown that programs for chil-dren at risk, including Head Start, result in in-creases of 0.5 standard deviations in IQ andachievement. Estimated impacts on measuresof social behavior, self-esteem, and academicmotivation typically are slightly smaller.

A recent short-term study by Abbott-Shim,Lambert, and McCarty (2003) is particularlynotable for using random assignment of eli-gible 4-year-olds who had applied to a largeHead Start program with a waiting list. Thisprocedure allowed the researchers to ruleout selection bias as an influence on results.Abbott-Shim et al. (2003) found that HeadStart participants benefited substantially com-pared to nonparticipants in the areas of recep-tive vocabulary and phonemic awareness andhad more positive health-related outcomes,for example, they were more likely to be cur-rent on their immunizations. And the parentsof Head Start children reported more posi-tive health and safety habits than the parentswhose children did not attend Head Start. Be-cause of the strength of the research designused in this study, these outcomes providestrong support for the short-term effective-ness of Head Start.


18 INFANTS & YOUNG CHILDREN/JANUARY–MARCH 2005

Some past reviewers (Haskins, 2004;McKey et al., 1985; White & Casto, 1985)have found that positive impacts of HeadStart and early childhood programs for dis-advantaged children decrease over time andeventually fade altogether. However, recentmeta-analyses of longitudinal studies (Gorey,2001; Nelson et al., 2003) suggest that effectspersist over time although there may be somediminution of effects over the long term.These findings are consistent with the workdone by Barnett, Young, and Schweinhart(1998), who used causal modeling to showthat long-term effects of early childhoodeducation are built upon short-term effects.

Reviews focused on long-term studies ofearly education programs serving econom-ically disadvantaged children (eg, Barnett,1998, 2004) find that the evidence regard-ing Head Start’s long-term outcomes is mixed.In a recent examination of Head Start’s long-term cognitive effects, Barnett (2004) identi-fied only 39 studies in which educational pro-grams included treatment and control groups,served children from low-income families, be-gan during or before the preschool years,and were followed up with cognitive or aca-demic measures at least through third grade,of which 15 were studies of “model”programsand 24 were studies of large-scale public pro-grams. Twelve of the public program stud-ies focused on Head Start, and an additional4 included both Head Start and publicschool programs. Several of the model pro-gram studies, but none of the large-scalepublic program studies, employed randomassignment.

Studies of model programs typically showinitial gains in children’s IQ scores that fadeout over time (Barnett, 2004). Studies of large-scale programs have less often measured IQ,although the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Testhas sometimes been used as a proxy for ver-bal IQ, making it more difficult to evalu-ate whether Head Start produces persistentIQ gains. However, it is likely that initial in-creases in IQ scores by Head Start childrenalso fade out over time. Findings regardingother types of benefits are more promising.

Studies of both model and large-scale pro-grams find achievement effects. In some stud-ies the effects persist, in others effects onachievement cease to be statistically signifi-cant over time. Fade-out is frequently asso-ciated with high attrition over time or withother design flaws that affect the collection ofachievement test data. Yet, decreases in chil-dren’s later rates of grade retention and spe-cial education placements are found in moststudies of model and large-scale programs.This apparent inconsistency often can be ex-plained by differences in data collection pro-cedures that lead to greater, more-biased attri-tion for achievement test data (Barnett, 2004).Few studies have measured impacts on highschool graduation, but those with the largestsamples reported statistically significant posi-tive impacts (Barnett, 1998).

Overall, it appears that model programsand large-scale programs such as Head Starthave similar types of effects, but the studiesof model programs found effects of greatermagnitude (Barnett, 2004). Given the varia-tion in populations, programs, and contextsacross studies, it is difficult to identify a sin-gle cause for this difference in effectiveness.Yet, it seems highly plausible that programssuch as Head Start lack the type of fund-ing necessary to produce the levels of in-tensity and quality achieved in better fundedmodel programs with the direct result thatthey are less effective. Several studies providedirect evidence in support of this argument(Barnett, 1998). Some of this is discussed be-low in the context of findings from key studiesof non–Head Start preschool interventions.

OUTCOMES FROM OTHER PRESCHOOLINTERVENTION PROJECTS

The Carolina Abecedarian Project(Campbell & Ramey, 1994, 1995) is one of themost notable studies of a model program toprovide high-quality early education servicesto at-risk children. Participants were identifiedin the 1970s as infants, on the basis of theirparents’ low-income status as well as otherrisk factors predictive of cognitive difficulties



in childhood. The sample (N = 111), whichwas primarily African American, was dividedinto experimental and control groups byrandom assignment. Experimental groupchildren attended the full-day, year-roundAbecedarian program until age 5. Anotherrandomization took place before childrenstarted school, with half the members of boththe control and the experimental groupsreceiving an additional 3-year intervention.Thus, participants in this study received from0 to 8 years of intervention services, with vari-ation in its timing. Follow-up results have nowbeen reported through age 21 (Campbell,Pungello, Miller-Johnson, Burchinal, & Ramey,2001; Campbell, Ramey, Pungello, Sparling,& Miller-Johnson, 2002).

Findings from the Abecedarian Projectshow that the program produced large ini-tial effects that persisted long after the inter-vention ended (Campbell et al., 2001, 2002;Campbell & Ramey, 1994, 1995). At the age21 follow-up, Campbell et al. (2002) foundthat program effects were strongest for youngadults who had taken part in the (5-year)preschool phase of the intervention. Whencompared to the preschool control group,these adults showed stronger performance onmeasures of academic skills and IQ. At age21, they also were more likely to be enrolledin 4-year colleges, were better educated over-all, and were more likely to hold skilled em-ployment. Further, cost-benefit analysis of theAbecedarian Project (Masse & Barnett, 2002)shows that its overall benefits outweigh itscosts, on the order of $4 saved for every dollarspent on the preschool intervention (presentvalue discounted at a real rate of 3%).

Research on the Chicago Child-Parent Cen-ters (CPC; Reynolds, Temple, Robertson,& Mann, 2002) provides evidence of thelong-term effects of a public-school–operatedpreschool program. The CPC program beganin 1967 and classrooms are located in or nearpublic schools in Chicago’s highest povertyneighborhoods. From age 3 until age 5, par-ticipants attend 2.5 hour classes 5 days aweek during the school year and a 6-weeksummer program is also generally provided.

After attending kindergarten, participants re-ceive less intensive services through the pub-lic schools until age 9. Longitudinal follow-upsof the CPC cohort born in 1980 have beencompleted through age 21, on the basis of 2study groups created beginning in 1985: for-mer participants in the preschool and kinder-garten phases of the CPC program (N = 989)and a comparison group of nonparticipants(N = 550). Members of the comparison groupwere matched to former preschool partici-pants using SES and other demographic fac-tors. Reynolds and colleagues (2002) reportpositive long-term outcomes from CPC acrossa wide range of domains. These include per-sistent gains in reading achievement (age 14),lower rates of grade retention and special ed-ucation, lower rates of reported child mal-treatment (ages 4–17), lower rates of juvenilearrests, and higher rates of educational attain-ment. A cost-benefit analysis estimates thatthe CPC preschool program yields an eco-nomic return far exceeding its cost (Reynoldset al., 2002).

RECENT RESEARCH ON HEAD START’SLONG-TERM OUTCOMES

Although long-term longitudinal evalua-tions of benefits associated with the HeadStart program have been rare, several re-cent studies have sought new evidence. Ina follow-up to the Head Start Planned Vari-ation study conducted from 1969 to 1972,Oden, Schweinhart, Weikart, Marcus, and Xie(2000) compare 22-year-olds who attendedHead Start at age 4 to others who had not at-tended, in 2 communities, 1 in Florida (N =424) and 1 in Colorado (N = 198). FormerHead Start participants were located as youngadults, and a post hoc comparison group wasconstructed using young adults who had livedon the same streets or in the same high-poverty neighborhoods (Census tracts) as theHead Start participants. Members of the com-parison group had not attended Head Start orany other early education program. However,perhaps because many children from the com-munities’ lowest SES families had attended



Head Start, the Head Start group was slightlylower in SES than the non–Head Start compar-ison group. Statistical adjustments for theseand other differences were made in the dataanalysis, to facilitate the process of drawingmeaningful conclusions from comparisons be-tween the 2 groups.

Few statistically significant differenceswere found between the Head Start and non–Head Start comparison groups (Oden et al.,2000). However, the direction and pattern ofresults suggests possible long-term benefits.Most notably, in the Florida sample, girls whohad attended Head Start were significantlymore likely to graduate high school or earna GED (95% vs 81%) and significantly lesslikely to have been arrested at age 22 (5% vs15%) than were girls in the non–Head Startcomparison group.

The lack of strong results in this studymay be due to methodological limitations thatled to difficulties in adequately controllingfor preexisting differences between the HeadStart group and the non–Head Start group. Allof the initial advantages of the comparisongroup may not be captured by the differencein socioeconomic status, and the statistical ad-justments cannot be guaranteed to producean unbiased estimate of the impact of HeadStart on the more disadvantaged participantgroup. Oden and colleagues recommend thatmore rigorously designed studies be devel-oped to obtain stronger evidence.

Janet Currie and colleagues have employedcreative statistical approaches to estimate thelong-term effects of Head Start from nationaldata sets with self-reported Head Start partici-pation (Currie & Thomas, 1995, 1999; Garces,Thomas, & Currie, 2000). These studies esti-mate within family differences among siblingswhere one child is reported to have attendedHead Start and another not. One strength ofthese studies is that they employ data col-lected across the nation. Limitations includeerror in self-reported participation and highlyrestrictive assumptions about the reasons for,and the consequences of, differences in HeadStart participation among siblings (Barnett &Camilli, 2002; Currie, 2001). Most of the lim-

itations seem likely to lead to an underesti-mation of long-term benefits (Currie, 2001).For example, they assume that Head Start hasno benefit for siblings and that parents en-gage in no compensating behaviors to gen-erate more equal outcomes among siblings.These assumptions are unlikely to be trueand thus bias downward the estimated effectsfrom comparing siblings (Barnett & Camilli,2002).

Currie and colleagues find long-term effectsfor subpopulations: higher long-term PeabodyPicture Vocabulary Test scores, less grade rep-etition, and more high school graduation andcollege attendance for whites and Latinosand fewer criminal charges and convictionsfor African Americans. This variation by eth-nicity is not predicted a priori, and thelack of persistent academic improvementsfor African Americans is inconsistent withthe findings of randomized trials of other in-terventions with African American samples.Barnett and Camilli (2002) conducted similaranalyses with one data set employed by Currieand Thomas (1995) and found no persistentgains for either white non-Latino or AfricanAmerican children. They caution that limita-tions of the data and the potential for substan-tive violations of the analytical assumptionsare so serious that such estimates of HeadStart’s long-term effects should not be reliedupon for public policy purposes.

RECENT FEDERALLY SPONSOREDEVALUATIONS OF HEAD START

The federal government has renewed itsemphasis on funding large-scale scientificevaluations of Head Start and Early Head Startin recent years. These national, longitudinalstudies have been sponsored by the Admin-istration on Children, Youth, and Families toprovide more details about the services pro-vided by these programs, as well as better in-formation regarding the progress made by par-ticipants and their families.

The Family and Child Experiences Survey(FACES; Zill et al., 2001) of Head Start children



and their families was the first of these studies,beginning in 1997. Of primary interest inFACES 1997 were Head Start’s impact on chil-dren’s development and readiness for school;the quality of education, nutrition, and healthservices provided to children; the relation-ships between quality in the classroom andchild outcomes; and the program’s impact instrengthening families. One problem with thisstudy, however, is that its design does notallow for comparisons between Head Startparticipants and demographically similar chil-dren who did not attend Head Start. There-fore, although it is possible to conclude thatmiddle-income children continue to outscoreHead Start participants, the scope for finergrained conclusions about the gains made byHead Start children in comparison to eligi-ble nonparticipants is quite limited (Barnett &Hustedt, 2003). Results have recently becomeavailable for an additional FACES cohort ofchildren who entered Head Start beginning in2000 (Zill et al., 2003). However, like the ini-tial FACES study, FACES 2000 lacks a compar-ison group of non–Head Start children. Themodest initial effects estimated by Barnett andCamilli (2002) appear to be consistent with re-sults from the FACES studies.

A second large-scale study is the Early HeadStart Research and Evaluation project (Loveet al., 2002), which began shortly after EarlyHead Start was established. At the outset ofthis study, families were randomly assignedto a participant group that received servicesfrom the Early Head Start program or to acontrol group that did not receive these ser-vices. Results suggest that this program has awide range of important short-term impacts,both for 2- and 3-year-old Early Head Startparticipants and for their parents. When com-pared to nonparticipants, participating chil-dren were less aggressive and more success-ful on measures of cognitive and languagedevelopment. Parents of Early Head Start chil-dren became more self-sufficient, as theywere more likely to participate in job trainingand educational programs. Furthermore, theyshowed improvements on assessments ofparenting.

Finally, data collection began in 2002 for athird large-scale longitudinal study, which wasmandated by Congress during Head Start’smost recent reauthorization in 1998. The Na-tional Head Start Impact Study (Puma et al.,2001) will focus on the effects of Head Startparticipation on children, especially theirschool readiness, and will also examine theimpacts associated with variations in typesof services and settings. Children will be fol-lowed in this study from age 3 or 4 untilthe spring of their first grade year. Unlike theFACES studies, the Impact Study employs ran-dom assignment of at-risk children to exper-imental (Head Start) and control (non–HeadStart) groups. Although results are not yetavailable, the use of random assignment givesthis study greater promise of producing validestimates of the effects of Head Start pro-grams on children and their parents. The Im-pact Study is the most promising evaluation ofHead Start’s benefits to date.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FORFUTURE HEAD START RESEARCH

Despite the fact that Head Start has beenextensively studied since it began nearly 4decades ago, the answers to some criticalquestions remain incomplete. The long-termbenefits of Head Start rarely have been stud-ied, and never with sufficiently strong re-search designs. Research on Head Start andsimilar programs has found substantial long-term benefits in educational achievement andattainment, employment, and social behavior.It is reasonable to conclude that Head Start haspositive benefits for school readiness and atleast some educational benefits are sustainedover time. Less is known about the magnitudeof the benefits, the full range of benefits (so-cial, emotional, and physical as well as cogni-tive), the benefits to parents and siblings ofchildren in Head Start, and the effectivenessof Head Start’s various components.

The strongest evidence for a broad rangeof large long-term benefits comes from stud-ies of other preschool programs in whichkey aspects of both the research designs and



programs are of higher quality. This compli-cates the interpretation of differences in find-ings between studies of Head Start and otherprograms. One constant is that initial gains inIQ fade over time. Gains on subject-matter–specific achievement tests are more likely tobe maintained. Decreased grade retention andspecial education rates and increased highschool graduation rates are common. Flawedresearch methods frequently produced resultsthat mimic fade-out with achievement tests,producing an unnecessarily confusing patternof results. Head Start also seems likely to im-prove social behavior (eg, reducing crime),but direct evidence is quite limited.

Across all domains, Head Start’s benefitsfor children seem likely to be modest insize, smaller than the effects of such well-known interventions as the Perry Preschooland Abecedarian programs. The most obviousreason for the relatively small size of HeadStart and Early Head Start effects is the qual-ity and intensity of key aspects of the pro-grams. The programs producing larger effectshad much better educated teachers, smallerclasses, stronger supervision, and other re-source advantages. Head Start’s broad missionto the family may result in smaller impacts onchildren because its budget is not sufficient toprovide intensive services across the board.Head Start Program Information Report data(U.S. Department of Health and Human Ser-vices, 2003b) suggest another possible reasonfor smaller effects. A substantial number ofchildren appear to pass through the programin a given year so that the total number servedduring the course of the year is considerablylarger than the number served for an entireyear. And, only about half the children servedby Head Start attend the program prior to age4 enabling them to receive more than a yearof Head Start.

An important related question for future re-search is the relative costs and benefits ofthe broad array of services mandated to bepart of Head Start. Evidence regarding theseis spotty, although this includes such brightspots as very large increases in access to den-tal care (Barnett & Brown, 2000). Results

from the Early Head Start study (Love et al.,2002) are promising as they show positive,though small, impacts on a range of outcomesfor both children and their parents. In ad-dition, benefits transmitted through parentsseem likely to diffuse to siblings, as well. Howcan the potential to enhance program effec-tiveness through services to parents be bet-ter realized? How can Head Start be reshapedin terms of social, health, and related ser-vices? Should its overall budget be increasedso that it can increase the intensity of all its ser-vices? Should the intensity of selected compo-nents be increased, and should this be accom-plished by reducing the scope of Head Start’sservices and goals?

The past offers some lessons for futureresearch on these questions. IQ tests andtheir proxies, which include the Peabody Pic-ture Vocabulary Test, may provide reasonableguides to the magnitude of initial cognitivegains, but subject-matter–specific tests are re-quired to more fully assess Head Start’s long-term effects on cognitive abilities. Social andemotional development should be assessed,and studies should not neglect attitudes andbehavior in and out of school including moti-vation, prosocial activities, aggression, delin-quency, and crime. Physical development andnutrition seem all too often neglected at atime of increasing concern regarding obe-sity in children. If such outcomes are ne-glected in research and evaluation, Head Startpolicy will be made without much relevantinformation.

It is particularly important that researchersseek answers to these questions to informpolicy decisions that will shape the future ofthe Head Start program. For example, in 2003and 2004 Congress considered proposals fora variety of changes in Head Start. The pres-ident and others have proposed that HeadStart should focus more intensely on liter-acy, and there are indications that Head Startneeds improvement in this area (eg, McGill-Franzen, Lanford, & Adams, 2002; Zill et al.,2001). However, such a focus could lead HeadStart away from an integrated curriculum withbroader educational goals and draw down



resources required to provide other servicesto children and families. The intensive focuson literacy could come at the expense of at-tention to social and emotional developmentwith dire consequences, given the tremen-dous potential value of benefits in these do-mains to Head Start participants and society asa whole (Barnett, 1993; Reynolds et al., 2002).Proposals to be considered also include in-creasing Head Start teacher education require-ments and shifting authority for Head Startto the states. This last raises questions thatbroader policy studies might answer, such ashow funding would be affected by a dilutionof federal responsibility for quality and thenumber of children served.

Although research indicates that Head Startworks in its current form, there remains roomfor research to contribute to further refine-ment of this program. A research agenda

could be developed to study the costs andbenefits of Head Start’s components. Anothercould investigate the effects of enhancementsto Head Start 1 component at a time or over-all. It would seem especially useful to em-ploy rigorous designs to study improvementsto Head Start’s classroom component thatwould make it more like programs that haveproduced larger impacts, including increas-ing teacher quality and compensation, classsize, and hours. It cannot be emphasized toostrongly that Head Start is a dynamic programthat has already been reshaped over the years.Thus, Head Start research provides an histori-cal look at a program that has already adaptedto the changing times. It is critical that the re-search community continue seeking answersto important questions about how to helpmake Head Start even more successful in thefuture.

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