American Policy on Early Childhood Education & Development: Many Programs, Great Hopes, Modest Impacts

Abstract

The primary motivation for this Spotlight section on early childhood programs is to assess whether and to what degree they are successful in promoting the development and school readiness of children from poor families. Conflicting claims abound over the effectiveness of public programs such as Head Start and state-funded prekindergarten (pre-K) and whether they are meeting the intended goals of preparing disadvantaged children for school and boosting the overall development of served children and their families. The disappointing results of the federal study of Head Start (the Head Start Impact Study [HSIS], reported in 2010) showing that the immediate positive impacts on children's achievement quickly faded1 added fuel to the evolving debate on what does and does not work in publicly funded early childhood education. Because other pre-K studies, conducted over similar time periods as the HSIS, have demonstrated more promising results, the hope remains that these programs can significantly boost children's development and school readiness. High-quality evaluations of state pre-K programs show that some produce substantial gains in intellectual development,2 yet many programs do not. In addition, few of these studies have shown long-term impacts on children. Another popular approach to advancing family and childhood development is home visiting programs (HVPs). Trained professionals or paraprofessionals work with new mothers, improving their child-rearing skills and assisting with life issues such as perinatal depression and employment. As with Head Start and state pre-K programs, the benefits of HVPs are often modest or overstated. There are also many unresolved issues about both the long-term impacts of these programs and the nagging but pressing question of whether successful interventions can produce good results when implemented at hundreds or even thousands of sites nationwide. Clearly, improvements are needed in setting early education and development policy and in advancing the research that will point the way forward. The articles in this Spotlight address these and other issues faced by Head Start, state pre-K, and HVPs and offer a host of solutions for educational policymakers to consider.