JohnEngelman
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by Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst, January 18, 2013, Brookings
There is no better example of our need to think critically and consider the evidence about preschool education than Head Start, the federal program for children from low-income families that is administered through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Head Start was begun in 1965 as part of the Lyndon Johnson administration’s war on poverty. Presently it serves about 1 million children annually (roughly 10% of the nation’s population of 3- and 4-year-olds[1]) at a yearly cost to the federal budget of approximately $8 billion...
The Head Start Impact Study is a randomized controlled trial, the gold-standard for evaluating the effectiveness of social and health programs. And it involves long-term follow-up of participants, which is both highly desirable and very unusual in evaluations of social and education programs.
The findings, in brief, are that there were effects favoring Head Start children on some outcome variables at the end of the Head Start year. However, these impacts did not persist...
If this conclusion by the authors isn’t clear enough, I’ll put it in less academic language:
There is no measurable advantage to children in elementary school of having participated in Head Start. Further, children attending Head Start remain far behind academically once they are in elementary school. Head Start does not improve the school readiness of children from low-income families.
https://www.brookings.edu/research/can-we-be-hard-headed-about-preschool-a-look-at-head-start/
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The Brookings Institute is considered to be a liberal research institute. When a respectable organization or individual publishes findings that conflict with that the organization or individual wants to believe, I believe we should consider those findings seriously.
Professor Arthur Jensen was a Berkeley professor who in 1969 had an article published in the Harvard Educational Review in which he predicted that virtually nothing could be done to improve intelligence and school performance. As a result of his article new left radicals interrupted his classes, he received death threats, and sometimes required police protection.
Since the publication of Professor Jensen's article much money has been spent in efforts to disprove his thesis. Nevertheless, subsequent events have substantiated his predictions. This is his explanation of the findings presented in Grover J. Whitehurst's article:
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Where the differences in basic characteristics are not conspicuous, as in the case of [East] Asians and whites, and when persons can fit in and do the same kinds of jobs and do them as well as anyone else, it may work. See, there are blacks who fit in this way too — who do all right.
But the black population in this country is in a sense burdened by the large number of persons who are at a level of g that is no longer very relevant to a highly industrialized, technological society. Once you get below IQs of 80 or 75, which is the cut-off for mental retardation in the California School System, children are put into special classes. These persons are not really educable up to a level for which there’s any economic demand. The question is, what do you do about them? They have higher birth-rates than the other end of the distribution.
People are shocked and disbelieving when you tell them that about one in four blacks in our population are in that category — below 75.
There is no better example of our need to think critically and consider the evidence about preschool education than Head Start, the federal program for children from low-income families that is administered through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Head Start was begun in 1965 as part of the Lyndon Johnson administration’s war on poverty. Presently it serves about 1 million children annually (roughly 10% of the nation’s population of 3- and 4-year-olds[1]) at a yearly cost to the federal budget of approximately $8 billion...
The Head Start Impact Study is a randomized controlled trial, the gold-standard for evaluating the effectiveness of social and health programs. And it involves long-term follow-up of participants, which is both highly desirable and very unusual in evaluations of social and education programs.
The findings, in brief, are that there were effects favoring Head Start children on some outcome variables at the end of the Head Start year. However, these impacts did not persist...
If this conclusion by the authors isn’t clear enough, I’ll put it in less academic language:
There is no measurable advantage to children in elementary school of having participated in Head Start. Further, children attending Head Start remain far behind academically once they are in elementary school. Head Start does not improve the school readiness of children from low-income families.
https://www.brookings.edu/research/can-we-be-hard-headed-about-preschool-a-look-at-head-start/
------------
The Brookings Institute is considered to be a liberal research institute. When a respectable organization or individual publishes findings that conflict with that the organization or individual wants to believe, I believe we should consider those findings seriously.
Professor Arthur Jensen was a Berkeley professor who in 1969 had an article published in the Harvard Educational Review in which he predicted that virtually nothing could be done to improve intelligence and school performance. As a result of his article new left radicals interrupted his classes, he received death threats, and sometimes required police protection.
Since the publication of Professor Jensen's article much money has been spent in efforts to disprove his thesis. Nevertheless, subsequent events have substantiated his predictions. This is his explanation of the findings presented in Grover J. Whitehurst's article:
------------
Where the differences in basic characteristics are not conspicuous, as in the case of [East] Asians and whites, and when persons can fit in and do the same kinds of jobs and do them as well as anyone else, it may work. See, there are blacks who fit in this way too — who do all right.
But the black population in this country is in a sense burdened by the large number of persons who are at a level of g that is no longer very relevant to a highly industrialized, technological society. Once you get below IQs of 80 or 75, which is the cut-off for mental retardation in the California School System, children are put into special classes. These persons are not really educable up to a level for which there’s any economic demand. The question is, what do you do about them? They have higher birth-rates than the other end of the distribution.
People are shocked and disbelieving when you tell them that about one in four blacks in our population are in that category — below 75.
