A replication study of Head Start

A replication study of Head Start
By Sooyeon Byun, Johns Hopkins University
Remy Pages from UC Irvine and her team replicated a study of Head Start’s impacts conducted by Deming in 2009, which found that attending the Head Start program resulted in improved long-term outcomes.
The current paper extended Deming’s previous work, using 10 additional years’ data for the same sample in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), and 10 additional birth cohorts to generalize the findings. Specifically, the authors included participants who attended Head Start no later than 2000 with siblings who did not attend Head Start (either attending other preschools or not attending any preschool programs). The sample included 3,768 participants, including 1,251 overlapping with Deming’s study (attending Head Start no later than 1990), and 2,144 in the complement cohort.
An adulthood outcomes variable was computed by following high school graduation, college attendance, teenage parenthood, working or attending school, involvement with the justice system, and health status. After controlling for pretreatment covariates and family fixed effects, the Head Start group demonstrated significantly positive longer-term adulthood outcomes in the sample equivalent to Deming’s study (ES=+0.17), compared to those who did not attend preschool. On the other hand, in the complement cohort, Head Start attendees showed significantly more negative outcomes than the no preschool group (ES=−0.15). The effects of Head Start attendance was found to be not significant when the two samples were combined (ES=−0.01).
While the combined findings suggest a null effect of Head Start, the breakdowns of findings imply differential effects of Head Start on different cohorts. In particular, it is noteworthy that Head Start can have detrimental effects for the younger generation (i.e. the complement cohort). This can be attributed to the different sample characteristics between the two cohorts due to the changed sampling method of the survey over time, such as younger maternal age and less disadvantages in the older cohort. Also, although not noted in the study, there might be sampling bias because of the sample restriction – for example, parents might send their children to preschool if they appear to be smarter or more verbal than other siblings. Or, there can be unobserved differences between siblings with discordant preschool experiences and those who failed to meet the sample restriction, i.e. siblings with the same preschool experiences and only children.

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