Head Start, the government’s program for giving preschool training to children from low-income families, has become something of a political football as both parties champion their efforts to spend government funds more efficiently.

Numerous economic studies, as well as the government’s own sponsored research, have examined the immediate and long-term effects of Head Start, looking at cognitive skills, social and emotional development and health, as well as the likelihood that students attend college, earn higher incomes or avoid criminal activity.

Researchers and policy makers have been troubled by studies that show that while children in Head Start show clear gains in skills like vocabulary, spelling, letter naming, color identification and other precursors of academic performance during and immediately following their enrollment in the program, those effects appear to fade over time.

A new study looks at how the program affects parents’ involvement with their children both during and after the program, and finds that those effects are more long-lasting.



The researchers used data from the government’s study, based on a group of about 4,000 newly entering 3- and 4-year-olds who were eligible for Head Start in the fall of 2002. About 60 percent of them were randomly assigned to Head Start programs while the others were not given access to Head Start, although they could enroll in other early childhood programs. The research followed both cohorts through 2006.

Alexander M. Gelber, an assistant professor of economics at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and Adam Isen, a doctoral candidate in applied economics at the Wharton School, found that when children took part in Head Start, their parents read more regularly to them, practiced writing the alphabet, played math games, kept notes of their children’s progress and took their children to art galleries or museums more than the parents of the children who were not enrolled in the program.

The study also found that parents of Head Start children set rules about activities like television watching more than the parents of children not in Head Start. And fathers who didn’t live with their children visited them more often once they were enrolled in Head Start.

Professor Gelber and Mr. Isen found that the data showed that even after the children had moved on from the Head Start program, their parents continued to be more involved in their out-of-school education and development than parents of children who had not enrolled in the program. Fathers who lived separately from their children visited them an average of one more day a month than the fathers of children who had not enrolled in Head Start.

Among the possible reasons parents might be more involved with children in Head Start, the researchers said: the program actively encourages parents to volunteer in the centers, and parents may pick up tips there; parents believe their children have been offered a special advantage and therefore invest more time in them; the children are more pleasant to be around because Head Start helps curb behavioral problems; the parents have more energy and time to focus on certain activities because they effectively gain free child care through Head Start.

Regarding an apparent disconnect between lasting cognitive effects and lasting parental involvement, Professor Gelber said in an interview that the data was “puzzling,” because many of the activities that parents of Head Start children engage in – like reading, practicing letters or math games – should contribute to cognitive development even after the students leave the program.

Mr. Gelber said that perhaps children performed better on cognitive tests while they were in the Head Start program because the program specifically taught them the skills they would be tested on. Parents, he suggested, “are teaching skills that don’t show up as readily in the test score data but are showing up later in life.” Of course, he added, “this is all in the realm of speculation.”