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Pre-K and Early Head Start Programs
Enhance Children's Development
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In a recent pre-K study marked improvements have been shown in reading, writing, and spelling skills; Early Head Start students show improved child growth as well, including more family support for children’s learning.
WASHINGTON – In two studies published in a special issue of Developmental Psychology, researchers explain the cognitive benefits of universal pre-K programs, which help 4-year-olds, and Early Head Start programs, which serve babies, toddlers, and their families. While researcher purport that pre-K programs benefit most children they are especially beneficial for children from low-income families. The pre-K study showed benefits in many areas of school readiness, and the Early Head Start study showed a rise in social-emotional growth as well as benefits for children’s parents. Developmental Psychology is published by the American Psychological Association (APA).
Higher performance in children’s cognitive and learning skills are among the positive effects purported by these two studies. Pre-K children who participated in the Early Head Start program showed a marked decrease in angry behavior, grew socially and emotionally, showed signs of improved health and parent-child relations, while the pre-K program increased parents’ involvement in their children’s school and home activities.
In a study sponsored by Professor William T. Gormley, Jr., Ph.D., and his associates of Georgetown University, comparisons were made on letter-word identification, spelling, and applied problems with over 1500 pre-K 4-year-old children and over 1,400 children who just finished one of the pre-K programs in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Children who did not participate in the pre-K program did not perform as well on cognitive tests measuring pre-reading and reading skills, prewriting and spelling skills, and math reasoning and problem-solving skills, as the children who participated in pre-K programs.
Analysis of the studies showed that Pre-K programs improved test scores and skills for children from different cultural backgrounds, including Hispanic, Black, White, and Native American. Results of the studies also showed that children from lower income families, Hispanic children and disadvantaged children benefited the most.
Gormley tells us, “This study is an improvement over past studies on effectiveness of school readiness programs because it uses more scientifically sound methods. We use a methodological design that reduces the likelihood of biasing our selection of children and we use standardized measurements that are administered to the children only by college-educated and specially trained teachers.”
The Georgetown team concluded that universal pre-K programs run by public schools can prepare children from different backgrounds to learn the basics of reading, writing, and problem solving and improve their ability to acquire these skills later in life.
In another study of 3,001 families who tried to enroll in 17 Early Head Start programs located in rural and urban areas across the United States were examined by a team of workers at Mathematica Policy Research in Princeton and Columbia University. The participating families that served as the control group for the study were selected at random. To qualify for the study families had to be at or below the federal poverty level and were expecting a baby or had a baby under a year old. Only 10 % of the families involved were above the poverty level.
The children were tested on measures of cognitive, language, social and emotional growth, and health. Parents of the children in the program were compared to parents whose children were not in the Early Head Start program on how they related to their children. For example, the study measured how supportive or unconnected parents were when they interacted with their child, how conducive their homes were to their child’s cognitive and language development, whether parents read to their child each day, and how often they spanked their child.
Each Early Head Start program provided participating families with either home- or center-based services, and some provided both. The best results were found in programs that met the federal Head Start program standards. By observing the children and watching how they interacted with and around their parents, the authors found that children in the Early Head Start programs performed better on cognitive and language development measures than children in the control group.
From interviews with the children’s parents, and by watching how involved parents were with their children, researchers found that parents who did become involved with Early Head Start were more supportive, taught their children at home more regularly, read to their kids more frequently, and spanked their children less than did control group parents. The best results were found by the programs that provided a mix of home visiting and center-based services.
Project director John Love said, “From these results, we can conclude that Early Head Start can influence multiple aspects of development—cognitive, language, and social-emotional—in very young children from poverty-level families. And this happens one or two years before the children typically begin pre-kindergarten programs. Early Head Start participation can also improve overall family life as indicated by the enhanced supportiveness parents demonstrated-aspects of parenting that have the potential to continue supporting children’s development after they leave the program.”
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