There are unique challenges to estimating causal effects of preschool for students with special needs that have not received attention in the literature. We revisit the Head Start Impact Study (HSIS) to illustrate that when and how special needs is defined has implications for the internal validity of and interpretation of special needs subgroup…

This study examines the impact of repeated exposures on word learning of preschool children with and without hearing loss (HL) in quiet and noise conditions. Participants were 19 children with HL and 17 peers with normal hearing (NH). Children were introduced to 16 words: 8 in quiet and 8 in noise conditions. Production and identification scores…

This paper uses data from the Head Start Impact Study (HSIS), a nationally representative multisite randomized trial, to quantify variation in effects of Head Start during 2002-2003 on children's cognitive and socio-emotional outcomes relative to the effects of other local alternatives, including parent care. We find that (1) treatment and control…

Project Early Kindergarten (PEK) aims to improve the school-readiness of Saint Paul children and help close the achievement gap through offering high-quality educational experiences for preschool children. This report comes at the conclusion of the sixth year of PEK. Following an initial planning year (2004-05), PEK has served children through the…

AS PART OF AN EFFORT TO ASSESS THE EFFECT OF THE BALTIMORE HEAD START PROGRAM ON COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT, CHILDREN ENROLLED IN THIS PROGRAM WERE GIVEN THE PEABODY PICTURE VOCABULARY TEST (PPVT) AND THE DRAW-A-PERSON (DAP) TEST AT THE START OF THE PROGRAM, AT ITS TERMINATION, AND WHEN THEY ENROLLED IN KINDERGARTEN. A CONTROL GROUP, DRAWN FROM THE…

A research project was conducted to study the effects of an 8-week prekindergarten enrichment program and of two 15-month preschool enrichment programs. Pretest and posttest scores of experimental and control kindergarten children (a sample of 100 out of 1,000 subjects) showed that both groups made significant gains in all ability categories o f…

An intervention program was designed to study offsetting progressive school retardation of deprived children and the impact of the program on the community. This third report presents findings at the end of the fourth grade, 3 years after the experiment ceased. Subjects were 88 children, all Negro, and 27 of these served as a distal control group.…

Five groups of children were tested, and their test performances were compared. Experimental group one (X-1) consisted of 105 children who had attended a yearlong Preschool Readiness Center program. Experimental group two (X-2) consisted of 93 children who had attended a summer Head Start program. Control groups one and two (C-1 and C-2) consisted…