The federally-funded Head Start program has provided millions of low-income children with school readiness education since it began in 1965. Support for low income children is vital because, according to Distinguished Professor of Psychology Karen Bierman, disadvantaged youths often experience delays in school readiness that contribute to academic underachievement and early drop out, with life-long social and economic consequences. The goal of Head Start is to prepare children for school—both academically and emotionally—before they reach kindergarten.
After decades in operation, Head Start officials noticed significant changes in family and school life in the United States. When Head Start launched, 70 percent of five year olds attended kindergarten, but only 16 percent of four year olds attended preschool, according to the National Center for Education Research. Today, 70 percent of children attend preschool and all but five states fund pre-kindergarten programs. This drastic increase in participation raised national awareness of the importance of preschool education and contributed to a decision to evaluate the outcomes of Head Start in the early 2000s.
In a large national study comparing Head Start with other options, officials found that Head Start’s curriculum promoted skills in preschool, but had few, if any, lasting effects after children entered kindergarten. A group of federal agencies called the Interagency School Readiness Consortium (ISRC) was therefore created with the goal of funding research that might increase the impact of Head Start throughout the United States and improve the long-term outcomes for the children attending the preschool program.
An important aim of the ISRC was to unite researchers and professionals with a set of common goals. “At the time, there was a lot of division among researchers and professionals,” Dr. Bierman said. “Some thought we needed to push the academic side of things. Others focused on the need for social-emotional development and play.” When seeking new directions for Head Start curricula, the ISRC charged researchers to integrate a focus on both academic and socio-economical skills.
Head Start REDI – The Intervention
In 2002, Dr. Bierman received a Level-2 grant from the Children, Youth, and Families Consortium to develop Head Start REDI (Research-Based, Developmentally Informed). REDI incorporates educational strategies that promote language development and pre-reading skills. These strategies include interactive reading, sound games, and other collaborative activities. REDI also integrates the Preschool PATHS® curriculum—a program developed by Mark Greenberg from Penn State’s College of Health and Human Development. PATHS® uses modeling stories, discussions, puppet characters, photographs, and teacher role-plays that build children’s socio-emotional skills. These skills help children regulate their emotions, gain self-control, make and keep friends, and problem solve.
To enhance the quality of program implementation, pre-school teachers were given guidance on how to reinforce Head Start REDI’s goals in the classroom. Teachers also received professional development, including workshop training and mentoring, that advanced their capacity to skillfully deliver the intervention.
“Most children attend some kind of preschool, and we are learning how to make the most of their experiences,” Dr. Bierman said. “REDI uses evidence-based curricula and instructional practices in the classroom, and it provides much needed professional development for teachers. We felt confident that this would be a powerful way to obtain the desired outcomes.”
To assess program impacts, participating students four years old at entry, were exposed to either the original Head Start curriculum or Head Start with the REDI enrichments for one year, and the two groups were compared to determine if there are differences in child outcomes.
Impressive Results
Dr. Bierman’s Head Start REDI project was first funded in in 2003. In the initial study, between 2003 and 2008, 356 children from 44 Head Start classrooms were followed from pre-k into elementary school. Children from this cohort are now beginning to transition into high school.
Compared to peers enrolled in the original program, Head Start REDI students achieved better outcomes in many areas. These outcomes include improved vocabulary, literacy skills, social competence, and learning engagement. Evidence of lasting effects on social adjustment and learning engagement was documented through third grade. REDI was recently refunded to allow the research team to monitor students as they move into high school (grades 9 through 11) and see if the improved social-emotional functioning and self-regulation skills promoted in REDI during preschool produce long-term effects in adolescence.
“What’s exciting is that we are seeing effects lasting through childhood, long after students complete the program,” Dr. Bierman said. “It appears that the pre-school years provide a tremendous window of opportunity for kids from disadvantaged backgrounds to make incredible developmental strides when provided with exposure to enriched learning environments. A key goal of the next project period is to see how these skills affect adolescent adjustment and high school completion.”
In 2009, the research team initiated a second Head Start REDI trial. With a sample of 210 children, the researchers compared students attending Head Start with the REDI program in the classroom with students randomly assigned to receive an additional set of intervention components, REDI-Parent (REDI-P), which included a home-visiting aspect and a focus on parent involvement.
The REDI-P home-visiting program teaches parents how to promote child social competence, self-directed learning, and academic competence in ways that complement the REDI classroom program. As with efforts to promote teachers’ professional development, parents were mentored to provide guidance and support for their children using evidence-based practices that support children’s classroom experiences.
“We are finding additional value by including parents,” Dr. Bierman said. “Children who received the parent and classroom programs had higher reading achievement and social competence at the end of kindergarten compared with those who received the classroom program alone.” The recent funding will support follow-up assessments with these children as they move through elementary school (grades 3-5).
What’s Next?
In September 2014 the third renewal of the REDI project was funded. This funding will permit Dr. Bierman and her team to assess the longer-term impacts of the REDI classroom and parent programs.
If funding continues, future plans include implementation of Head Start REDI BKC (Better Kid Care), which will involve a partnership with Penn State Cooperative Extension (CE). CE will provide a distance learning piece to the program. REDI BKC will rely on an intensive professional development program that is delivered via technology-assisted web platforms. Teachers will have access to tutorials and videos that highlight effective teaching practices and demonstrate how to deliver lessons. The team hopes to evaluate this more accessible and cost-effective form of professional development and program dissemination with new cohorts of preschool children.
Head Start REDI was originally funded by the ISRC, which includes funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the Administration of Children and Families and the Assistant Secretary of Planning and Evaluation within the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services of the U.S. Department of Education. Follow-up funding is provided by NICHD.
Other researchers who have worked with the Head Start REDI project are Robert Nix, Research Associate at the Prevention Research Center; Scott Gest, Professor of Human Development and Family Studies; Janet Welsh, Assistant Research Professor of Health and Human Development; Sukhdeep Gill, Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State York; Celene Domitrovich, formerly from Penn State and now Vice President for Research at the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning; Claudia Mincemoyer, Professor of Agricultural and Extension Education and Director of Better Kid Care; Mark Greenberg, Edna Peterson Bennett Endowed Chair in Prevention Research, Professor of Human Development and Psychology; Keith Nelson, Professor of Psychology, and Clancy Blair, formerly from Penn State and now Professor of Cognitive Psychology at New York University.