Impact of Head Start on Children, Families and Communities. Final Report of the Head Start Evaluation, Synthesis and Utilization Project. Executive Summary

摘要

The project was undertaken to synthesize a large body of Head Start evaluation literature and make these findings more accessible to national, regional and local Head Start decisionmakers. It is intended for the findings to be used to help direct the course of policy and program initiative and to identify areas of need for more focussed research. The project addresses the impact of Head Start on childrens' cognitive development, socioemotional development and health as well as its impact on participant families and communities. Over 1100 documents related to Head Start were collected and of these, 210 reports of the effects of Head Start programs were analyzed and synthesized, using a quantitative technique called meta-analysis. This technique aggregated findings across different studies on the same topic by converting study findings into 'effect sizes.' 'Effect sizes' are statistics that configure the performance of two groups (Head Start vs non-Head Start differences or pre-test vs post-test differences) using standard scores (z scores).