The Department of Health and Human Services commissioned a massive study of Head Start, the flagship early childhood education program, and found “the benefits of access to Head Start at age four are largely absent by 1st grade for the program population as a whole.” In the past few years, early childhood education has taken a beating in studies of its effects a few years down the road. Early childhood education’s effects fade - except the ones that persist decades later Early childhood education helps because it’s reliable daycare. Here’s an explanation that makes sense of all the research: The benefits of early childhood education aren’t coming from the academic skills they teach students. If one set of studies is wrong, that has profound implications for how we should be spending that money instead. In 2017, the US spent $9 billion on Head Start, the flagship early childhood education program launched in the 1970s. This is an area where research is fiercely debated - and really important. One study with a followup when the students were in their mid-30s found that they were likelier to have eventually attended and completed college. Kids who enter intensive preschool programs are less likely to be arrested, more likely to graduate, and less likely to struggle with substance abuse as adults. On the other hand, there’s an equally substantive body of research suggesting that early childhood education produces a profound, lifelong advantage. By kindergarten much of their advantage has receded, and by second grade researchers typically can’t detect it at all. On the one hand, there’s a sizable body of research suggesting that kids who go through intensive education at the ages of 3 and 4 don’t really come out ahead in terms of academic abilities. There’s a bizarre-seeming paradox sitting at the heart of research into early childhood education.
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