The Head Start Debates - Softcover

The late Jane Knitzer, Ed.D. was Director of the National Center for Children in Poverty, and Clinical Professor of Population and Family Health in the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York.

In addition to her work with the National Center for Children in Poverty, Dr. Knitzer was also a Clinical Professor of Population and Family Health at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. As a psychologist, Dr. Knitzer focused her own research on improving public policies related to children's mental health, child welfare, and early childhood. Her work on mental health included the ground-breaking policy report, Unclaimed Children: The Failure of Public Responsibility to Children and Adolescents in Need of Mental Health Services (Children's Defense Fund, 1982). Most recently, she was a leader in calling attention to the importance of addressing social and emotional issues in young children. Dr. Knitzer was on the faculty at Cornell University, New York University, and Bank Street College of Education. She was a member of the New York State Permanent Judicial Commission on Justice for Children and a past president of Division 37: Child, Youth, and Family Services of the American Psychological Association, and a member of the American Association of Orthopsychiatry. She was the first recipient of the Nicolas Hobbs Award for Distinguished Service in the Cause of Child Advocacy from the American Psychological Association.

Mariela M. Páez, Ed.D., is Associate Professor at the Lynch School of Education and Human Development, Boston College. She has a doctorate in human development and psychology from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her primary research interests include bilingualism, children’s language and early literacy development, and early childhood education. Dr. Páez has conducted several longitudinal studies with young bilingual children with funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the Office for Educational Research and Improvement of the U.S. Department of Education. Currently, she is conducting a study investigating practices of exemplary teachers for dual language learners across different early childhood programs (i.e., public, private and Head Start). Dr. Páez is author of numerous articles in top journals and, with Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, co-edited Latinos: Remaking America (University of California Press, 2008).

Craig Ramey, Ph.D., is the creator and founding director of the Abecedarian Project and its replicants including Project CARE and the Infant Health and Development Program. His program of research centers on the role of early experience, especially education – across the human lifespan - in the development of competence and robust health. His approach relies largely on experimental interventions in education, psychology, and pediatrics that provide rigorous tests of plausible developmental mechanisms of stability and change within dynamic, multilevel ecologies.

Arthur J. Reynolds, Ph.D.

, Professor, Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, 51 East River Parkway, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55455. Dr. Reynolds is Director of the Chicago Longitudinal Study, one of the largest and most extensive studies of the effects of early childhood intervention. He also studies the effects of early childhood intervention on children's development from school entry to early adulthood and the family and school's influences on children's educational success.

Excerpted from Chapter 1 of The Head Start Debates, edited by Edward Zigler, Ph.D., & Sally J. Styfco

Copyright © 2004 by Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Early Educational Interventions and Intelligence: Implications for Head Start

Intelligence is a complex, undeniably important, and controversial topic, especially within the arena of the Head Start policy and practice. Considering intelligence from an historical perspective and in light of emerging scientific evidence is informative for future deliberations about the direction of Head Start programs, their performance standards, and evaluation of their success. To what extent can Head Start programs contribute positively to the development of intelligence in young children and increase the likelihood of their academic and social success in school?

Reviews of the research evidence agree that when children from low-income, multirisk families and communities participate in intensive, high-quality, preschool programs, the children show benefits. These benefits are apparent in their developmental competence, most notably in the areas of general intelligence and language development (Burnett, 1995; Bryant & Maxwell, 1997; Guralnick, 1997; Haskins, 1989, Karoly et al., 1998; S.L. Ramey & Ramey, 1999a, 2000; Yoshikawa, 1995). In studies that have followed children's development through the primary grades — and sometimes far beyond — continued benefits often are documented. These include improved test scores on standardized assessments of reading and mathematics, markedly reduced rates of grade retention (grade repetition), and lowered rates of placement in special education (Barnett, 1995; C.T. Ramey & Ramey, 1998).

In this chapter, we first make the case that improving children's intelligence is an important program goal for early intervention programs, especially for Head Start in the 21st century. Second, we present a review of the key findings from evaluations of the Abecedarian Project conducted since the 1970s, which has provided evidence of multiple, practical developmental benefits that last into adulthood. The Abecedarian Project is the first randomized, controlled trial of early educational intervention that started when children were infants and provided continuous supports to children and families for at least the first 5 years of life. Thus, this project provides and exceptional opportunity to understand the extent to which an intensive, multiyear, educational, and health support program can make a lasting difference in children's intelligence and overall well-being. Third we summarize the principles of effective early intervention programs — that is, the factors that appear to be essential in order for children to benefit from their participation. Fourth and finally, we discuss key issues for policy and decision making in the arenas of Head Start, education, child care, and parent and family support programs.

HEAD START IN THE EARLY YEARS: A COMMITMENT TO IMPROVING CHILDREN'S EVERYDAY INTELLIGENCE

When Head Start began in 1965, its national vision was to improve children's everyday or real-world intelligence prior to entering kindergarten or first grade. The method for achieving this goal was to offer children from economically impoverished homes some of the wealth of learning opportunities that their more advantaged peers had prior to entering public school. Educators and developmental psychologists who had worked with low-income children in preschool settings knew how quickly and eagerly children from all walks of life learn when they are in a safe and supportive setting with adults they can trust. They also saw firsthand the tremendous inequities in the lives of many economically poor children compared with economically advantaged children in terms of home-based learning and developmental encouragement. These inequities led to later developmental delays in those who had restricted learning opportunities and were readily noticed in children's speech and vocabulary, their everyday problem-solving abilities, and their tested intelligence (IQ scores). For many children who lived in extreme poverty, their most apparent delays related to their knowledge about the larger world and were pronounced in the areas of language and reading readiness (preliteracy skills), numbers and numeracy, and reasoning abilities. Without a doubt, the founders and leaders of Head Start in the 1960s, along with many middle-class volunteers who eagerly helped with Head Start programs throughout the country, believed that Project Head Start would increase children's everyday intelligence and their subsequent academic success in school.

Intelligence Defined: Everyday versus Academic Definitions

In the everyday sense, intelligence is widely accepted to be an indicator of a person's broad array of skills and knowledge. More (rather than less) intelligence is viewed quite positively — with only slight skepticism from some segments of society about the value of having extremely high levels (that is, genius-range intelligence). Intelligence is not considered a hidden trait but rather something that shows itself actively. Examples include how well a person handles real-life issues, such as planning, analyzing, information gathering, decision making, and generating new ideas and solutions.

In the academic and scientific world, however, the definition of intelligence is far from resolved. There are numerous competing theories and many hotly debated issues about how best to measure intelligence and whether intelligence itself is a stable lifelong trait versus something that can be modified by experience or affected by the testing situation itself (Ceci, 1991; Zigler & Butterfield, 1968). May of the superb academic treatises about the nature of intelligence are laden with terminology from statistics, learning, theory, genetics, and developmental and evolutionary biology. Some of the most celebrated new theories promote an exciting vision of intelligence as a multifaceted representation of diverse human talents. Howard Gardner (1993) proposed a theory that there are "multiple intelligences," including interpersonal, linguistic, logical-mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, musical, and intrapersonal. Robert Sternberg (1995), in his "triarchic theory of intelligence," posited three distinct types of intelligence: creative, practical, academic. Academic intelligence, of course, is the one primarily measured by traditional standardized tests of intelligence. Critics complain that such all-encompassing ideas about intelligence are not testable or refutable, whereas fans appreciate the recognition of multiple pathways in life that cannot be reduced to just what is taught and tested in traditional school settings.

We endorse the view that children benefit immensely when they have school readiness skills related to reading, writing, and arithmetic, as well as a solid language foundation and general knowledge about many things in the world. We know that standardized tests of intelligence and school achievement are important indicators of children's developmental progress but are woefully inadequate to tap the full range of their skills and learning. Ideally, there will be major advances in how to assess children's skills and knowledge more fully and fairly. Improved assessment techniques should also help educators realize their goals of providing the best individualized instruction to each child at each stage of development and increasing the opportunities for children's multiple types of intelligence to shine in the school setting.

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