Effects of Individualized Education Programs on Cognitive Outcomes for Children with Disabilities in Head Start Programs

Assessment of heterogeneous Head Start treatment effects on cognitive and social-emotional outcomes

“…Indeed, previous studies found that Head Start was more effective at improving cognitive outcomes for many high-risk subgroups, including children with Spanish as a primary language, 12 , 13 lower cognitive test scores at baseline, 12 non-parental care at baseline, 15 low and moderate parental pre-academic stimulation, 37 or special needs. 19 Similarly, we found that larger benefits for children with Spanish as a primary language or a low parental education level appeared to explain away some of the effects on the variance. Head Start may have been more effective on cognitive outcomes for these children because it offered academic resources, which their home environments may have lacked, for developing English language skills and cognitive abilities.…”

“… 11 Head Start benefitted several subgroups with more disadvantages, such as children with Spanish as a primary language, 12 , 13 those who had lower cognitive skills at baseline, 12 , 13 and those with home-based or non-parental care. 14 – 16 However, further examination of HTE in Head Start is needed because findings on the treatment effects were mixed for many other disadvantaged subgroups, such as children with low parental education level, 17 , 18 special needs, 19 single parents, 20 or caregivers with depressive symptoms. 21 .…”

Distributional effects on children's cognitive and social-emotional outcomes in the Head Start Impact Study: A quantile regression approach

“…In other words, the Head Start was able to shift up the cognitive outcome distribution at the lower tail, or those who performed worse at baseline. These findings add support to the previous observations that the Head Start had compensatory effects on cognitive outcomes, having larger positive effects for multiple systematically excluded subgroups such as Spanish-speaking children ( Bitler et al, 2014 ; Bloom & Weiland, 2015 ), children with non-parent care at baseline ( Lipscomb et al, 2013 ) or special needs (K. Lee & Rispoli, 2016 ). By analyzing additional follow-ups, we found that larger benefits in multiple cognitive outcomes for those at the lower quantiles were sustained until two to three years after the intervention.…”

Treatment effect heterogeneity in the head start impact study: A systematic review of study characteristics and findings

“…There were no clear patterns in treatment effect findings by children with special needs status, low household income, single parents, younger caregivers, or caregivers with depressive symptoms ( Table 3 ). Bloom and Weiland (2015) and Shapiro and Weiland (2019) found benefits for special needs children on PPVT, other studies showed no differential benefits for special needs children on a range of other cognitive outcomes ( Lee & Rispoli, 2016 ) and social-emotional outcomes ( Lee et al, 2016 ). However, the discrepancy may have occurred because the latter studies may have been biased as they only offered endogenous TOT effect estimates and did not adjust for attrition and selection.…”