Early Childhood Topics

• Head Start/Early Head Start
• Early Care & Education Settings
• Home Visiting
• Early Childhood Education Practices
• Studying Children in a Multicultural Society
• Clients

Early Head Start: Fifth-Grade Follow-Up Study

For the past decade, Early Head Start has provided services to low-income pregnant women and families with infants and toddlers to enhance the development and health of at-risk children, strengthen families, and build and strengthen family and community partnerships. The Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project was designed to answer questions about the impact of the program on the children and families it serves. Mathematica and its partners, the National Center for Children and Families at Columbia University and Educational Testing Service, supported the fifth-grade round of data collection for this ongoing evaluation. Approximately 1,900 children, their parents, and teachers in 17 sites across the United States participated.

The study included direct assessments of children's cognitive, socioemotional, and physical development; parent interviews; teacher questionnaires; and videotaping of maternal-child interactions. The data were collected over a three-year period as the children completed their sixth year of formal schooling. Mathematica and its partners selected the measures used in the study, designed and selected the follow-up sample, developed data collection protocols and trained field staff, coded and analyzed the survey data, created data files for use by the project team and by the larger research community, and prepared reports of study findings.

Publications

"Early Head Start Children in Grade 5: Long-Term Followup of the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project Study Sample" (December 2010)