Caveat emptor: the Head Start scam.

• Author: Hood, John

There is no evidence that the program results in long-term effects on rates of graduation, teenage pregnancy, crime, and unemployment.

IT IS SAFE to say that Americans public schools are not exactly basking in the glow of achievement and approbation. While the education establishment continues to block fundamental state and Federal reform efforts, public disaffection with the nation's system of public education is at an all-time high. Business leaders increasingly are vocal in their criticism of public schools. Journalists are not as eager as they used to be to parrot the National Education Association's line on school reform. Activists across the country have won important victories--from privately funded voucher plans to local and state choice initiatives--against sloth and bureaucratic intransigence. Students in Indiana, Michigan, Maryland, Georgia, and Texas already or soon will receive vouchers from businesses and foundations to attend local private schools. Private firms are managing public schools in several states, and Chris Whittle's Edison Project plans a nationwide network of for-profit schools to revolutionize American education.

Yet, even as public elementary and secondary schools increasingly draw fire from every side, one government-run education program continues to attract substantial political and public support--Head Start. Liberal Democratic and conservative Republican governors tout it. Even disgruntled, frustrated business leaders--willing to back revolutionary change in kindergarten through 12th-grade education-nonetheless sing the praises of Head Start, a Great Society program that spends billions of dollars a year to provide educational, developmental, medical, and nutritional services to poor preschoolers.

Head Start's impressive public relations triumph should surprise no one. Boosters base their appeal on a sensible-sounding premise: If it is possible to intervene early in poor children's lives, giving them a "head start" on developing into good students and well-adjusted teens, then many of them will not grow up to be welfare mothers, deadbeats, or criminals. With every social catastrophe averted, the nation will be saved a lot of worry, trouble, and money. That is the essence of fiscal conservatism, advocates maintain, since a little public investment now will pay huge dividends in tax revenues and forgone social spending later. Head Start's sales pitch works wonderfully. Business leaders like the investment rhetoric. Journalists love all the photo opportunities with cute, smiling kids. Teachers' union officials and other leaders of the education establishment relish the chance to extend their reach beyond kindergarten into the preschool years. Big-spending politicians enjoy touting a program that actually appears to work. Fiscal conservatives prefer Head Start's relatively low price tag.

Shaky foundations

However, Head Start's major selling point--early intervention can prevent future dependence and delinquency--rests on several shaky foundations. First, it assumes that policymakers can draw sweeping national conclusions from studies of a few unique (and non-Head Start) preschool programs. Second, it assumes that children's futures are fundamentally malleable and that a brief outside intervention can make an indelible impact on most youngsters' lives despite the continuing influence of both heredity and environment. Third, the Head Start thesis assumes not only that successful early intervention is possible, but that government is an appropriate and effective provider of it.

All three of those propositions are false. Head Start's hucksters, all smiles and promises, have sold the public on a shiny prototype that bears little resemblance to what actually will be provided and, upon closer examination, is an empty shell with nothing under it. Before American policymakers sign anything, they'd better take a good look at what they're getting.

The efficacy of preschool programs hasn't been ignored by academic and government researchers. During the past three decades, researchers have published hundreds of studies on preschool programs nationwide. More than 200 focused on the Head Start program itself, with approximately half of them providing detailed information about samples and results. The distinction between studies of Head Start and those of other preschool programs is crucial, since not all are created equal.

Policymakers have gotten the wrong impression about Head Start by listening to enthusiastic boosters who cite the success of model preschool programs as though it proved the efficacy of Head Start. One can't judge the quality of a Ford Escort by test driving a Lincoln Continental. Similarly, Head Start must be judged on its own merits, not by a sort of "fleet averaging" gimmick that hypes the successes of one or two unique projects that aren't Head Start programs at all.

Perhaps the most famous preschool in the U.S. is the Perry Preschool in Ypsilanti, Mich. In 1962, it selected 123 poor kids to take part in an experiment. Half the group was given two years of preschool instruction and services, two and one-half hours a day, five days a week. The other half took part in no preschool program. Both then were tracked throughout their academic careers and into adulthood. The Perry students demonstrated not only...