Does adding parent education and workforce training to Head Start promote or interfere with children's development?

Terri J Sabol; Elise Chor; Teresa Eckrich Sommer; Lauren A Tighe; P Lindsay Chase-Lansdale; Amanda Sheffield Morris; Jeanne Brooks-Gunn; Hirokazu Yoshikawa; Christopher King

doi:10.1111/cdev.14141

Does adding parent education and workforce training to Head Start promote or interfere with children's development?

Child Dev. 2024 Jul 31. doi: 10.1111/cdev.14141. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Terri J Sabol¹, Elise Chor², Teresa Eckrich Sommer³, Lauren A Tighe³, P Lindsay Chase-Lansdale¹, Amanda Sheffield Morris⁴, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn⁵, Hirokazu Yoshikawa⁶, Christopher King⁷

Affiliations

¹ School of Education and Social Policy, Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA.
² Department of Political Science, College of Liberal Arts, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
³ Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA.
⁴ Department of Psychology, Oklahoma State University, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA.
⁵ Teachers College and the College of Physicians & Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA.
⁶ Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University, New York, New York, USA.
⁷ Ray Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resources, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA.

PMID: 39082445
DOI: 10.1111/cdev.14141

Abstract

This study explores the effects of the two-generation program CareerAdvance-which combines education and training for parents in healthcare with Head Start for children-on children's academic, language, mathematics, and inhibitory control followed for 3 years. The sample (collected in Tulsa, Oklahoma from 2011 to 2018) includes 147 children in the CareerAdvance group and 139 children in a matched comparison group (n = 286; 40% Black, 17%, White, 10% Hispanic, 33% Mixed Race, or Other Race; M = 3.6 years old; 47% female). Overall, the effect of CareerAdvance on child outcomes is neither greater nor less than Head Start alone. These findings suggest that children's developmental outcomes do not worsen or improve in the short term when their parents return to school.

Abstract

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