The literacy skills of returning and first-year children in Head Start programs

The benefits of preschool, especially for low-income children, have been a major research and policymaking question in the last decades. As more children are starting preschool at the age of 3, and, with the development of programs like Early Head Start, understanding the effect of early literacy interventions for young children became indispensable. This quantitative study was designed to investigate whether children who return to a Head Start program (for a second year or from an Early Head Start Program) have different literacy skills and perform better than newly enrolled children, and to compare returning children’s literacy skills from rural, suburban and urban centers. This study uses the Language and Emerging Literacy Assessment (LELA) and analyzes the literacy scores of 2,305 3- and 4-year olds, from 39 Head Start centers in Alabama. The results reveal that returning children have higher literacy skills, but the return effect in centers differs depending on center’s location, percentage of 3 year olds, and percentage of ESL children.