WASHINGTON, D.C.—”It is appalling that having spent more than $150 billion on Head Start and Title I educational programs for disadvantaged children, we still do not know which practices and programs are effective in helping at-risk children,” said Maris A. Vinovskis, University of Michigan professor of history and former research adviser to the federal Office of Educational Research and Improvement in the Bush and Clinton administrations, who testified before Congress today (July 31).

“While we all should applaud and reaffirm our commitment to providing equal educational and economic opportunities for everyone, we cannot pretend that the laudable goals of Title I and Head Start are being achieved,” he said. “We need to reconsider broadly and constructively the proper federal role in compensatory education in order to try to devise better ways of helping those in need of additional assistance.”

Vinovskis voiced his concerns today to the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce in a “Hearing on Literacy: A Review of Current Federal Programs.”

Over the past 30 years, intermittent studies of Head Start (for preschool children), Title I and similar programs have consistently found the public programs wanting.

“Too often, well meaning proponents of these programs understandably defended Title I and Head Start at all costs, but in the process were reluctant to admit weaknesses and limitations in the programs,” Vinovskis said. “They labored diligently to expand funding for Title I and Head Start programs without trying to discover what interventions have significant and lasting positive impact and which do not”.

Assessments of smaller, intensive and well-funded programs such as the Perry Pre-School Program in Ypsilanti, Mich., suggest that interventions can enhance achievement, but it may be that less costly approaches such as the “Success for All” kindergarten/third-grade program developed at Johns Hopkins University or summer programs might work, too. At this point, there is too little solid research from which to draw any conclusions, Vinovskis said.

He offered four reasons for the discouraging confusion about the compensatory programs:

• “One is the limited funds available for educational research and development during the past three decades.
• “The second is misallocation of research and development funds to small, short-term projects that often have limited scientific validity and little practical usefulness.
• “Third, the decreases in the number of distinguished researchers and evaluators in OERI and the Department of Education limits the ability of those agencies to design and monitor high quality research and development.
• “The fourth difficulty is the relatively low priority that has been assigned over the years by educators and policy makers to the development and analysis of effective educational programs to fight poverty. There has not been enough focus on the design and rigorous testing of educational interventions to find out which are most effective with at-risk populations in different settings.” 

The Department of Education is beginning “a valuable, large-scale, individual-level analysis of the overall impact of Title I and standards-based school reform,” Vinovskis added, but “this study will not systematically ascertain which educational practices or model programs are effective. Nor will that evaluation focus on the most disadvantaged students—those at-risk children who frequently move from one school to another.”

Vinovskis urged a broad reconsideration of the government?s role in compensatory education. “When existing federal educational programs, well-intentioned though they may be, are not as effective as they could or should be, the problem is not just wasted tax dollars but wasted chances to help those most in need. For many of the at-risk students who pass through these programs and who are not significantly helped, the results are more than just frustrating—they are precious opportunities lost forever.”

More information: 

• Head Start
• Department of Education