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

Area of Science:

• Early Childhood Education
• Developmental Psychology
• Socioeconomic Interventions

Background:

• Two-generation programs aim to improve outcomes for both parents and children.
• The CareerAdvance program integrates healthcare education for parents with Head Start for children.
• Limited research exists on the long-term impacts of such integrated programs on child development.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effects of the CareerAdvance program on children's academic, language, mathematics, and inhibitory control skills.
• To compare child outcomes in the CareerAdvance program with a matched comparison group receiving Head Start alone.
• To assess developmental trajectories over a three-year period.

Main Methods:

• Longitudinal study following 147 children in the CareerAdvance group and 139 in a comparison group.
• Data collected in Tulsa, Oklahoma, between 2011 and 2018.
• Analysis focused on academic, language, mathematics, and inhibitory control outcomes.

Main Results:

• The CareerAdvance program did not yield significantly different child outcomes compared to Head Start alone.
• Children's developmental trajectories in academic, language, math, and inhibitory control were not negatively impacted by parental participation in the program.
• No short-term adverse effects on children's development were observed when parents engaged in educational pursuits.

Conclusions:

• Integrated two-generation programs like CareerAdvance may not offer additional short-term benefits for child development beyond existing programs like Head Start.
• Parental engagement in education does not appear to negatively affect children's developmental progress in the short term.
• Further research is needed to explore potential long-term benefits or specific subgroup effects of two-generation interventions.