Research that benefits children and families

Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project 1996-2010


The Early Head Start Research and Evaluation project, a rigorous, large-scale, random-assignment evaluation of Early Head Start, was designed to carry out the recommendation of the Advisory Committee on Services for Families with Infants and Toddlers for a strong research and evaluation component to support continuous improvement within the Early Head Start program and to meet the 1994 re-authorization requirement for a national evaluation of the new infant-toddler program. The Early Head Start Research and Evaluation project was funded in three waves. The Congressionally-mandated Birth to Three Phase (1996-2001) included an Implementation Study, an Impact Evaluation that investigated program impacts on children and families through their time in the program, and local research projects.


As the map below indicates, the programs that participated in the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation project are located in Russellville, Arkansas; Venice, California; Denver, Colorado (two programs); Marshalltown, Iowa; Kansas City, Kansas; Jackson, Michigan; New York City; Kansas City, Missouri; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Sumter, South Carolina; McKenzie, Tennessee; Logan, Utah; Alexandria, Virginia; Kent, Washington; Sunnyside, Washington; and Brattleboro, Vermont.

Figure 1.0 Programs that Participated in the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project

A national evaluation conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., and Columbia University's Center for Children and Families, in collaboration with the Early Head Start Research Consortium, found:

• At the end of the program, 3-year-old Early Head Start (EHS) children performed significantly better on a range of cognitive, language, and social and emotional development measures than a randomly assigned control group. Additionally, the parents of the 3-year-olds scored significantly higher than control group parents on many aspects of home environment, parenting behavior, and progress toward self-sufficiency.
• Two years after the end of the program, prior to children entering kindergarten, positive impacts of EHS remained in areas of children’s social and emotional development, parenting, and parent well-being. Furthermore, those children who experienced EHS followed by formal early childhood education experiences (e.g., center-based child care, Head Start, or state pre-kindergarten) tended to have the best overall outcomes at the start of school.
• By fifth grade, there was some evidence of sustained impacts of EHS on children’s social and emotional well-being, although we did not see the broad pattern of impacts for child and family outcomes found at earlier ages. Nonetheless, positive impacts persisted for some subgroups of children and families. For example, EHS demonstrated sustained impacts on children’s social and emotional development, parent support for education, and parent mental health among African-American families.

This program benefited both parents and children. It had a fatherhood component to it as well as a parent engagement component when it first was initiated. 

References:

https://www.acf.hhs.gov/opre/research/project/early-head-start-research-and-evaluation-project-ehsre-1996-2010

https://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/programs/article/early-head-start-benefits-children-families

My Personal Research Journey

How to Shift the Paradigm of Parents

My Personal Research Journey


In my personal research journey I chose the topic:  How to shift the paradigm of parents to get them to value laying a foundation for their children that matters. Parents are their children's first and best teachers and the home environment is crucial to children's academic and social emotional success. If parents are not aware and intentional, life could be disastrous for children.

My personal experience with this is that I am a parent coach professionally and I go into many homes where parents do not realize that they are the ones responsible for laying a foundation for their children. I teach them that the first three years of their child's life is most crucial and by five years old their child's personality is developed and is pretty much set through adulthood. Most parents gasp in disbelief because they think that they have plenty time to shape their child's personality, but that window closes at age five. After five years old, parents will be fixing personalities, which is ten times harder than shaping personalities. In the state that I live in, Michigan, their is a campaign of getting children ready for school by age five and their is a support system set up to help parents (Anton, P. & Chase. R. 2009).

The subtopic that will be the focus of my simulation is: The benefit of children's behavior because of parental paradigm shifts.

Do you guys have any insight or advice that might help me with this simulation?


I found a couple of resources related to my topic:

Bhattacharyya R, Neogi R, Chakraborty K. Essence Of Positive Parenting In Changing Socio-economic Developmental Milieu And Paradigm Shift Of Parental Role In Indian Context. INDIAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRY. 59(6):S154. 

Isaacs ML, And Others. Full Participation: A Useful Paradigm for School Self-Renewal. December 1995. https://ezp.waldenulibrary.org/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=ED396423&site=eds-live&scope=site. Accessed November 11, 2018.




Reference

Anton, P. & Chase. R. (2009). Cost Savings Analysis of School Readiness in Michigan.             Executive Summary. Wilder Research. Wilder Research. 4 pp. (ED511603). Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED511603