School Quality and the Longer-Term Effects of Head Start

Abstract

Recent research on Head Start, an enriched preschool program for poor children that effects on test scores fade out' more quickly for black children than for white children. This" paper uses data from the 1988 wave of the National Educational Longitudinal Survey to show that" black children who attended Head Start go on to attend schools of worse quality' than other black" children, in the sense that they attend schools in which most children have worse test scores. We" do not see any similar pattern among white children, indicating that on average children attend schools similar to those attended by other white children. Moreover stratify by school type, we find that gaps in test scores between Head Start and other children are" very similar for blacks and whites. These patterns suggest that the effects of Head Start may fade" out more rapidly among black students than among whites, at least in part because black Head Start" children are more likely to subsequently attend bad schools.