Photo: Michele McDonald for Strategies for Children

Back in 1965, the federal government launched Head Start. It was a national preschool program for low-income families and part of the war that President Lyndon Johnson declared on poverty.

Today, Head Start serves 900,000 children a year at a cost of $9.6 billion in 2017. And the program is praised by its graduates, including Massachusetts State Senator Sal DiDomenico. But Head Start also has critics who have challenged its value and suggested that over time, the program’s benefits fade.

Now a new study from the University of Michigan gives critics an answer. Head Start works. It produces lifelong benefits for children and a solid return on investment for taxpayers.

To conduct the study, researchers “used longitudinal data from children who attended Head Start between 1965 and 1980,” according to the First Five Years Fund. This data set was linked to “long-form 2000 Census and 2001-2013 American Community Surveys” as well as to birth information from the Social Security Administration.

“The data showed that as adults, people who attended Head Start programs were 12 percent less likely to live in poverty as adults and were 29 percent less likely to rely on public assistance,” the Fund adds.

In addition, “Children who attended Head Start were more likely to complete high-school, more likely to enroll in college, and were 19 percent more likely to complete college.”

In other words, by participating in Head Start, children are more likely to be self-sufficient as adults.

And, “Money spent on Head Start in the 1960s and 1970s led to a 4-percent return for girls and an 11-percent return for boys. This means for every $100,000 dollars spent on Head Start, the government earned back $111,000 for boys, and $104,000 for girls,” a University of Michigan article notes.

“The researchers concluded that Head Start’s positive effects come both from the academic curriculum as well as additional supports the program provides for children and their families,” the Fund says.

Martha Bailey, the study’s lead researcher says, “Head Start did a lot of seemingly small things like giving kids healthy meals and helping them get glasses or hearing aids. This helped disadvantaged kids learn in preschool but also helped them succeed for many years afterwards.”

“Bailey and her team join a growing group of researchers who have found positive impacts of early childhood education,” the Fund says. Bailey shared the report last month at a War on Poverty conference.

The study has important policy implications. As the report explains, the study’s “estimates suggest substantial long-run returns to America’s first scaled-up, public preschool program. While the results do not imply that all of today’s large-scale preschool programs work, they suggest that some less-than-model preschool programs may have lasting effects—a key finding for current policy deliberations.”

Bailey puts it more simply, saying that policymakers sometimes think they can only invest in programs that are perfect – but it seems impossible to create a perfect program at the national level.

“Head Start in the 1960s and 1980s was far from a model program,” she says. “No one knew how to do a public preschool programs on a large scale because no one had ever tried. The fact that this program had such large effects is an optimistic message for the power of public policy.”

And, Head Start has only improved since then. In 2007, the Head Start Act was reauthorized with a focus on program quality. And in 2016 new program performance standards were adopted.

“This study affirms what we have seen for years at Head Start: that it works,” says Michelle Haimowitz, Executive Director of Massachusetts Head Start Association. “Head Start’s high-quality early childhood education and comprehensive services prepare young children for school and lifetime success. Massachusetts Head Start programs proudly served 15,154 young children birth to age 5 in the 2017-2018 program year.”