Extending Compensatory Education beyond Preschool: Nonexperimental Evidence from Longitudinal Data

This activity is a planning grant supported under the Research Opportunities for Women Program. The purpose of this grant in to allow the investigator to begin investigating and implementing appropriate non-experimental estimation procedures to determine the effectiveness of a government-funded compensatory education program. With the help of an unusually rich data set from the Longitudinal Study of Children at Risk, the possibilities of obtaining unbiased estimates of program effectiveness will be explored. Various estimation techniques will be employed in order to determine the effects on student achievement and grade retention of participation in a Head Start type program that extends from preschool into the primary grades. A central question of the broader study is: Can the often noted fading effects of Head Start related programs be postponed or even eliminated by extending the compensatory services into the primary grades?