Discussion of Gibbs, Ludwig & Miller Katherine Magnuson UW-Madison Prepared for the “Legacy of the War on Poverty” Conference June 11-12, 2012

GLM: Does Head Start do any lasting good? Answer: Yes, GLM think so… – But the historic nature of the answer makes it hard to know for certain Changing demographics Changing policy landscape (within and outside of HS) Implicit second question – Can Head Start be improved, and if so, how? Their answer was “maybe,” but GLM doesn’t know how to do it, and they think that others really don’t know how to do it either

How do we know that HS has done lasting good? Non-experimental studies of older cohorts – Good (but of course imperfect) studies – Changing landscape both in terms of demographic characteristics of attendees of counterfactual conditions What matters and why? Circumstantial evidence looking at Black- White test score gaps – But why is the black-white gap more important than the poverty/income gap?

What about this faster fade-out? Evidence from other studies, is it really faster? – GLM could do more Changing school, counterfactual, and demographic contexts – Ugh Changing effects on Socioemotional & Behavioral skills – “Dark matter” seems like a vague answer Not really hard to measure (and not that unreliable) – Better find good evidence that there were substantial effects on SE/B outcomes in prior studies Deming has reported that in NSLY data there are no HS effects on BPI measures or HOME measures (not published though) Perry has meaningful effects on Personal Behavior (but ES?) What about health?

Are their increased efficiencies to be gained? Agree that RD-like evaluations of the PreK programs are not the right way to think about this – The HS and PreK studies differ in important ways Participation in other preschool programs in counterfactual Level of disadvantage of students they serve Complicated mix of ITT/TOT Timing of assessment & fade out… But then what is the right way to consider this? – Look at what we know makes a difference Curriculum, time spent in instruction, etc. Learn more about what the performance review & accountability