As Head Start marked its 60th anniversary this past May, the program’s legacy stands as more than a historical benchmark. It offers a powerful example of how early learning can drive equity, resilience, and long-term impact. Since its inception in 1965, Head Start has served more than 40 million children and families, particularly those from under-resourced communities. But in today’s push for
PreK for All, the conversation is not only about access, but quality and purpose, too.
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Teacher Shaquala Thorton leads a group of students around their classroom at New St. Paul Head Start Agency in Detroit.
What data tells us about Head Start’s promise
To understand Head Start’s promise, it helps to look at its connection to the
Perry Preschool Project, a landmark study in early childhood education, and to the insights of current researchers like Dr. James Heckman and Alison Baulos at the University of Chicago. On the ground, leaders such as Cheryl McFall, executive director of
New St. Paul Head Start Agency in Detroit, are seeing that promise play out every day.
“What’s impressive is that you're still continuing to find effects 50 years later,” says Baulos, executive director of the
Center for the Economics of Human Development.
The Perry Preschool Study, launched in the 1960s and based in Ypsilanti, tracked low-income Black children and found long-lasting gains in education, income, health, and reduced involvement in the criminal justice system among those who had been enrolled in preschool. The longest running longitudinal study, the study documented the impacts of early care and education programs on children from early childhood through the next 60 years of their lives, identifying that the highest rate of economic returns comes from the earliest investments in children.
“There’s a lot of evidence that flies in the face of some of the criticisms of Head Start, which is the fadeout of test scores,” says Baulos. “The skills that are to be promoted aren’t test scores. There are other more important things in life, from an individual standpoint, community standpoint, social standpoint, like returns that aren’t typically captured.”
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Teachers Kiaundra Bronson and Dimika Hankins lead music and movement at New St. Paul Head Start Agency in Detroit.
Head Start put into practice many of the principles that made the Perry Preschool Project successful — pairing classroom learning with wraparound services, home visits, and a commitment to family involvement.
“Head Start is intentional about the quality of early learning,” says Baulos. “That includes intentional curriculum and interactions required to mature a developmentally appropriate child.”
That approach resonates strongly with McFall.
“From my perspective, the biggest impact has been that now we have opportunities within the city for zero to five,” she says, “Originally it was three to five, but now from the time the mom finds out that she's pregnant, she can start receiving services up until her child is five. I think that is a big change for our families.”
McFall also speaks from personal experience.
“I was a Head Start parent,” she says. “Five out of six of my children attended Head Start. Then when my children aged out, I became a Head Start assistant teacher. The program paid for me to go to school to get my degree, and now I’m the executive director.”
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Teachers Madison Richardson and Alohna Alexander with a student at New St. Paul Head Start Agency in Detroit.
Whole-child focus and community partnerships
Head Start’s whole-child model also fosters multigenerational impact.
“One of our families started working for WIC because they were introduced to WIC through our Head Start program partnership,” McFall says. “We’ve been able to hire some of our Head Start parents, support them through CDA [Child Development Associate] training, and pay for them to go to school to become our early childhood teachers.”
Heckman says that benefits like these flow from the way Head Start and similar programs build not only academic skills but also social and emotional strengths.
“What we’ve come to understand is that environments build multiple skills,” he says. “Executive functioning, persistence, and self-regulation are taught not through scripted lessons, but through mentoring, imitation, and relationship-building.”
This helps explain why participants in the Perry Preschool Project outperformed their peers not only on achievement tests, but in life outcomes well beyond academics.
“Their whole motivations were turned on,” says Heckman, noting that cognitive test scores alone could not account for gains in areas such as health and overall well-being.
Motivation and resilience are skills McFall’s team intentionally works hard to nurture. After the pandemic disrupted traditional learning, her agency created a summer program to help Head Start graduates transition successfully to kindergarten.
“One grandparent came back to us excited to share that their grandchild received high scores on the entry exam and got accepted to
FLICS [Foreign Language Immersion and Cultural Studies School],” says McFall. “Our data shows how successful our children are from the time they enter our program until the time they leave.”
This kind of success, she says, is built through strategic local partnerships.
“Our collaborative meets monthly,” says McFall. “We’re able to share concerns, support one another, and leverage each other’s resources. For example, we did a community assessment together where each of us paid just a small amount for a great big project that benefited all of our programs.”
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Teacher Kiaundra Bronson plays patty-cake with a student at New St. Paul Head Start Agency in Detroit.
Building intentional quality and community partnerships into universal pre-K
As more states and cities pursue universal pre-K, experts and educators say that expanding access alone is not enough. The next phase of this work must focus on ensuring intentional quality and building strong community partnerships that support both children and families.
“What we’ve learned from Perry and from programs like Head Start is that environments build multiple skills,” says Heckman. “You can’t achieve those outcomes with a cookie-cutter model. It takes intentional relationships and partnerships that go beyond just what’s in the classroom.”
Heckman says that universal programs must be designed to ensure that all children — especially those from under-resourced communities — receive the kinds of interactions and support that foster long-term growth. Without that intentionality, he says, “universality can create greater inequality for children that need it most.”
That principle is reflected in how Head Start programs are designed at the local level.
“One of the cornerstones of developing a Head Start program is the community assessment,” says Shelby Holman, CEO of
Southern Imaginations and a longtime Head Start leader. “The landscape of the community must be assessed, needs identified, and thorough data analysis done. These steps allow an organization to hone in and identify priorities for community needs and ultimately tailor their Head Start programs to their local area.”
Holman says that cultural responsiveness must also remain a central priority, something too often missing from universal pre-K efforts that adopt a one-size-fits-all approach.
“It’s instrumental on several levels,” he says. “Programs must be executed in a manner that allows for sensitivity and cultural responsiveness to ensure that we can communicate effectively, regardless of background, culture, or race.”
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Teacher Wenturi Williams and student at New St. Paul Head Start Agency in Detroit.
McFall sees the importance of intentional design in her work in Detroit.
“We were able to maintain our funding, but it’s flat funding,” she says. “That means no funding for increases in food, lease payments, inflation. So we have to be very intentional about how we structure our programs and partnerships to make sure we’re still delivering high-quality services.”
For McFall, collaboration is key.
“Our goal is to make sure we’re providing high-quality services for the children, the family, and the community,” she says. “We don’t live in a vacuum. We partner with health departments, WIC,
Covenant Community Care, doctors’ offices, child care centers — we help support them, and they help support us.”
Holman also emphasizes the importance of partnerships.
“One organization can’t do it all,” he says. “When it comes to health and mental health, services for families moving toward self-sufficiency, support for children with disabilities, you need community partnerships to provide the most comprehensive set of services possible.”
Looking ahead, Holman says national efforts to scale universal pre-K should intentionally tap into local knowledge and leadership.
“One of the ways national programs can better align with grassroots leaders is by being more intentional,” he says. “Identify the community leaders who have been successful in creating positive change and have those people serve as conduits to help facilitate change on a larger scale.”
The Perry Preschool study underscores why this kind of approach matters.
Baulos, Heckman, and colleagues report, “The true measure of quality lies in adult-child interactions, which play an essential role.” Programs that foster those kinds of relationships, like Head Start, offer a model for what universal pre-K can aspire to be.
“The earlier we invest, the earlier we will see skills build over time” Baulos says.
McFall adds that, for her, the value of this work remains deeply personal.
“Speaking from a Head Start mom perspective, Head Start gave me the opportunity to give my child something I didn’t know was missing,” she says. “And now I have the opportunity to support other families in making the decision to be a part of our Head Start program.”
Dr. Brianna Nargiso, a graduate of Howard University and Mercer University, specializes in media, journalism, and public health. Her work has appeared in The Root, 101 Magazine, and Howard University News Service, covering profiles, politics, and breaking news. A Hearst journalism award nominee and active member of the National Association for Black Journalists, she has also worked with Teach for America and the Peace Corps. A doctoral graduate of American University, Brianna is dedicated to advancing social justice, public health and education on a global scale.
Photos by Nick Hagen.
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