¶ … Language and Literacy Development of Head Start Children: A Study Using the Family and Child Experiences Survey Database." The report opens with a description of the Head Start program, established in 1965, and sums up their goal: to provide a comprehensive development program for low socioeconomic status (SES) children and their families. In 1995 it was decided to evaluate the Head Start program's quality and effectiveness. To that end, the study defined a conceptual model that defined school readiness in terms of five developmental domains:

Physical well-being and motor development

Social and emotional development

Approaches to learning

Language usage and emerging literacy

Cognition and general knowledge

The Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) was then developed to provide information about Head Start children and their families, and to gather data about the program. The study included four cohorts for collection periods 1997, 2000, 2003, and 2006, with each cohort consisting of a nationally representative sample of 3- and 4-year-old Head Start children and their families. Information was collected on the children, the children's parents and family, along with the Head Start programs that the children attended.

Findings from the longitudinal study produced a series of reports over the study period. FACES 1997 and 2000 results showed that preschoolers who entered Head Start were below national averages in language...

Despite making gains during Head Start, children left Head Start with abilities below those of the average U.S. preschooler. The 2006 report includes data on Head Start children with disabilities. Findings on these children showed that they had lower language and literacy scores than children without disabilities.
Additional data analysis was conducted to investigate factors that would account for achievement gaps for low SES children. Factors that affect children's outcomes include:

Maternal education

Presence of a speech-language impairment

Children's gender

Home literacy environment

Preschoolers' oral language

Preschoolers' knowledge

Study results were complied and presented in a series of tables that highlighted the study's findings.

The study found several key factors were indeed predictive of Head Start children's reading abilities in kindergarten. The study showed that children of mothers with higher educational levels had higher vocabulary and letter-word identification abilities in Head Start than did children of mothers with lower educational levels. Consistent with earlier research, this study showed males were nearly three times as likely as females to have a speech-language impairment. Males also scored lower than females in letter-word identification abilities at the end of Head Start. Younger children, who entered at an earlier age and therefore spent more time in Head Start, scored…