Currently enrolling approximately 900,000 poor children each year, Head Start has served 25 million children and their families since it was established 44 years ago. Presidents and policymakers have embraced and scorned it. At times scientists have misguided it and the media has misunderstood it. Despite its longevity and renown, much of Head Start's story has never been disclosed to the general public.
The Hidden History of Head Start is a detailed account of this remarkable program. Surveying projects that were forerunners of Head Start, its birth during the Johnson administration, its fate during the presidency of George W. Bush, and the many years between--as well as what the future may hold in store for Head Start--Edward Zigler and Sally Styfco offer an inside view of the program's decades of service, detailing the ever-changing waves of politics, ideology, science, media interest, and public mood that oftentimes threatened the program's very existence. Providing a balanced assessment of Head Start's effectiveness, which has been a matter of debate since its inception, the authors also strive to answer questions that continue to pervade discussions about the program and its future. For example, why is Head Start, a leader of early childhood services, still struggling to prove itself? Why does it serve such a narrow segment of the population? And how can Head Start continue its mission as universal preschool becomes a reality? The Hidden History of Head Start will be of great importance to those who shape Head Start's future, and to those who wish to develop, research, and implement new early childhood programs. Students, historians, and scholars in the fields of early intervention and developmental science, as well as policymakers, will find here an invaluable resource as well as a fascinating chronicle of one of the foremost social programs in US history.

For almost thirty years, the U.S. government has funded education programs to help disadvantaged children succeed in school. In this important new book, Edward Zigler, one of the leading figures in this effort, and his associates evaluate the three existing programs (Head Start, Follow Through, and Chapter 1), Senator Edward Kennedy describes the newly created Head Start Transition Project, and the authors propose a bold plan to redirect and consolidate the programs in order to achieve a coherent, comprehensive policy for the nation's impoverished young children. The authors conclude that the Head Start model has been effective in enhancing the social competence and school success of poor children. They argue that Follow Through, which was intended to be a national program, now represents a tiny experiment in education that is too minimally funded to have an impact. And Chapter 1, which exists in over 90 percent of the nation's school districts and is massively funded, has become a supplementary funding program for local schools rather than a demonstrably effective educational treatment. The new Head Start Transition Project plans to extend Head Start's health and other support services, its efforts to involve parents, and its creative programming and evaluation to children in kindergarten through third grade. The authors suggest an alternative plan: that the huge Chapter 1 program adopt the model of the Transition Project and become the school-age version of Head Start, creating a well-funded, coordinated, and cost-effective series of interventions with unified goals and comprehensive services to meet the needs of poor children from the preschool years through the early elementary grades.