Coding Readiness Assessment (CRA)
Category: Student Learning
Fadeout is defined as the decline in an intervention's initial treatment effect in subsequent follow-up periods. This paper uses the Head Start Impact Study to examine heterogeneity in the fadeout of cognitive gains from access to Head Start preschool. I find that Black children experience substantially less fadeout than non-Black children and retain a 0.23 standard deviation gain at the end of kindergarten (p<0.10). A selection-corrected decomposition attributes 74% of the Black--non-Black fadeout differential to differences in cognitive growth between Black and non-Black children under Head Start nonparticipation. Mediation analyses provide suggestive evidence that kindergarten school environments, particularly school achievement levels and time spent in adult-directed individual activities, partially contribute to these divergent growth trajectories. Counterfactual simulations show that reallocating existing Head Start offers toward centers serving predominantly Black applicants reduces aggregate fadeout only modestly because Black children constitute a relatively small share of applicants nationally. These findings suggest that meaningfully improving the persistence of Head Start's cognitive effects may require expanding the program and directing recruitment toward children for whom initial gains are more likely to persist.
Keywords
Head Start; fadeout; early childhood education; treatment effect heterogeneity; skill formation; program participation; racial disparities; selection model
Education level
Topics
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/z77m-rk76
