A tale of two studies: The Westinghouse-Ohio evaluation of project head start and the consortium for longitudinal studies report

In February 1981 as President Reagan and his Cabinet considered which programs to sustain and which to cut, Secretary Bell of the U.S. Department of Education Spoke out on behalf of Project Head Start. The program, he is reported to have said, is effective in preventing later school failure and is deserving of continuing support.The incident seems remarkable. Ten years earlier, the failure of Project Head Start was cited by another President at much the same juncture of his administration as part of the reason for dismantling the Office of Economic Opportunity. In a decade or less, it is not remarkable for a social service program to fall from favor to the abyss. Project Head Start may be, however, the only example if not of a resurrection, then at least of a salvation. For this reason, it may be instructive to examine what happened to Head Start, particularly the influence of two studies as distinctive as the fortunes of the program itself: the Westinghouse-Ohio and the Consortium for Longitudinal Studies evaluations.