With funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, MDRC has launched a new research project to test the effects and implementation of a set of evidence-based strategies to improve the social and emotional development of children in Head Start classrooms. Called Head Start CARES (Classroom-based Approaches and Resources for Emotion and Social skill promotion), the study will randomly assign 100 Head Start centers to four different interventions and a control group, with 20 centers in each of the five groups. Centers will be recruited in the 2008-2009 academic year.

Head Start has been referred to as the nation’s “premier” federally sponsored early childhood education program, and today it serves nearly one million low-income children. Designed to “narrow the gap” between disadvantaged children and their more affluent peers, Head Start provides comprehensive programming during the preschool period to improve children’s social competence and academic readiness for school.

However, empirical studies have documented prevalence rates of emotional and behavior problems among preschool children as high as 20 to 40 percent, such that four to seven children in any given Head Start classroom may require additional assistance in managing their emotions and behavior. Accordingly, Head Start programs and other preschools in low-income communities report a pressing need for effective tools for building children’s social-emotional skills.

Head Start CARES has the potential to dramatically improve our understanding of: (1) promising approaches to building children’s social and emotional development, (2) the processes by which the largest and most sustained effects on children’s social and emotional development are likely to occur, and (3) the features of Head Start settings and families that contribute to successful implementation of these program models. The Head Start CARES Project will provide the information federal policymakers and Head Start can use to increase Head Start’s capacity to improve the social-emotional skills and school readiness of preschool-age children.

For this project, MDRC is partnering with The Lewin Group and Survey Research Management, as well as leading academics: Karen Bierman (Pennsylvania State University), Carolyn Hill (Georgetown University), Nancy Hill (Duke University), Stephanie Jones (Fordham University), Cybele Raver (New York University), Deborah Phillips (Georgetown University), Mary Louise Hemmeter (Vanderbilt University), and Todd Little (University of Kansas).

Head Start CARES joins MDRC’s growing portfolio of child care and early education projects, including Foundations of Learning, which is also focused on identifying promising approaches to improve low-income children’s emotional, behavioral, and academic readiness in a variety of preschool settings.