Examining the Effect of Head Start and Child Care Partnership on Quality of Child Care and Child Outcomes

Youngok Lim, Cornell University

Partnerships between child care and Head Start can both support parents’ labor force participation and foster children’s school readiness, especially, for low income families. The partnership has grown much since welfare reform to meet changed needs from low income working parent by providing full-day, full-year Head Start services. I examine the effects of partnership on process measures of quality, then, the effects on children’s cognitive development employing child fixed effects. I address selection bias issues by exploiting the nature of mixed classroom in partnership and estimating the effects on non Head Start children in partnership compared to non Head Start children in non-partnership. Results show that non Head Start children in partnership do not perform better than their counterparts in non-partnership, despite partnership centers appear to be higher quality than non-partnership centers.