Head Start programs helped improve the kindergarten readiness of homeless or highly mobile young children, says a report from the Institute for Children, Poverty, and Homelessness.
The analysis uses federal data from a nationally representative sample of 1,772 families with 3-year-olds entering Head Start in 2006.
It says the homeless children began behind their peers from more stable homes on socio-emotional, cognitive, and health indicators, and improved significantly over the next few years. But they failed to catch up with their counterparts from stable homes by kindergarten.
