Compared to what? Variation in the impacts of early childhood education by alternative care type
Early childhood education research often compares a group of children who receive the intervention of interest to a group of children who receive care in a range of different care settings. In this paper, we estimate differential impacts of an early childhood intervention by alternative care setting, using data from the Head Start Impact Study, a large scale randomized evaluation. To do so, we utilize a Bayesian principal stratification framework to estimate separate impacts for two types of Compliers: those children who would otherwise be in other center based care when assigned to control and those who would otherwise be in home based care. We find strong, positive short term effects of Head Start on receptive vocabulary for those Compliers who would otherwise be in home based care. By contrast, we find no meaningful impact of Head Start on vocabulary for those Compliers who would otherwise be in other center based care. Our findings suggest that alternative care type is a potentially important source of variation in early childhood education interventions.