Expanding the Cycle of Opportunity: Simultaneously Educating Parents and Children in Head Start

Dual-generation approaches—which simultaneously promote human capital among parents and children— represent a promising and innovative antipoverty strategy for families, and are gaining momentum across the United States. This proposal will conduct a randomized trial on the impact of a dual-generation education program for low-income parents and their children in Head Start. This dual-generation program provides education services and career coaching for parents with multiple levels of education through the Education Pathways Program (EPP) while their children attend Head Start programs run by the Community Action Project of Tulsa County (CAP). Starting in 2014, 150 families will be randomly assigned to EPP and 150 families will be assigned to a control group over the course of three years. An implementation study on the key strengthens and challenges of the intervention, and how it can better serve Head Start families will also be conducted. This study will collect data three waves of data (baseline and up two years later) on parents and children, including parent surveys, direct child assessments, focus groups, and administrative data from CAP. Findings will have implications for how dual-generation approaches affect family processes and well-being and how best to integrate this approach into Head Start programming.