No Simple Answer: Critique of the Follow Through Evaluation

Abstract

Follow Through has been the largest and most expensive federal educational experiment in this country's history. Conceived in 1967 as an extension of Head Start, Follow Through was designed as a service program to improve the schooling of disadvantaged children in the early elementary grades. Before it was under way,however, an expected $120 million appropriation was slashed to only $15 milion for the first year. A decision was then made by the U.S. Office of Education to convert the program into a planned variation experiment, which systematically would compare pupils enrolled in different models of early childhood education—the Follow Through models—to each other and to pupils from non-Follow Through classes.