Fifty years ago today, President Lyndon Johnson announced the launch of Project Head Start, a federal program that would deliver health, nutritional, academic, and other services to low-income, preschool children, hopefully giving them an early boost in life. It was certainly well intentioned, but as the federal government’s own research has shown, pure intentions don’t make something work, nor do hundreds-of-billions of taxpayer dollars:

In summary, there were initial positive impacts from having access to Head Start, but by the end of 3rd grade there were very few impacts found for either cohort in any of the four domains of cognitive, social-emotional, health and parenting practices. The few impacts that were found did not show a clear pattern of favorable or unfavorable impacts for children.

Unfortunately, the expansion of government pre‑K programs generally seems to be based much more on good intentions than evidence. As George Mason University professor David Armor concluded in a recent examination of the research not just on Head Start, but numerous state-level preschool programs, “the evidence as it currently exists demonstrates only short-term skill gains that fade after a few years.”

It’s Head Start’s birthday. How happy should we be?