From The Head Start Debates, edited by Edward Zigler, Ph.D., & Sally J. Styfco

Copyright © 2004 by Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Edward Zigler received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1958. He served a one-year internship at Worchester State Hospital and taught at the University of Missouri for one year before moving to Yale in 1959. During his 44 years at Yale, he has served as Director of the Child Development Program, Chairman of the Psychology Department, and a member of the Executive Committee of the Child Study Center. He founded and is Director of the Yale Center in Child Development and Social Policy. He is currently a Sterling Professor of Psychology, Emeritus. He is the author, coauthor, and editor of hundreds of scholarly publications and has conducted extensive investigations on topics related to normal child development and to adult psychopathology and mental retardation. He is the founder of the School of the 21st Century, which has been adopted by more than 1300 schools in 20 states, and cofounder of the CoZi model, which is a combination of Dr. James P. Comer’s School Development Program and Zigler’s 21st Century Schools.

Dr. Zigler is on numerous national advisory boards. He also regularly testifies as an expert witness before congressional committees and has served as a consultant to a number of cabinet-rank officers. He was one of the planners of both Projects Head Start and Follow Through, as well as the network of Parent and Child Centers (the forerunner of the more recent Early Head Start program, which he also helped plan). From 1970 to 1972, Dr. Zigler was appointed by President Nixon as the first Director of the U.S. Office of Child Development (now the Administration of Children, Youth, and Families) and Chief of the U.S. Children’s Bureau. While in Washington, he created the first Office of Child Care and conceptualized and implemented the Healthy Start program, the Home Start program (currently Head Start’s home-based services program), the national Child Development Associates (CDA) certification program, and the national Education for Parenthood program (the first parenting education program provided to adolescents in schools). He developed Head Start’s first Performance Standards (which were revised during the Clinton administration). He formalized parental involvement in Head Start by establishing the Head Start Policy Councils, which still exist, and prepared the final federal interagency day care regulations. Dr. Zigler established the first family support programs in the network of Child and Family Resource programs. President Carter asked him to chair the committee to develop the 15th anniversary forward plan for Head Start. He was asked by President Ford to chair the committee on resettling children from the Vietnamese Baby Lift. Dr. Zigler served on the Head Start Quality and Expansion committee and was Honorary Chair of the National Advisory Panel for the Head Start 2010 Project.

A major branch of Zigler’s studies and writings concerns the development and assessment of intervention programs to meet the needs of children and their families. He has worked with the State of Connecticut in designing the state school readiness program. He and his colleagues surveyed child care standards in the states as well as their preschool programs to raise awareness of the importance of quality and to guide policy makers in mandating higher quality programs. He also continues his interest in the Head Start program, conducting research, integrating the literature on early care and education, and making recommendations for the future. He and his colleagues are currently hard at work on developing a plan for a universal preschool program for our nation.

Dr. Zigler’s many honors include awards from the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Society for Research in Child Development, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Academy on Mental Retardation, the American Orthopsychiatric Association (of which he served as President), the National Head Start Association, the Heinz Foundation, Teachers College, Columbia University, and Family Support America. He has also received many honorary degrees.