The Long-Term Effect of the Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) Program on Academic Achievement: Evidence from a School District in Texas

In this paper, I evaluate the effect of the Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool
Youngsters (HIPPY) program, a home visitation program targeted at parents of children between the ages of 3-5, on long-term academic achievement using administrative data from a school district in Texas. To control for selection bias of program participants, I compare differences in scores between siblings where one of them was engaged in the program, and siblings where neither of them were. I find that HIPPY students see between 0.4 and 0.6 standard deviations of improvement relative to their non-HIPPY sibling in Mathematics test scores when I match sibling pairs directly on covariates. I do not find statistically significant results for Reading test scores. I also find that students who have undergone HIPPY are less likely to be held back in the same grade relative to their peers.