Head Start advocates oppose Bush
proposals

by Paul Morel

Lately, with the focus of national attention pitched ever more sharply towards Iraq, issues of domestic policy have struggled to find an audience. What policy issues do make the headlines overwhelmingly focus on the myriad budget crises that are affecting state programs more than the issues themselves. In this harried political climate, the Bush administration has quietly proposed making some sweeping changes in both the focus and administration of the nation’s Head Start program—changes that advocates of the program fear might undermine its very purpose.

Aimed at disadvantaged and at-risk children, Head Start works on the principal that poverty persists across generations because the social burdens of poverty impair a child’s ability to learn at a critical time in his or her life. A great deal of social and intellectual development occurs before a child even reaches the first grade. But for children brought up in poverty, the stresses of making ends meet can prevent parents from providing that most basic education. Typically both parents work (if there are two parents), and so don’t have time to socialize with and educate their preschool children.

Furthermore, Head Start recognizes that there are a host of non-academic factors that affect a child’s ability to develop cognitively at this age: lack of proper nutrition can stunt development of both the body and the brain, and frequent illness (from lack of immunizations) can keep a child out of school and away from his or her peers. The net effect of these factors is that the poorest children in society are already lagging behind their middle- and upper-class counterparts by the time they begin grade school. More than that, because of how the human mind develops, certain cognitive abilities simply won’t be as fully realized if they are not learned by the time school begins.

For 38 years, Head Start has attempted to bridge the gap between young children of differing class backgrounds by providing preschool education, immunizations, nutritious school lunches and other services to the poorest children to compensate for what a difficult home life has denied them. The results have been positive, with studies showing that Head Start graduates are less likely to repeat a grade, less likely to be in Special Education, and more likely to complete school. As a social program, Head Start is one of the few social programs aimed at reducing poverty in this country at the very root of the problem: it’s not a redistributive ameliorant for poverty, it is a corrective. Currently over 850,000 children are enrolled in Head Start.

The program is up for federal reauthorization this year, and senate Democrats are bristling at administration proposals for revising Head Start. They contest that if the president has his way, Head Start will narrow its focus significantly. Its primary purpose will be to promote literacy at an early age. The change would not be the result of a direct change in the program’s mission, but rather of a highly focused achievement test that the administration would use to promote “accountability.” If current assessment tests used in Texas and elsewhere are any indication, the result will be a teaching regimen directed at raising reading scores rather than preparing kids for the learning process. After all, it is the school systems that are supposed to actually teach reading skills.

Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut contends that the Bush administration proposals would completely undermine the developmental component of the program that has made it so successful. “Literacy is something we strongly support. It’s critically important,” he stresses. “But the idea that you shift this program entirely into a literacy program and miss socialization, the skills that are so necessary, the emotional problems a lot of these kids are having in addition to the linguistic and learning disabilities they bring with them as the enter the Head Start program—the idea that you’re going to have those issues being well-served under just a literacy program in the Department of Education, is to totally miss the value of Head Start and the areas in which it’s improved the quality of lives of these young people.”

Also concerning Head Start advocates is the administration’s proposal to give control of federal funds for the program over to the states. Under the current system, the money for Head Start goes directly from the federal government to the individual communities that have Head Start programs. However, critics of Head Start have pointed out that this can lead to inefficiencies in social services administration, with state funded child care programs sometimes actually competing with the federally funded Head Start programs.

If the program were to operate under the Department of Education, as the president proposes, the funds for the program would be turned over to the states in a lump-sum “block grant,” with which a state could do whatever it sees fit. Given the remarkable fiscal difficulties that all of the states find themselves in, however, the worry is that the funds might be used to plug holes in state general education funding rather than benefiting the communities most in need. “This program goes directly to the communities. That’s been the beauty of it,” says Dodd. “You don’t have to go through the state administration, lose dollars to administrative costs, and allow decisions to be made in the governor’s office that are less inclined to be supportive of the communities that are in some of the toughest shapes.”