Head Start, a Healthy ‘60s Survivor, Should Be Expanded to Serve Needs of the ‘90s

No other veteran of the War on Poverty survived the 1980s like the Head Start program--with its credibility and budget intact. Congress increased Head Start funding even during the Ronald Reagan era, and President Bush has proposed a $250-million hike in the program’s budget for next year. The House of Representatives, ready to outdo Bush, included a $317-million increase in Head Start funds in the budget resolution it adopted last week.

The key to Head Start’s enduring popularity is its focus on families, which enabled it to weather the drift from the liberal 1960s to the conservative 1980s. Today the program’s advocates must build on Head Start’s record of success in preschool education and family-support programs and tailor it to play a key role in the anti-poverty efforts of the 1990s.

As the nature of poverty has changed since Head Start’s debut in 1965, so have efforts to combat it. More poor families today are headed by single mothers, isolated in geographic pockets of persistent poverty. New federal initiatives to expand child-care funding and reform the welfare system may result in poor mothers working to support their families. Meanwhile, concern about low school achievement among poor, inner-city children--a large segment of tomorrow’s work force--has inspired a new school-reform movement.

Head Start has much to contribute to national efforts to expand child care, reform the welfare system and improve the nation’s schools. Positioning Head Start to work with those new anti-poverty projects will require only minor updating of the program’s methods.

To meet poor families’ child-care needs, Head Start’s traditional half-day program should be adapted to a full day. Working-poor parents need Head Start’s health services and parent education as much as those on welfare. But few utilize the program, because their children need all-day care. Serving working and non-working families would integrate Head Start economically, if not racially, and help build the networks between working families and those on welfare that have eroded in many communities.

Providing full-day services would also make it easier to link Head Start to welfare reform efforts. Many advocates worry that children’s needs are getting lost in the push to get welfare mothers employed. Most “workfare” programs, says Helen Blank of the Children’s Defense fund, provide “the lowest cost child care for the kids who need the most supportive care--the same kids who are eligible for Head Start.”

Linking Head Start with workfare projects makes sense. Head Start’s family-support focus would be invaluable in helping parents and children handle the transition from welfare to employment. And all-day Head Start could relieve the shortage of child care for mothers seeking work or training through welfare reform programs.

On the local level, Head Start must develop stronger ties with school districts and with other child development programs. The 1980s have seen an explosion in state-level funding for early childhood education, based on research showing that quality preschool programs--including Head Start--can improve low-income children’s school performance. But most programs operate in isolation from Head Start.

A federal study investigating the relationship between Head Start and local preschool efforts found that some administrators are unaware that the 1960s-era program even still exists. In some areas, programs compete for the same children. Lack of coordination with local child development programs and school districts hampered Head Start’s effectiveness, the study found.

Joint planning by Head Start and school officials can maximize the school-readiness benefits Head Start provides. Cooperation with the child-care community can ensure resources are tailored to family needs, and targeted most effectively. Even at current funding levels, when only one in six eligible children can be enrolled, some families who could be served by Head Start are not being reached.

In Oakland, where the Head Start program is considered a national model, administrators are perplexed by vacancies at a few sites, while most have waiting lists. Traditional efforts to get the word out about the program aren’t working well, they say, in a population of ever-younger single mothers, many of them teen-agers. Most are outside social service networks and many turn over child-rearing duties to their mothers or grandmothers. In planning for expansion, Oakland Head Start administrators put a high priority on new resources for outreach.

One solution to the outreach program is to lower the age at which children can enter Head Start, currently pegged at age 3. Parents are most interested in child-care and support programs, experts say, when their children are very young. By the time they are three, many are already lost to Head Start and other intervention efforts. Serving younger children would allow Head Start to reach teen mothers, who are all but left out of the program today.

Compassion, as well as enlightened self-interest, are inspiring a renaissance of concern about poverty in the United States. From corporate executives to low-income parents, there is growing focus on the preschool years, as a time of critical influence in children’s school performance and later life chances.

With a little retooling, Head Start will meet the challenge of poverty in the coming decades as effectively as it has in the last 20 years.