Helen Taylor

Early next month, thousands of children in Southern California and across the country will stream into Head Start preschool centers, as they have for the past 32 years. Yet, the federal program, which prepares low-income children for success in school, faces new pressures in the coming year because of recent changes in the welfare laws and the promised expansion grants, which will be announced in September.

With 800,000 children expected to enroll by the fall of 1998, many Head Start children will need full-day, full-year care as their parents train for jobs and enter the work force. President Bill Clinton wants Head Start’s enrollment expanded to 1 million by 2002. The program enjoys widespread bipartisan support as next year’s hearings approach on reauthorizing it, but advocates have learned never to take anything for granted.

Helen H. Taylor directs the preschool program, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services. Currently serving 752,000 children on a budget of almost $4 billion, Head Start was started in 1965 as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. Taylor, 55, ran a full-day Head Start program in the District of Columbia before being tapped for her current position in 1994.

Born in Georgia, Taylor was raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, in a family whom she said was “trained to serve.” Her mother has taught young children, her sister is a teacher and her brother, a physician. Taylor, who has a bachelor’s degree from Howard University and an master’s degree from Catholic University, received management training from both Texas Tech University and the John Anderson Graduate School of Business at UCLA. She is married to Robert J. Taylor, a retired manager with the Environmental Protection Agency.

Always interested in history, she wanted to be a teacher as early as elementary school and later decided that she could have the most impact working with young children. Taylor became involved with Head Start almost from its beginnings. “We were the civil rights generation--idealistic--and this seemed like a wonderful thing to do and so I got involved.”

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Question: Do children coming into Head Start today have a harder life ahead of them than poor children 30 years ago when the program started--or is it a different kind of hard life?

Answer: Poverty is always a hard life. I don’t care what era you’re in. It’s a mistake to say that poverty is harder now than it was 30 years ago. Poverty’s hard, period. The external environment has changed and impacts very differently on families than it did in the ‘60s. In the ‘60s, we didn’t have the scourge of drugs that we have now. We certainly didn’t see women who were addicted to drugs, which is something you see in the ‘90s. They’ve always been the mainstays of families. I think that’s what’s different. But the poverty is constant.

Q: The changes in the welfare laws mean that more parents will be seeking training or jobs and need full-day care for their children. Where does Head Start fit into that picture?

A: One of Head Start’s greatest strengths has always been responding to the needs of children and families at particular points in time. One example of that is the current expansion. The priority is to fund programs that either seek out additional resources and blend funds with our dollars or who partner with other child development programs in order to provide full-year, full-day services.

Q: At its recent meeting, the National Head Start Assn. [which represents staff and parents] criticized the expansion guidelines as threatening quality or lacking flexibility.

A: I disagree with that totally. Under our expansion announcement, it’s very clear that programs that we’re going to fund have to meet Head Start performance standards. It’s a competitive announcement so we’re seeking out the most innovative approaches to doing full-year, full-day services and the most innovative blending of funds [through] partnerships. The Head Start association would prefer that programs make up their own minds about how they want to expand. That would be wonderful if we could do that. But we can’t do that because we have limited resources in this country. Our job is to maximize the resources we have available to serve children and families well.

Q: The performance standards are guidelines that Head Start agencies have to meet. If programs don’t meet those standards, what happens?

A: In the 1994 Head Start Reauthorization Act, which is a bipartisan act, we’ve got tough new language about Head Start programs that don’t measure up to our standards. After being identified as poor quality, they have up to one year to turn themselves around and meet our standards. We offer them technical assistance in order to help them, and those programs that don’t turn around, then we terminate them.

Since I’ve come in, we’ve defunded 76 programs, and that’s historic. Programs have been defunded before, but usually in the past it’s been because of mismanagement of funds. I think the field has gotten the message that we’re very serious about quality and I think overall people support us.

Q: If people have heard any factoid about Head Start, they say, “Yes, it works, but don’t the gains fade out after two or three years?” Isn’t that the elementary schools’ problem?

A: Absolutely. That’s an undue burden on Head Start. Head Start does exactly what it’s supposed to do, that is, get kids ready for school. In the short term, the research backs up the fact that we do that, we do that very well. You cannot look at Head Start like you look at an immunization--you get a shot for polio and measles and it’s fixed. Every year’s important in school. So we need to begin to look at what’s happening to poor children in America--in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade.

Q: We’re seeing all this research about what children learn before they’re 3 or 4. What has Head Start done with this?

A: We’re very excited that, as part of the 1994 reauthorization, Congress directed us to develop a program for infants and toddlers. Head Start has always been a national laboratory for early childhood. It’s operated a number of demonstration programs as far back as 1967. Our Head Start programs for migrant children have always served infants and toddlers. When we started Head Start, people figured out that we were setting up these wonderful little programs for 3- and 4-year-olds, yet infants and toddlers were lying in the field and getting sprayed with pesticides. So people running those programs said we’ve got to do something.

What Early Head Start represents for us is building up services for infants and toddlers in a significant way. We created an advisory committee with some of the top researchers and experts in health and child development. They advised us that any good infant program has to be concerned about child development, about family development, about the staff--the people who actually work with the kids--and about community development. So we’ve put together Early Head Start--we thought it needed a special name to call attention to it. We’re up to 143 programs.

Q: What must Head Start do to train teachers and find classrooms to expand to 1 million children by 2002?

A: Technical assistance and facilities are a big issue. One of the things that reauthorization allowed was for programs to purchase and construct facilities, which we hadn’t been able to do in the past. We’re talking about $4 billion that’s running through this economy with Head Start, so what we’re saying is, “Go out and leverage those dollars. What you would spend in rent, you could be paying on a mortgage.” The issue for us is what is the most cost-effective way to have facilities. For some places, it might be to purchase a facility or, on Indian reservation, to construct a facility. Other places that is not the most cost effective. A lease arrangement is the most cost effective way.

Q: You’ve got a lot of teachers to train, too.

A: We have a track record in terms of that. When Head Start started back in ‘65, there were very few early childhood people. We’ve built up a national technical assistance network over the last 30 years. More universities and community colleges are offering early childhood education. The market is going to be there.

Thirty percent of the employees of Head Start are current or former parents. People don’t think of us as an economic development institution but we are.

That’s the untold story of Head Start--what’s happened to parents and families. I’m astounded constantly as I move around, meeting people whose lives have been affected by this program. They come up to me and tell me their stories. They’ve gone back to school. They’ve gotten motivated, gotten jobs. It’s an incredible story. Head Start programs know how to relate to and work with low-income families. They know how to motivate them and push them. Other parts of bureaucracy--whether the state level, city level, county level--can learn something from these Head Start programs in terms of the number of people who have been moved from welfare to work over the last 30 years.

Q: During the big expansion in enrollment in the Bush Administration, some local programs had problems handling growth. What have you learned so that won’t happen this time?

A: That growth has to be planned. One of the differences between then and now is that we’re not forcing people to expand. In the past, we’ve gotten expansion dollars and we’ve divvied them up, program by program, according to the size of the program. We’re giving people choices whether they want to expand or not. We’re doing competitive expansion so that people who want to go after it, who have the facilities, who have the staffing, who have the infrastructure to do it can do it and people who aren’t there don’t have to.

Q: Will there still be money for expansion for someone planning for it two years away?

A: If we stay on track. According to the balanced budget agreement, they’ve worked out funding for Head Start to reach these million children by 2002. We anticipate, unless there are some changes and the bipartisan agreement breaks down, that there will be increases in Head Start over the next five years so that people will have the opportunity if they feel they’re not ready this year that they’ll participate in the expansion next year.

Q: What is the political climate for reauthorization next year?

A: It looks positive. The positive signals are that as part of the bipartisan budget agreement, Head Start is one of the few programs that was protected--that the president’s plan to reach a million children by 2002--those figures are in the budget. That says to me that it’s positive. I hope that bipartisan spirit continues because, from my perspective, children aren’t political.

Q: In the beginning of 1995 with the new Republican control of Congress, there were some runs at the budget of Head Start. Do you think the political climate is better now than it was then?

A: Yes. I’m not a fortune teller. Who knows? I just believe in this program. It represents one of the best things that America has to offer. The program works for poor children like nothing else works for poor children and families.

I’ve dedicated my professional life to working on behalf of low-income children in America. My vision is for all America’s children to have this kind of comprehensive child development experience. Poor children need some extra things that middle-income and upper-income children don’t need, but all of our children need nurturing and protection and the experiences that allow them to develop to their fullest. My dream--and I think we just have to have the will to do it despite the balanced budget and all these other things--is that we invest in our children.

Q: Some people have suggested that the states should run Head Start.

A: I don’t think the states should run Head Start. What they’re talking about--devolution--Head Start’s already there. Head Start is run by local communities. We don’t need to utilize our resources by going through another layer of bureaucracy. Our dollars go directly to local communities for children, for families. Our programs are owned by the local community.

Q: When the pressures of your job are the most intense, what recharges you?

A: I go to centers and see real children and real families and talk to them. That reminds me why I’m doing what I’m doing when I think it all gets ridiculous. That keeps me focused on what my mission and my goals are. That gives me the energy to keep up the fight.