Head Start Deserves Better

The federal Head Start program has enjoyed solid bipartisan support for years. Legislators recognized that its education, health and social services have a proven benefit in helping disadvantaged children succeed at school. The downside is pretty much nil.

Congress has doubled Head Start’s funding over the last six years, and last month bills were introduced to make some long-overdue improvements to the 33-year-old program. The Senate swiftly passed its reform bill, but momentum halted last week when controversial “killer amendments” were tacked onto the House bill. The amendments should be swept aside as the distractions they are, having nothing to do with the revisions Congress planned.

One killer amendment, for instance, would remove a requirement that union wages be paid for Head Start construction projects, while another would ban children from Head Start if their mothers were unable to help authorities locate their fathers to collect child support. Rep. William F. Goodling (R-Pa.), chairman of the House committee that introduced the amendments, acknowledges that they are being championed by a small minority of his GOP colleagues who “wanted to find a way to cause problems.” Goodling, as chairman, has the authority to withdraw the amendments and should exercise it.

Chief among the needed Head Start reforms is expanding the program so it can be accessible to mothers who are working full-time or who will be working soon as part of welfare reform. Changes are needed in curriculum and performance standards, which are vague and lack substance, perhaps a leftover from Head Start’s founding in the “let them be free” era of the 1960s. The House and Senate bills would make a start by beefing up oversight and teacher credentialing requirements and by requiring that Head Start children learn such basic skills as recognizing letters and numbers. But states, which set Head Start curricula, need to go beyond such minimum standards by ensuring that Head Start offers a solid, structured learning program.

New brain research has shown that preschool children profit greatly from intellectually stimulating environments. Head Start began exposing young children to such environments long before science perceived why these conditions are so valuable. Head Start does need some retooling, but this most useful and bipartisan of programs deserves a new lease on life, not a political poke in the eye.