Head Start

Early Ed for “The Safety of Our Country”

Lisa Guernsey — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:41:00 -0500

A report last week from a new group called Mission: Readiness featured a very troubling statistic: 75 percent of young Americans cannot join the U.S. military because they are too poorly educated, have a criminal record or are overweight.

But here's a promising development to go along with that startling data: The report goes straight to the heart of the problem, explaining that the solution is to ensure that all children receive a high-quality early education. In fact, the report puts early education its sub-head.

The title is, "Ready, Willing, and Unable to Serve: 75 Percent of Young Adults Cannot Join the Military; Early Education Across America is Needed to Ensure National Security."

Eighty-nine retired military leaders, including two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, signed the report. They have come together to form Mission: Readiness, a non-profit, bi-partisan organization dedicated to supporting public investments in early childhood programs as a matter of national security.

In their words:

"The safety of our country demands urgent and intelligent action. We call on all policymakers to ensure America's national security by supporting interventions that will prepare young people for a life of military service and productive citizenship; this includes fully funding early childhood education programs, improving graduation rates, supporting families in ways that improve parenting skills and reduce child abuse, improving child health, mental health and nutrition services, and helping troubled kids get back on track."

In its "Next Steps" section, the report hails Oklahoma for its pre-K program, and points out that "Head Start serves less than half of all eligible children," and Early Head Start serves far fewer than that.

But the report doesn't simply urge the opening of more pre-K programs for 4-year-olds. It includes examples of birth-to-5 strategies and stresses how important it is to deliver high-quality programs -- both of which are approaches that we fully support as well.

The only piece missing from the military leaders' assessment is an acknowledgment that school readiness by age 5 is not the end-all, be-all either. It will take high quality early education programs that push up through the primary grades, maintaining the momentum of the gains made in children's preschool years. The faster we start focusing on that, the more likely the chances that our country can not only pull itself out of the military-recruitment morass but also improve the quality of life that these children will lead no matter what career path they choose.

So Far, So Good: Home Visitation Still Intact in Health Care Reform Bill

Lisa Guernsey — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:46:00 -0400

The home visitation program -- a key piece of the Obama Administration's pledge to strengthen programs for children from birth to age 5 -- received another boost yesterday when the Senate's Finance Committee passed its version of the health care bill. The bill includes language that would establish a program for "maternal, infant and early childhood visitation."

Over the summer, the House committees with dominion over the financing and regulation of the proposed program had already cleared the way for the program. And it appears to have support from both Democrats and Republicans. Rep. Todd Russell Platts (R-PA) was among the authors of the first version to be introduced this year, and Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) has introduced similar legislation in the past. Unless something unexpected happens -- and anything is possible given the overheated environment surrounding health care reform (see our post on Chuck Norris) -- chances are good that any health care bill that passes the House and Senate will bring home visitation along for the ride.

Still, there are differences between the House and Senate versions that will have to be worked through -- especially related to funding. The version that passed yesterday allocates twice as much funding for home visitation than what passed in the House committees. It would provide $1.5 billion in mandatory funding over five years (starting with $100 million in 2010). The version passed by the House committees put the price at $750 million over five years.

Obama's budget, you may remember, had requested $124 million in mandatory funding for fiscal year 2010, with plans to spend $1.8 billion on the program ten years from now. The Administration had estimated that 50,000 additional families could be served in the program's first year, with 450,000 on board by 2019.

Aside from the increase in money, the Finance Committee's version looks similar to what we've described before.

Here's how it would work: The federal government would grant states money each year to support programs that assist low-income pregnant women and mothers with babies who want the help. The assistance would come in the form of a registered nurse or trained paraprofessional who arrives at the mother's home on a regular basis to provide information that encourages healthy pregnancies and infant care.

States who want the grant money would have to fund programs modeled on already-well-researched approaches, such as the Nurse-Family Partnership and the program run by Healthy Families America. The bill also requires states to hit benchmarks if they want to keep their grants, showing improvement in maternal and child health, child injury protection, school readiness, and other factors related to children's well being. States would have to use rigorous research methods to evaluate the programs.

The Finance Committee's version also requires states to conduct a "needs assessment" - a report on how many at-risk families live in the state and what services they lack access to. This report, according to the committee mark-up, would be "separate from but coordinated with" the needs assessments required by agencies that receive Head Start grants. It's encouraging to see a nod to the need to align efforts between Head Start and this program, especially since the Early Head Start program is already designed to offer pregnant women and new mothers a combination of services including center-based child care, parenting groups and home visitation. Here at Early Ed Watch, we wonder if there are other areas of commonality between Early Head Start and home visitation programs that should be examined to promote coordination and avoid redundancies.

Given that smart health-care reform should include as many enticements for prevention and wellness as possible, it makes good sense for home visitation to be included in this bill. And as many experts pointed out at a Brookings Institution forum earlier this month, it's exciting to see the bill's emphasis on rigorous evaluation and the use of programs with strong, scientific evidence of effectiveness. Along with our colleagues at New Health Dialogue, another New America Foundation blog, we'll be watching the progress closely as the Senate and House start their debates. Stay tuned.

Checking in with Head Start’s New Director

Lisa Guernsey — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:05:00 -0400

After two years without one, the Office of Head Start will soon have an appointed director: Yvette Sanchez Fuentes, executive director of the National Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Association, says she will take the post on October 13^th. She was appointed by Carmen Nazario, Assistant Secretary for Children and Families at HHS.

In a brief phone call with Early Ed Watch yesterday, Sanchez Fuentes described two areas that she will focus on from the outset: understanding the needs of training and technical assistance programs; and enhancing "transparency" among members of the early care and education community so that people "feel that information is flowing back and forth."

Another goal, she said, is to "helping states to learn from the lessons of Head Start" as they try to build cohesive early learning systems as envisioned under the proposed Early Learning Challenge Grant program. "We can use Head Start," she said. "A lot of programs already have infrastructure in place. The question is, how can you build off of what already exists?"

Sanchez Fuentes, 36, who has a bachelor's degree in liberal studies from California Polytechnic University, started her career as a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified school district, teaching kindergarten and third grade. She later worked in San Luis Obispo's Economic Opportunity Commission, creating a family child care initiative using federal grant money from Head Start's program for migrant and seasonal workers. The initiative, she said, was designed to provide family care providers the training and guidance required to meet Head Start's performance standards while providing migrant parents a more comfortable, familiar environment in which to place their children while working. The program, she said, grew from 15 providers in 1996 to 100 providers in 2001.

From 2001-2002, Sanchez Fuentes was part of the National Head Start Fellows program, an annual program that brings Head Start practitioners to Washington, D.C., to learn about the broader policy landscape and provide their expertise to policy makers at the federal level. Not long after, she took the executive director position at the Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Association, which is based in Washington, D.C.

She is the co-author of Migrant and Season Head Start and Child Care Partnerships: A Report from the Field, published by the Education Development Center in 2003.

Sanchez Fuentes said in the interview that she sees hopeful signs that the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education will be able to work together to build high-quality systems for young children. "It's really about building capacity and building out a birth-to-8 continuum," said Sanchez Fuentes. The need for these connections, she said, is hitting close to home: She has a son in the first grade.

The last appointed director for the Office of Head Start was Chanell Wilkins, who held the position from March 2006 to mid-2007. Since August of 2007, career employee Patricia Brown has been the acting director of the Office of Head Start.

A Tool for Tracking Federal Spending on Education and Other Programs for Children

Maggie Severns — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:40:00 -0400

It is deceptively difficult to determine how much money the federal government spends on America's children each year. Money spent on children's health, education, and nutrition -- as well as a host of other government programs that promote child welfare -- comes from 180 different federal programs, making it hard to account for just how much is spent each year.

Enter First Focus, a nonpartisan children's advocacy organization that created the Children's Budget, a document that provides a birds' eye view of all federal spending on education. This week, using data from Congressional appropriations bills through fiscal year 2009, First Focus released its latest report. It shows that, while there are 82 different federal programs aimed at children from birth through age 18, the share of federal money spent on children in the non-defense budget has decreased from 10.5 percent to 9.2 percent over the past five years.

The report comes with an array of helpful charts and searchable databases at ChildrensBudget.org. We here at Early Ed Watch were curious about whether spending on education programs in particular has been going up or down over the years. Using the tools on the site, we found:

Education's share of overall federal spending declined between 2005 and 2009, from 2.09 percent to 1.51 percent.
When funding levels are adjusted for inflation, the amount spent on Head Start from 2005 to 2009 decreased by 7.9 percent.
Title I funding stagnated between 2005 and 2007, but received a boost during the last two fiscal years. When adjusted for inflation, funding for Title I in 2009 was 3.2 percent above 2005 funding levels.

There's lots more you can do with the Children's Budget website, including tracking programs and money by program type, federal department, and a variety of other criteria. Keep in mind, of course, that several changes may be ahead in the fiscal 2010 budget, which Congress should pass this fall.

Don't forget that here at New America we have another helpful tool -- the Federal Education Budget Project -- which features data on students' academic achievement and demographics that can be analyzed alongside federal, state and district funding data.

The Head Start Series in PDF

Lisa Guernsey — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:56:00 -0400

Many thanks to everyone who has provided comments on our seven-part series on Head Start and to those of you who participated in our web chat on Tuesday.

For your convenience, we've combined all of the posts plus the chat transcript into a PDF document for easy reading. Keep the feedback coming!

Live Chat: The Future of Head Start

Lisa Guernsey — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 17:15:00 -0400

In this week's New America/Politico live web chat, Lisa Guernsey and Christina Satkowski are taking questions on the future of Head Start.

Ms. Guernsey, director of New America's Early Education Initiative, and Ms. Satkowski, a former program associate, are the authors of "What's Ahead for Head Start?" This seven-part blog series tackles critical questions about the federal government's 44-year-old preschool program for children from poor families.

As the Obama Administration turns its attention to improved programs for young children, where does Head Start fit? As states develop their own pre-K programs while struggling to balance budgets, what role can Head Start play?

UPDATE: This chat has concluded, but a full transcript is available below.

Head Start and Early Ed with New America Foundation:

To see last week's chat, with Fellow Dayo Olopade on the Obama Administration's faith-based initiatives, please click here.

Where is Head Start Heading? Three Potential Tracks

Lisa Guernsey — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:06:00 -0400

This is the final post in a seven-part series on the future of Head Start. Please join us for a web chat on this topic tomorrow at 12:30 p.m. EDT here at EarlyEdWatch.org in partnership with Politico.com. We invite you to email us questions to get the chat rolling.

We started this series with a train metaphor, describing early education programs as trains moving down various tracks to deliver children to elementary school ready and eager to learn. More than a decade ago, when a few states started developing new paths for publicly funded preschool, the tracks already laid by Head Start seemed outdated and distant from what states were constructing. The unspoken, yet as it turns out, overstated, assumption was that state pre-K was aiming for literacy and kindergarten readiness, while Head Start was pointed toward children's health and social well-being.

But changes in Head Start standards and a tilt toward literacy instruction have brought the program closer to what many states have envisioned for their public pre-K programs. Studies have shown that the program has had a modest positive impact on several, though not all, indicators of children's readiness for school. While state-funded pre-K programs have more teachers with bachelor's degrees, independent ratings of the quality of preschool classrooms put Head Start ahead of state-based programs.

Sept. 8: Competing, Collaborating and Evolving
Sept. 9: Seeking Signs of Change Since 2007
Sept. 11: Checking Assumptions on School Readiness
Sept. 15: A Tilt Toward Literacy
Sept 17: The Case for 'Comprehensive Services'
Sept. 18: The Benjamin Buttonization of Head Start
Today: Future Tracks
Tomorrow: Web chat here (email us your questions)

Meanwhile, early childhood specialists have renewed their call for a broader definition of kindergarten readiness, beyond preparing children to identify and sound out letters. A growing number of pre-K programs are expanding their mission to include children's social development, parent involvement and health -- echoing an approach that Head Start has taken since its genesis.

Ideally this might mean more choices for low-income parents and more cohesion in today's fledgling systems of early education. But it also raises the prospect of confusion and collision. Except in a few select places -- such as Tulsa, Oklahoma, which we described in our previous post -- Head Start and state pre-K programs run according to entirely different sets of standards for everything from teacher credentialing to how many hours their doors are open. Head Start is designed to be available only to very poor families, while the pre-K programs in the states vary widely in how they determine which families can participate. And Head Start and state-funded pre-K aren't the only trains at the junction. Child care programs that rely on state and federal subsidies are chugging along too, many of which have standards in only the barest sense of the word.

How these programs connect to the public schools is critical too. A coherent, high-quality system would never allow trains to simply deposit children on the platform, assuming that elementary school educators will know where to pick up each individual child and where to take them next. Ultimately, the future of early education in this country will depend on how well state and federal policymakers build the infrastructure to connect all these different routes into an integrated system that transports children seamlessly from preschool (or even the infant and toddler years) through early elementary school.

Imagine, for example, a day when parents can make smart decisions about childcare and preschool with a full array of information at their fingertips, as if they were perusing a transit map with multiple and intersecting options for enrolling their children in affordable preschool and flexible wraparound care. To make this happen, the broader early education system - all the way up to 3^rd grade -- will need to become better connected to Head Start, and vice versa.

Both the Early Learning Challenge Fund, passed by the House of Representatives last week, and the 2007 changes to the Head Start law call for better collaboration between all the different stakeholders in early childhood circles, not to mention the public schools. But many questions remain on how to knit everything together. Based on what this blog series has considered so far, we see at least three paths that Head Start could take over the coming years -- each of which have both positive points and pitfalls.

More possibilities are out there too, and we're eager to get perspectives from our trusty Early Ed Watch readers. Consider this a brainstorming exercise, help us list out more pros and cons in the comment field below, and join us tomorrow for a web chat on this series.

Brainstorming: 3 Tracks Head Start Could Take

1. Divvy Up the Day, Serving Children Under Different Programs at Different Times

In this scenario, Head Start classrooms could become state pre-K classrooms in the morning and revert to Head Start classrooms in the afternoon. Or vice versa. The point is that part of the day is paid for with state funds and part of it is paid for with federal Head Start dollars.

PROS:

Head Start programs in some states, like Georgia, are already doing this.

Students from a broader spectrum of economic circumstances -- Head Start and non-Head Start children -- arrive in kindergarten with a similar set of skills because at least part of their day has been taught by pre-K teachers according to the state's curriculum standards.

CONS:

Funding instability in one program could lead to a mismatch in quality and expectations between portions of the day. What happens when a state cuts early education programs to survive a severe budget crunch? (Funding imbalances are, of course, a problem inherent in any system that relies on both state and federal money.)

Eligibility criteria may differ between time periods in the day. Many working families, for example, aren't "poor enough" to qualify for Head Start. Parents who work full-time would have to find alternatives for afternoon childcare - and figure out how their children would be transported to different facilities or classrooms.

2. Put Everyone in One Train Car by Blending Funds at the Classroom Level

Children of different economic circumstances would be taught in one room instead of being separated, based on their parents' income levels, into different classrooms, buildings and facilities, as they are today. At the level of classroom instruction, no one would be able to tell which children have their tuition covered by Head Start dollars.

PROS:

Children would no longer be segregated by economic status; the stigma of poverty associated with Head Start could subside.

Because children would be all mixed together, as they are in the K-12 public schools, there are more chances to promote continuity from pre-K up through the early elementary grades. This is already happening in pockets around the country, including in parts of South Dakota and Chicago.

CONS:

Without a common set of standards for both programs, whose standards for classroom quality take precedence? Who would be "in charge' on issues like teacher credentialing and children-to-teacher ratios -- the state or the federal government? Would standards be based on the lowest common denominator?

3. Let Head Start Get Younger, While Schools and States Take Care of 4-Year-Olds

The federal government, via Head Start, would pay for early learning programs for parents of babies and children up to age 4. States -- and by extension, local school districts -- would pay for education services for children at age 4 and up.

PROS:

Trends show that Head Start is already taking on a higher proportion of very young children than it used to, while state-funded pre-K programs typically aim only at 4-year-olds or children one year before entering kindergarten. Head Start officials in Tulsa, Okla. -- where there are already strong ties to the state's pre-K program -- are seriously considering this approach.

Since Head Start is aimed at families with very low-incomes, and research has shown that cognitive gaps between the poor and the middle-class start as early as nine months old, this could give poor children several years of support so they aren't too far behind before they start pre-K.

CONS:

But there is the risk of yet more disconnection. Would we simply be shifting the already problematic division between K-12 and early childhood systems down by one year, creating an artificial divide at age 4 instead of age 5, where it sits today?

The Benjamin Buttonization of Head Start

Lisa Guernsey — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:52:00 -0400

Sept. 8: Competing, Collaborating and Evolving
Sept. 9: Seeking Signs of Change Since 2007
Sept. 11: Checking Assumptions on School Readiness
Sept. 15: A Tilt Toward Literacy
Sept 17: The Case for 'Comprehensive Services'
Today: The Benjamin Buttonization of Head Start
Sept. 21: Future Tracks
Sept. 22: Web chat (email us your questions)

This is the sixth post in a seven-part series on the future of Head Start. Please join us for a web chat on this topic on Tuesday, Sept. 22 at 12:30 p.m. EDT here at EarlyEdWatch.org. We invite you to email us questions to get the chat rolling.

Head Start may be about to turn 45. But you could argue that it's younger than ever.

Though many people think of Head Start as a program aimed at 4-year-olds, it actually enrolls children at 3 and 4 in the hopes of immersing them in two full years of early childhood services before their arrival in kindergarten. Lately, Head Start's enrollment has started to shift, serving an increasing proportion of 3-year-olds and a decreasing proportion of 4-year-olds. In 2008, 3-year-olds comprised 36 percent of Head Start's enrollment, up from 28 percent in 2006. At the same time, enrollment of 4-year-olds dropped to 50 percent from 56 percent over those two years.

In 1995, when Early Head Start was introduced, the program started to reach for even younger children -- targeting infants, toddlers and pregnant mothers. With the influx of stimulus money, the number of children and pregnant mothers served by Early Head Start programs is set to nearly double in size -- with money available to serve 117,000 babies and pregnant mothers instead of the 62,000 participating last year.

Could these new growth areas lead Head Start to become known as the program for pre-preschoolers? Are we witnessing the Benjamin Buttonization of Head Start, a program getting younger with each passing year?

It seems likely, especially in places where state-funded pre-K programs are serving children at age 4 but not age 3.

The shift in age demographics shouldn't be taken to mean, however, that Head Start agencies across the country are having a hard time finding 4-year-olds. In places of high poverty or without many other options for affordable or free pre-K, demand for Head Start at age 4 continues to be very high. "We haven't had any problem filling our 4-year-old slots," says YaTonya Abdullah, disability coordinator and head teacher for the Head Start program in Morris County, N.J. "We always have a waiting list."

Neither is there a stampede of Head Start programs rushing to convert themselves into Early Head Start programs, even though the law was amended in 2007 to allow them to do so. The Department of Health and Human Services will not disclose how many applications it has received from Head Start agencies wanting to make this transformation, but given that conversions require agencies to stop serving 3- and 4-year-olds, most agencies do not consider it an appealing option. They are loathe to eliminate services for older children just to be able to serve infants and toddlers.

It is the case, however, that with so much money suddenly available to expand Early Head Start slots -- $1.1 billion in stimulus funds -- Head Start administrators are now chomping at the bit to supplement their preschool offerings with birth-to-three programs. At the annual Birth to Three Institute in Washington, D.C., a June gathering that typically draws people who work with infants and toddlers, sessions were packed to standing-room-only. And unlike past years, representatives from Head Start were everywhere. Many of them said they had come to find out exactly what Early Head Start looks like and how their programs might be able to get a little younger themselves. (They learned, for example, that caring for children this young is not cheap. Providing care for infants and toddlers typically costs 15 percent more than regular Head Start, primarily because more staff members are required to keep adult-to-child ratios low.)

Federal officials are now processing the abundance of applications that arrived by the July 9^th deadline for agencies to apply for the expansion money. An HHS spokesman said that an announcement will be coming this month or next on how many Head Start agencies will be given money to expand.

Early Head Start has received good press for its effectiveness. Since its genesis, a national study has tracked the progress of its participants and compared them to a group of similar children who were not assigned to be part of it. Results published in 2002 showed that Early Head Start had significantly increased children's scores on measures of cognitive and social-emotional development by the time they were 3.

Of course, Early Head Start should not be considered a magic pill. "You cannot expect one program to bear the responsibility" for pulling children out of entrenched poverty, said Tammy Mann, deputy executive director of Zero to Three, in a talk at the Birth to Three Institute. But one aspect of recent research on Early Head Start's impact has been particularly heartening: It showed that children with the most risk factors - those born to poor mothers without much education and high levels of depression, for example - are most helped by Early Head Start when it is connected to Head Start. "When you look across the age spectrum, children did better when they had the opportunity to experience the continuity," Mann said. "If they had Early Head Start to Head Start, we began to see positive outcomes."

And what about continuity in a shorter time span, as children grow from 3 to 4 years old?

Here is where the shift among regular Head Start programs toward serving a greater proportion of 3-year-olds could be good or bad. The positive side is that if more Head Start children are reached at younger ages, they will presumably be in preschool for two full years before entering kindergarten. That's a plus, given that studies have shown two years of preschool to be better than one.

But if the shift to 3-year-old services is occurring because Head Start centers are losing 4-year-olds to other pre-K providers, children may be bopping from one program to another each year, and then to yet another setting when they enter kindergarten. Research shows that with each such transition, something may be lost.

For a peek into the future, it's helpful to look at states where Head Start operates alongside state-run pre-K programs with large enrollments. In Georgia, the first state in the country to offer universal pre-K, the state pays for 6.5 hours of pre-K instruction for any 4-year-old whose family wants it. Over 50 percent of all 4-year-olds are enrolled. It does not provide services for 3s.

When the program started, some people worried that this would siphon children away from Head Start. But enrollment has remained steady in both programs over the past few years, with about 76,000 4-year-olds in state-funded pre-K and 22,000 3- and 4-year-olds in Head Start in 07-08, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research. And lately, the two programs have started to work together more closely. In a sign of their collaboration, both Janice Haker, Georgia's Head Start Collaboration Director and Susan Adams, program manager for Georgia Pre-K, spoke with Early Ed Watch together on a conference call to explain how they work.

One strategy on the table, they said, is for Head Start to focus on 3-year-olds in poverty, while the state's Pre-K program covers the 4s, no matter what their income. Already, Georgia's Head Start programs serve more 3-year-olds than 4-year olds; most recent data show that approximately 12,000 3-year-olds are in the state's Head Start programs versus just 9,000 4-year-olds. That enrollment inbalance could increase if Head Start focused even more of its energies on enrolling 3-year-olds. (And as the Pre-K program stands now, 4-year-olds who qualify for Head Start typically get state-funded pre-K for 6.5 hours with Head Start funding paying for their "wrap-around services" including after-hours care and health and parental involvement programs that the state program doesn't cover.)

The Head Start program in Tulsa, Oklahoma has a similar vision. In Oklahoma, every 4-year-old in the state has the option of attending the state's free pre-K program, which is administered by the public schools. One might think that this would pull so many children away from Head Start that it wouldn't survive, but that isn't what happened. Because the law was written to ensure that public schools could contract out for preschool services, Head Start has had a place at the table. In Tulsa, where the Community Action Project (CAP) runs Head Start, this opened up an opportunity for the Head Start agency to make stronger connections with the schools and build new Head Start facilities on school grounds. Tulsa's Head Start also decided to make sure its standards lined up with those of the pre-K program, requiring every teacher to have a bachelor's degree and paying them the same as a public school teacher. New research out of Georgetown University (described in an earlier post in this series) shows that classroom quality is high and nearly identical to the preschool classrooms in the public schools.

It used to be that Tulsa's Head Start program had more 4-year-olds than 3-year-olds, but lately the proportion has dropped to about 50-50. Steven Dow, executive director for CAP, envisions a day when the public schools get all the 4-year-olds and Head Start retains the 3-year-olds.

"Head Start ideally shouldn't have 4-year-olds at all," Dow said. "If the school district could get more money from the state, that would let them do more 4-year-olds and let us do the 3s." But he added that this would only work "as long as schools are committed to reaching the at-risk 4s." His concern is that Head Start's emphasis on serving the neediest families - who often need to be recruited and made aware of the importance of early education - would fall away under the state-funded program, since it takes in all families regardless of income. Another worry is whether Head Start's comprehensive services could be fully replicated by the state program. Oklahoma already provides medical screenings and meals in pre-K - would commensurate health and parental involvement services be offered too?

If Dow's vision does come to pass - and if Early Head Start continues its rise -- the result would be an interesting division in state and federal funding, with the federal government essentially paying for children's education up until age 4 and the state taking over from there.

Whether that is a fruitful dynamic is up in the air. But it shows how important it will be to think through exactly how early education should be funded, especially as we see it extending to younger and younger ages. And it will be crucial to make transitions as seamless as possible as children move through infancy to preschool and on through elementary school. As Early Ed Watch has stressed before, these PreK-3^rd transitions are a key element in making sure that children have the best opportunities for educational success.

Before we brainstorm what future tracks that Head Start might pursue (the topic of the final post in this series), we will leave you with this statistic from the executive summary of NIEER's 2008 yearbook: "At current growth rates, it will take 150 years for the United States to achieve universal access for 3-year-olds." That's right, 150 years. With Head Start expansion, maybe there is at least a chance for more of the poorest 3 year olds to gain access before then.

The Case for 'Comprehensive Services'

Christina Satkowski — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:09:00 -0400

This is the fifth post in a seven-part series on the future of Head Start. Please join us for a web chat on this topic on Tuesday, Sept. 22 at 12:30 p.m. EDT here at EarlyEdWatch.org. We invite you to email us questions to get the chat rolling.

Last year Rhode Island Governor Donald Carcieri stirred up a storm of criticism when he said that Head Start "has been the biggest waste of money" and needs to "get into the early education business" instead.

His comment said a lot -- not only about his own misunderstandings of the program, but about how Head Start is perceived in the outside world. Many mistakenly believe that Head Start isn't doing a good enough job of preparing children to succeed in school because it has devoted too much energy to providing health, nutrition and parent-involvement services.

Among Head Start's advocates, these "comprehensive services"- medical screenings, parenting classes, tooth brushing after every meal -- have become almost sacrosanct. But, as discussed in yesterday's post, Head Start also provides instruction in literacy and other school-readiness skills. In fact, just 9.3 percent of Head Start's total $6.8 billion annual budget in 2006 was for health and nutritional services, with a comparable amount going to family support services, according to data provided by the Administration for Children and Families to Early Ed Watch. By contrast, 43 percent went to education. This is not a case of Head Start offering comprehensive services to the exclusion of preschool instruction.

The more relevant questions today are: How exactly should Head Start balance these two responsibilities? Should state-funded pre-K programs be performing the same balancing act? And how should the services offered by states, localities and Head Start interoperate?

First, let's consider how well Head Start's comprehensive services have been working.

Head Start providers are required by law to evaluate the medical history and needs of every enrolled child and to arrange for a dental exam within 90 calendar days of the child's entry into the program. Decades of research show that these screenings have a positive impact. A 2007 study in The Quarterly Journal of Economics on mortality rates showed that, compared to Head Start attendees, elementary school children without Head Start are more likely to die of causes addressed by Head Start's services. In addition, Head Start children at ages 3 and 4 have much greater access to dental care than those who didn't attend, according to the 2005 Impact Study. The study also showed that 3-year-olds enrolled in Head Start were healthier in general than their peers, but no effect showed up for 4-year-olds. And a 1995 study in The American Economic Review showed that immunization rates go up when children attend Head Start. No study exists, as far as we know, showing Head Start having a negative impact on children's health.

Sept. 8: Competing, Collaborating and Evolving
Sept. 9: Seeking Signs of Change Since 2007
Sept. 11: Checking Assumptions on School Readiness
Sept. 15: A Tilt Toward Literacy
Today: The Case for 'Comprehensive Services'
Friday: The Benjamin Buttonization of Head Start
Sept. 21: Future Tracks
Sept. 22: Web chat (email us your questions)

Early Head Start comes with good news, too. More than 90 percent of babies in Early Head Start received complete medical screenings in 2007 - exceeding HHS's target, according to data in the budget submission for 2009 from the Administration for Children and Families.

"One of things that has disappointed me is that Head Start never gets the credit it deserves for what it has done with kids' health," says Edward Zigler, one of the early directors of Head Start and a professor emeritus in child psychology at Yale University."

Do these health findings play a role in the cognitive and social growth of children in Head Start? Academic researchers haven't arrived at an answer to this question yet. But experts in child development have long theorized that children's health and mental well-being are inextricably linked to later academic success, not to mention the general ability to become active citizens who can cope with life's challenges. This idea has anchored Head Start's identity as a child development program since the appointment of Urie Bronfenbrenner, a Cornell psychologist famous for his ecological approach, to the planning committee for Head Start more than 44 years ago.

Given the solid data that we have on health outcomes alone, it's clearly worthwhile to continue Head Start's work in ensuring, at the very least, that children receive proper medical attention.

Another aspect of Head Start that comes under the "comprehensive services" umbrella is parent involvement, an approach that grew out of the 1960s Great Society agenda and War on Poverty. Since the beginning, Head Start parents have been volunteering in classrooms, taking parenting classes, and participating on the Parent Policy Councils that are unique to the Head Start model. These councils have decision-making authority over curriculum and staff, and in many cases, they allow parents to take leadership roles in their community for the first time. Many other parents use volunteering as a first step towards getting a higher degree, becoming a teacher, or perhaps a program director.

In 2008, more than 890,000 Head Start parents -- roughly one per child - volunteered with the program, according to the Head Start Program Information Report. But beyond that, there is little data to examine on how, if and in what ways parental involvement makes a difference to Head Start children in particular. It's an area ripe for more research.

Head Start also delivers nutrition services, provides healthy meals to children each day, and offers lessons for parents on how to limit high-fat, high-sugar foods. But, again, little is understood about the impact of these services. Few if any peer-reviewed articles appear in keyword searches of nutrition and Head Start.

Still, most early childhood advocates consider comprehensive services well worth protecting -- and they have worried that changes to Head Start might lead to weak funding for such programs. In 2001, for example, the Bush administration proposed turning Head Start into a block grant to states, rather than making grants directly to local school districts and non-profits. At the time, many advocates for the program worried that giving states more control would lead to a diminished emphasis on children's health and social well-being, turning Head Start programs into little more than literacy-based preschools instead.

But that shift in funding didn't happen and worries have subsided since. Today, policymakers at the federal level and in many states are focused on building bridges between Head Start and other organizations that provide health and well-being services for young children. States are facing the happy prospect of new money from the Early Learning Challenge Fund -- a federal grant system that is written into legislation now being debated in Congress. But whether states can win these new grants will depend in part on well their early childhood programs work together. As Head Start evolves to find its place in this new paradigm, we need to examine what states are doing to build a family-friendly system of early childhood services to connect all children to local resources that already exist if and when they need them.

One model -- exemplified, in fact, by Head Start -- is to think of early learning centers of all kinds as the starting point, not the end point, for health and other social services. Teachers and program directors in Head Start don't don a white coat and do the health check-ups themselves. Instead, they serve as brokers, connecting children and their families to existing Medicaid-eligible services as well as those offered by community organizations. (Given how difficult it can be in some communities to find a doctor that accepts Medicaid, this assistance is invaluable for many families.)

The North Carolina Smart Start program, for example, has adopted a similar strategy that involves its state pre-K program. Smart Start funds county-level partnerships that work to connect families, regardless of income, to local health services. Those funds are combined with money for More at Four, the state pre-kindergarten program, to allow children who qualify to receive the highest level of services offered by both state pre-k and Head Start.

Arizona is another interesting case. It is one of many states where the state pre-K program originally focused primarily on education and has not required providers to give medical referrals. But things are changing with First Things First, a three-year-old initiative, funded by a tobacco tax, that works to build community connections for families in the state. The program will serve middle-income children as well as the low-income children served by Head Start. "Our focus is to create a support bubble around children and their families," said Karen Woodhouse, First Things First's deputy director.

Could it be that state pre-k programs are actually starting to look a little more like Head Start when it comes to offering comprehensive services? And in doing so, could they also pave the way for further expansion of comprehensive services into the early elementary grades -- as the "community schools" movement advocates? If so, it becomes even more critical to find the most effective ways for Head Start and state systems to collaborate or divvy up the job. For some insights on that front, stay tuned for our next post.

A Tilt Toward Literacy

Lisa Guernsey — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 22:08:00 -0400

This is the fourth in a seven-part series on the future of Head Start. Please join us for a web chat on this topic on Tuesday, Sept. 22 at 12:30 p.m. EDT here at EarlyEdWatch.org. We invite you to email us questions to get the chat rolling.

What a difference a decade makes. Ask experienced Head Start teachers and administrators about how things have changed over the past 10 to 15 years, and many of them will talk about differences in how, or whether, they taught the A, B, Cs or even posted the letters on their classroom walls. "I was forbidden to teach letters," wrote teacher J.M. Holland just this week in an Early Ed Watch post reflecting on his experience in 1995.

Leery of putting undue attention on literacy instruction, Head Start's proponents have always argued that a comprehensive approach to supporting young children's development is the strategy most likely to yield long-term learning gains for the impoverished youngsters Head Start serves. Head Start was designed at the outset to promote the development of the whole child, mentally, socially, cognitively and physically. It is a program that offers health services -- including dental screening, nutrition, and other services that alleviate the effects of poverty -- as well as education.

Sept. 8: Competing, Collaborating and Evolving
Sept. 9: Seeking Signs of Change Since 2007
Sept. 11: Checking Assumptions on School Readiness
Today: A Tilt Toward Literacy
Thursday: The Case for Comprehensive Services
Friday: The Benjamin Buttonization of Head Start
Sept. 21: Future Tracks
Sept. 22: Web chat (email us your questions)

But to some critics, Head Start's emphasis on comprehensive services is a sign the program has little interest in preparing children to read. That's the argument Douglas J. Besharov, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, made last February in an op-ed against investing stimulus funds in Head Start. Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, devotes an entire chapter in his book Reroute the Preschool Juggernaut to "The Problem of Head Start," arguing that Head Start does too little to prepare poor youngsters for success in school. Finn spends a large part of the chapter describing how Head Start's founders worried, several decades ago, about placing too much importance on children's cognitive development. But he ignores more recent policy decisions -- most noticeably improvements to Head Start's early literacy standards in 1998 and 2000 -- that increased the program's focus on early literacy. He also glides over several findings from the 2005 Impact Study that do show participants making improvement on several, albeit not all, indicators of early literacy skills.

The truth is that a lot has changed since the days that Finn writes about. Head Start continues to be a comprehensive program (the case for continuing this comprehensive focus will come in tomorrow's post), but Head Start has taken a 180-degree turn on teaching pre-literacy skills. Alphabet letters are allowed -- indeed encouraged -- not just on the walls but throughout Head Start classrooms. Teachers are required to more directly introduce early reading skills, including the identification of letters and the singling out of printed words on signs and in books.

Today, more and more early childhood experts -- including many in Head Start programs -- agree that 4-year-olds should have exposure to some kind of pre-literacy instruction. New research published throughout this decade is persuasive, and some of it is based on gains made by Head Start children. (Watch for a helpful summary of this research in the forthcoming report titled "America's Early Childhood Literacy Gap," to be released on Thursday by the non-profit organization, Jumpstart.) Those who criticize Head Start for not being interested in early literacy haven't been paying much attention to the program lately.

Instead, the more pressing question today is not whether literacy should be taught in Head Start classrooms, but how. What are the most effective and developmentally appropriate approaches? For example, Susan Neuman, an early literacy expert and professor of education at the University of Michigan, worries that Head Start programs are relying on rote memorization strategies. "There is this false sense of satisfaction that we may be doing the right thing now," Neuman said. "But I worry that we may not be doing the right things, that we aren't focusing on the things that bring achievement."

The tilt toward literacy dates to the 1990s. Throughout the administrations of the Presidents George H.W. Bush and William Clinton, when efforts to improve Head Start quality gathered steam, new research began to emerge on the importance of foundational literacy skills. As early as 1992, one of Head Start's first directors reflected on the tension between the program's comprehensive approach and the desire to prepare children for academic work in school. Edward Zigler, professor emeritus at Yale University, described it this way in Head Start: The Inside Story of America's Most Successful Educational Experiment: "In an effort to ensure that Head Start was a comprehensive program, particularly one that downplayed cognitive development, we may have paid too little attention to the educational component," Zigler wrote.

In the 1998 reauthorization, Congress mandated that the Head Start Performance Standards be expanded to include "print and numeracy awareness." To measure this, the law required "that children know that letters of the alphabet are a special category of visual graphics that can be individually named, recognize a word as a unit of print, identify at least 10 letters of the alphabet, and associate sounds with written words."

Helen Traylor, associate commissioner of the Head Start Bureau at the time, laid out these requirements in Head Start Bulletin on curriculum in 2000. But she maintained that Head Start teachers should not veer from developmentally appropriate teaching. "This does not mean," she wrote, "that we drill children on the alphabet or enforce rote learning!"

Also in 2000, the federal government established the Child Outcomes Framework, which defines a set of skills and developmental milestones that children should reach to be prepared for school. Literacy is named as one of eight top-level domains. For example, a child should show "a growing awareness of beginning and ending sounds of words" and "recognize a word as a unit of print."

"We've seen some real progress in the last decade," said Susan H. Landry, founder and director of the Children's Learning Institute at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. Landry has led efforts nationwide to include more literacy instruction in the early years. "It took a lot of work over the years to convince both the federal Head Start folks and the Head Start Association to make this adjustment in their philosophy, " she said, "And it slowly but surely happened, in some places more quickly than others."

In 2003, during President George W. Bush's first term, the administration rolled out a National Reporting System (NRS) that was designed to test young children's ability to recognize letters, among other things. The system was criticized for being hastily designed and inappropriate for young children and was scrapped three years later as part of the 2007 reauthorization of Head Start. But some of its data remains available in the Department of Health and Human Services performance reports. In NRS's last year, 95 percent of Head Start children could identify at least 10 letters.

Other data, from the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES), show improvements in children's letter identification even earlier than 2007. One of its studies compares sample groups of children who attended Head Start in 1997-98, 2000-01 and 2003-04. The children surveyed in 2003-04 were able to name more letters after a year in Head Start than those who attended four years before them. (See chart below.)

It would be wrong, of course, to rely entirely on letter identification as a measure of pre-literacy. Head Start observers want to see more growth in vocabulary and language use, for example. Equally important is an examination of which early literacy skills are most helpful to children in the long run, up to and beyond third grade, when comprehension becomes more important than simple decoding of words. We need more independent research projects that help to answer these questions.

One area for improvement, urged by many literacy experts and championed here at Early Ed Watch, is the teaching of actual content instead of word and letter drilling. An important report, Preschool Curriculum: What's In it For Children and Teachers, published by the Albert Shanker Institute earlier this year, showed the dearth of rich content provided for 3- and 4-year olds.

Timothy Shanahan, the chair of the National Early Literacy Panel, a group that has come under criticism of its own for focusing too narrowly on decoding skills and letter naming, agrees that there is room for improvement - not just in Head Start but in early education generally. "I do think right now we're at a stage where there is a lot more literacy instruction going on in preschools than there was five years ago, but that also means there is a lot more bad instruction than was going on five years ago as well," he said.

The root of the problem, he said, is that "you have a work force that hasn't had a lot of training."

In other words, how do we ensure that teachers are using the most appropriate methods when many of them do not have post-secondary degrees related to early childhood development, do not have time or money to get these degrees, or do not have strong communication skills of their own, in part because they never went to college? As we reported in an earlier post in this series, changes in Head Start laws have upped the ante for teacher credentialing, with half of all Head Start teachers required to have a bachelor's degree by 2013. Will this help to improve pre-literacy instruction? Is it enough?

As we contemplate the next steps for Head Start, these issues of how to help children gain early literacy skills need to become an important part of the discussion. They are wrapped up in many of the sticky issues surrounding teacher training, credentialing, professional development, curricular choices, early learning standards and developmentally appropriate assessment. Many of these same issues are shared by state-funded pre-K programs. If we are to build a system of early education that provides pre-literacy instruction - a goal that the research shows us to be essential - we have to think about how to move both state pre-K and Head Start onto stronger, more effective pre-literacy tracks.