Head Start: Vision and Reality

...The curriculum drafted for Head Start was meant to provide poor children with the academic stimulation and physical care every child needs to advance—it was to be a "head start" toward the learning customary for more privileged children of the same age...

...Yet in its reports to Congress, the U.S...

...Still, even Shriver was surprised at how quickly Head Start acquired public support...

...Evaluations must recognize children as members of families and communities capable of contributing to their education and maturation...

...When the results of a Head Start education are studied, they must be evaluated with awareness for the social aptitude gained by children and for the program's effectiveness for whole families...

...Conceived in the Office of Economic Opportunity, which was established in 1965 to "eliminate poverty in the United States," Head Start was to be the palatable spearhead in the OEO's extensive plans to open up poor communities to social action programs aimed at adults...

...Concerns about the dollar value of Head Start's effectiveness in helping children grew, and Congress became more interested in the administration of IQ tests to Head Start children than in parental involvement—some members proposed calculating Head Start's budget allowances based upon children's IQ gains...

...Some parents, if they actually find jobs, must pull their children out of Head Start and place them with full-time babysitters...

...Two-thirds of the nation's Head Start directors report a more radical lack of suitable facilities, and more than 86 percent have insufficient qualified staff...

...In a dis 46 n DISSENT / Fall 2001 trict almost devoid of trees, children tracked the growth of planted seeds and the blooming of plants whose every stage of maturation they called by name...

...Today, Head Start no longer has any connection with the OEO...

...Though many parents are clearly capable of assisting in the administration of Head Start, and often volunteer for service, in this center there are no procedures in place for assessing their abilities, beyond what individual teachers and educational directors try to do on their own initiative...

...Children are being set up to fail tests, the evaluation of which is left to people too overworked to do the job, and the public is being prepared for another round of propaganda about the deficits ingrained in those populations for which the government and its welfare agencies have done all they could...

...Lady Bird Johnson became Head Start's national spokeswoman, and Donna Reed, the television mother of the day, made pubic service announcements encouraging people to volunteer...

...A typical Head Start family service worker has a caseload of a hundred—three times the recommended level—which is likely to include children with developmental disabilities, children in the foster-care system, and children in families with histories of abuse...

...classroom out of five...

...B B ECAUSE Head Start works from within the very center of American poverty, it must address poverty's implications for children...

...in philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York...

...The new program would serve as a back door to bring the poor into community action programs...

...The study emphasizes the involvement of parents in homework assignments, the delivery of medical and social services to families, and the employment of teachers who sought students door-to-door in poor neighborhoods and continued to work closely with parents and guardians...

...In lauding the value of a Head Start education, Lady Bird referred to delinquent parents unable to help their children and implied that participation in Head Start could undo the damage...

...Many children enter Head Start seldom having left their neighborhoods and buildings and never having had access to developmentally helpful toys, let alone "print rich" environments...

...Not only would parents come to know the OEO through Head Start involvement, but their children's continued positive development after Head Start would be ensured by the impact of that involvement on the parents themselves...

...In the same way that the involvement of families in Head Start's administration and policy decisions was never achieved, so too have its promises of sweeping improvement in poor communities fallen short...

...Given 44 n DISSENT / Fall 2001 these constraints, individual Head Start centers have commonly opted to neglect parent outreach, educational seminars, and related family services in favor of admitting as many children as centers can hold, and in using the volunteer efforts of the most engaged parents for chores that require no training...

...DISSENT / Fall 2001 n 47...

...The resulting ambivalence was reflected in Head Start literature and policy manuals, which were heavy on calls for parents' involvement and vague about the ways parents might actually become involved...

...In this center the children's bathrooms are dank and crumbling, the parent and staff bathroom door has been broken for the last six years, roaches are ever visible, and teachers' supplies and cleaning materials are regularly paid for out of pocket by the teachers themselves...

...While discussions of IQ accountability took place in Congress, the few suggestions for parents' involvement and wider community action in the Head Start handbook were deleted...

...Testing for children's initial academic readiness and later academic progress regularly takes place in the center, though there are no provisions to help teachers find the time, as they must, to give tests individually...

...This is not to say that parental involvement will significantly change the hard realities of American poverty...

...Three of them quit within two years, frustrated over the lack of training or support...

...Again, "parent councils" are already mandated for Head Start centers, but only when all parents are able to participate in them and their votes are reflected HEAD START in Head Start policy will their potential be fully realized...

...The strict focus on impact evaluation and the accompanying curriculum and testing now facing Head Start are prescriptions for failure...

...The question as to whether Head Start will produce its intended results is really the question of whether America will actually contend with the poverty through which Head Start children must make their way or will instead demand accountability for conditions we have not made it possible to surmount or even taken the time to understand...

...The "anecdotals" that teachers are required to record weekly based upon their observations of children's needs and strengths are not scheduled into their workdays and are usually dashed off during class hours or saved for just before teachers and centers are to be audited...

...The South Bronx center, again beating the national average, has one full-day (8:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m...

...It needs more rigid accounting of academic yields far less than it needs the resources necessary to advance the intellectual and social engagement of its children...

...The Bush plan takes the wrong direction...

...Their experiences were not abnormal...

...Although family service workers and teachers routinely deal with families in which AIDS, domestic violence, and drug addiction are problems, they receive no formal training to address these crises or the mourning that follows them, and are left to figure out for themselves the community resources to which they are supposed to direct families...

...Still, Head Start needs a structured program resilient enough to work in widely different environments, from the Bronx to Appalachia...

...Over a period of several years, I worked with six mothers of Head Start graduates who became assistants or head teachers...

...The study finds that the academic success of children is linked to home environments and can only be furthered when resources for families are maintained...

...All had been left to teach alone in classrooms that were technically required to have two teachers and, if possible, additional volunteers...

...The work that makes all subsequent academic study possible and that lays the foundation for children's development in the hostile environments outside of Head Start is demonstrated every day in the socialization this center achieves and the curiosity it encourages...

...Many of the best ideas for improving Head Start—such as job training and seminars for parents on issues of their choosing—and the professional evaluation of special-needs children, have long been required by Head Start ordinances, but the emphasis on paper results coupled with a lack of facilitation and funding have turned them into rhetorical chimeras in most centers...

...I saw firsthand the resulting pressures and disappointments during the years I worked in Head Start classrooms in a center in the South Bronx...

...The other classes run different morning and afternoon sessions, creating chronic scheduling conflicts with working parents and those struggling to find jobs...

...In order to "improve Head Start's accountability," the act is tailored to shift the focus of federal management "from staffing, activity levels, and tasks completed toward results...

...General Accounting Office (GAO) finds that Head Start centers still have the resources to serve only 20 percent to 40 percent of eligible children in a given community...

...Lady Bird inaugurated Head Start in a Rose Garden tea party attended by socialites and politician's wives that was covered on the society pages, but not in political reporting...

...It has indeed become a highly popular program, whose funding has tripled in the last ten years...

...But the nature of parent participation was a matter of debate between those who thought that parents needed to acquire childcare and homemaking skills and those who held that they should be equal partners in the administration of the program...

...Dug up in a stalled effort to repair and exterminate, the playground remained unusable, unfenced, and strewn with rodent poison for more than a year...

...At the time of the report, ninety programs had been terminated over four years...

...the centers are to be judged according to the bill's new standard and scripted curriculum...

...Yet the clear focus described in the Chicago study was made possible by a program of parent involvement and a sensitivity for developing children's social aptitude, both of which are to be steam-rolled in Bush's curriculum...

...it needs clear objectives in guiding children and vesting their families with the resources to continue to guide them...

...Although teachers were often exhausted and frustrated, they continually brought project materials from home when the center could not provide them, worked to tailor small-group lessons to the demands of their teeming classrooms, and canvassed as much information as they could about children's home environments...

...Head Start centers that do not comply with the latest regulations face termination...

...These are outcomes not accounted for in Bush's plan, or in any obsession with testable "results" that ignores the context of poor children's academic achievement...

...HEAD START was born in a state of contradiction that thirty-six years of struggle and reform have failed to overcome...

...HEAD START Yet compared to national statistics, this particular center is relatively lucky...

...He thought that racism clouded perceptions about welfare programs and hoped that focusing on children would alleviate its stigma...

...Year after year, I watched children who were overwhelmed by group activities and too shy to speak with others quickly develop into engaged partners in storytelling, eager to describe art projects, and adept at negotiating the rules of moving from one activity to another...

...This year, the center's children were able to return to the cement playground area that sits in the middle of the city housing project where the center is located...

...KATIE TEREZAKIS is completing a Ph.D...

...Bush's plan for Head Start takes its cue from the Results Act of 1993, which focuses on "impact evaluation," the deceptively scientific term for a given program's assessment based upon a comparison of its outcome with an estimate of what might have happened in its absence...

...Within a few years, the parental involvement encouraged by the early OEO was blamed for clashes with local schools, and a group of school superintendents complained to Congress that Head Start parents were undermining their authority...

...In the most recent and extensive study of the effects of preschools developed for the poor, DISSENT /Fall 2001 •45 HEAD START published in May of this year in The Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers have shown that preschool participants, tracked over a period of fifteen years, were less likely to repeat grades, more likely to finish high school, and less likely to be arrested than nonparticipants...

...It cannot be judged as though it were a common preschool designed only to produce academic results...

...Head Start can neither omit the contributions of parents to the management of individual centers, nor can it be asked to make ends meet by ignoring comprehensive training for its staff or forgoing the services of well-trained professionals...

...The bill gives parent involvement a far lower priority than these results, implying that the two are relatively independent, and no mention is made of the development of social aptitude, which is perhaps Head Start's most significant positive effect on children's lives...

...Special needs flagged by testing are seldom addressed with supplementary clinical or educational services...

...So Head Start was established, on the one hand, as a strategic way to reach adults thought to need particular services, and on the other, as a way to undo the damage those same adults were allowing (or causing) their children to suffer...

...Its founders believed that success was only possible by involving parents in the program, which was in line with the OEO's maxim of "maximum feasible participation...

...In language reminiscent of the earlier focus on IQ accountability, the report calls Head Start "a national laboratory for child development" and recommends that Head Start's budget be geared toward results-based evaluations...

...personnel-related expenses make up the biggest part of Head Start's budget, and thousands of dollars can be saved by giving one untrained assistant teacher full responsibility for a classroom...

...Head Start in the South Bronx Governmental machinations over Head Start policy have had glaring microsocial and micropolitical effects on local Head Start programs...

...When Head Start did make news, discussions focused on the cycles of cultural deprivation ingrained in poor communities and used emerging research in child psyDISSENT / Fall 2001 n 43 HEAD START chology to argue that poor children introduced to the values of hard work could rise above the unemployment and ignorance accepted in their communities...

...While we struggled to meet federal demands for on-paper results, it was impossible to facilitate or fund many mandated services for the enrolled children, and we could do nothing at all for the many more on waiting lists for admission...

...For at least as long as the bathroom door has been broken, there has been a bullet hole at a child's head level in the window of one classroom's "art area...

...At the time of the report, however, no supplementary funding or training for the latest oversight requirements had been created, and officials complained to the GAO that "workload demands prevented [them] from submitting the reports on time...

...It will, however, allow Head Start centers to use the funds they have to become more responsive to families' needs and therefore be more effective in producing positive academic and social results for children...

...It was precisely the focus on needy children, to the discredit of their families, that allowed Head Start to garner such enthusiasm...

...In a report to the Senate and House of Representatives in 1998, the GAO pledged that the Results Act would finally rectify inconclusive and inconsistent appraisals of Head Start's effectiveness...

...Children who lived in crowded studio apartments with parents and other family members learned how to request quiet time in the classroom's reading and music areas...

...It needs staff who are given the time, as were those in the Chicago study, to regularly visit homes and to work on particular projects with families and teachers who are paid more than poverty-level wages and are subsidized to continue their training...

...Maximum Feasible Participation Early OEO director Sargent Shriver hit upon the idea of a summer school and pre-kindergarten for poor children as the OEO was struggling against the suspicion of paternalism its other programs aroused, as well as against the misgivings of conservative journalists and politicians, who were apprehensive about what they considered to be the OED's radical agenda...

...Accounting for Bush The education bill recently passed by the Bush administration proposes to address Head Start's weaknesses by requiring particular academic results...

...The Bush administration has already jumped on the Chicago findings to argue that with a "clear focus," language and literacy can also be improved in Head Start programs...

...African children learned Spanish and English directives for games from their peers, and others who entered the classroom with no knowledge of English graduated not only reciting alphabets, but expert at cajoling others to explain the meaning of English words...

...Given the climate of the civil rights movement, increasing concern with American poverty, and widely discussed studies showing the first few years of life to be crucial for later development, Shriver knew that Head Start was likely to win public support to a degree that his legal aid and other programs had not...

...At a time when other OEO programs were receiving bad press, Shriver's plan was to implement a program that would advance underprivileged three and four year olds to a level of educational readiness on par with their middle-class counterparts, while providing their families with health services, job training, and other resources...

...The GAO also reports the inability of Head Start centers to find health professionals and facilities in their communities at affordable costs or to retain qualified teachers (who are paid an average of $15,000 per year [1994,1998...

...in the first summer, hundreds of volunteers and OEO workers set up more than two thousand centers serving more than five hundred thousand children...