The Los Angeles Times reports that President Obama plans to call for a “$1.6 billion increase in federal funding for child-care programs” in his upcoming State of the Union address. The report frames this proposal as part of a larger effort to “help the middle class.”
Some parents will probably welcome the news of more subsidized child care. But they need to remember that their children are the ones who will end up paying for the billions that will be added to the ballooning national debt, which is set to explode over the next decade. Put in that perspective, parents and taxpayers need to ask: is another “investment” in child care or preschool really worth it?
According to the GAO, the federal government currently operates 69 different early childhood education and child care program at a total annual cost of at least $25 billion. And new evidence suggests that this considerable “investment” isn’t being well spent.
As we have reported, the recently-released national evaluation of the $9 billion per-year Head Start program found the program to be a complete failure—providing zero lasting benefits to students by the end of 1st grade. Russ Whitehurst of the Brookings Institution provides a good overview of the study’s findings and importance in a new article:
The study demonstrated that children’s attendance in Head Start has no demonstrable impact on their academic, socio-emotional, or health status at the end of first grade. That’s right. If you were a mother who lost the lottery, couldn’t get your child into Head Start, and had to care for her at home, she was no worse off at the end of first grade than she would have been had she gotten into Head Start.
Whitehurst also points out that media has completely ignored the release of the report:
The study went virtually unnoticed. You can’t find anything about it in the Washington Post or the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or any other media outlet that serves the general public. The Post has 11 reporters covering education. Why isn’t a report on the effectiveness of the nation’s largest federally administered education program, one that serves thousands of needy children within the Post’s metro area, deemed worthy of newsprint? Is Head Start so sacrosanct that bad news about it is to be ignored?
This week’s State of the Union address should give the press another news hook to look at the Head Start report. As President Obama urges that taxpayers “invest” billions more on child care or preschool programs, he should be asked to explain whether his administration will still live up to his pledge of “funding what works.”
Taxpayers and children (the taxpayers of the future) deserve to know.
The middle class, of course, will pay for it. Our children and grandchildren will pay for it.
Obama should leave the responsibility to the responsible party. THE PARENTS. Children are very impressionable and need the fundamentals taught by the bonding with their PARENTS, NOT GOVERNMENT!!!!!!!!!! K-12 public education by the feds is indoctrinating. GET GOVERNMENT influential, indoctrinating SCHOOLS OUT OF THE LIVES OF OUR CHILDREN. They are corrupt and on course for a governmental mind set of the youth.
Obviously Obama is agenda driven and doesn't have a clue that economics drives reality.
He is still living as a college preppy trying to invent a reality where hope, dreams and audacity of exuberance make worth. Alas, as we all know to well some one has to create and sustain the value that all these hopes and dreams rest upon.
When he grows up, faces the reality of the damages of dreams and immature adolescent desires to change the world with some one elses sweat, tears and efforts, he may come to realize as all us grown ups do , that stealing your neighbors worth, value and dreams to sustain yours is nothing more than barbarism; a style of existence we American adults already know leads to the government robbing the fruits of liberty that we have fought so hard for that have benefited all of us.
We hope he grows up soon and realizes his brand of totalitarianism bears the opposite fruits of which he preaches.
We can only hope he grows up because the child we are enduring is spending at a rate that exceeds our ability to sustain the idealism of social reconstruction laid forth by the mere child we have elected.
Your question is great "who will pay?' I don't think Obama has a clue, as i don't believe his ideas have proceeded beyond the day care level.
We and the next generation will pay for this, and more children will be pre-programed. Federal Child Care is not as innocent as it sounds.
http://howisthatobamavoteworkingoutforyou.blogspo…
Back the dark ages, Mommies took care of their preschool children…politically incorrect today…but very cost effective…………homemade cookies anyone???
First of all,my wife and I have 7 children.She stays at home to take care of them while I go to work.Now,on a policemans salary,I (we), will end up paying again for other peoples children.People need to learn to raise their own.
Since when is Head Start a middle class program???
Ron – very well stated.
Maybe Jesus 2.0 should have gone to Head Start ?
I have spent the last 15 years undoing what has been indoctinated into my grandsons heads. Schools should teach the three R's and let parents teach morals and believes. Let's stop trying to out do each other with test scores and teach the fundamentals, like Math, science and most of all READING, most today cannot comprehend what they read nor can they balance a check book or do their own taxes. And Please teach these children How To Write in Cursive.
Obama dipping into a dry well america don't have the money,and will have to tax the american people for this program..Do you realy want some unkown preson teaching your child to be policly correct while in someone elses care. It is our responceabliey to bring up our children ,and you will be paying for day care through taxation it will not be free we need to use some common sence and think this one out our goverment needs to quit spending.
President Obama clearly understands his debt to public education in America.
The value of "government education" to his socialist agenda is incalculable. A population truely educated in the principles of our Constitution would never have elected him. Ronald Reagan had the right idea, eliminating the Dept. of Education. Too bad he didn't accomplish it.
Head Start doesn’t work because the fundamental question has not been addressed due to “political correctness” – to what degree is a person’s IQ inherited and to what degree does education influence this value?” All people are NOT created equal (simply visit your local shopping mall) – in our country all people have the right to equal access. Certainly there are exceptions, but in general smart people tend to beget smart people and vice versa. All the government programs in the world will not change a person’s DNA – at least not yet.
Parents should be free to choose "what works" for the education of their children. This should be a core principle for the conservative movement going forward. President Obama wants to spend over a billion dollars to promote more government involvement in the education of pre-school children?!!
This proposal fits with the agenda of big government. Aside from the important point that it's outrageous to spend more taxpayers' money, it's a power grab that will further destroy our country.
Make no mistake: The hard-left's agenda is to increase the power of government through what is already an incredibly inefficient monolithic government school system. They have set their sights on education, energy, and health to put us all on the plantation, to destroy our freedom and our way of life.
We need to organize every PRECINCT in our country to restore FREEDOM.
This study was by the Brookings Institution! No right-wingers there.
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Who will pay? Always, someone other than the one proposing that which is to be provided..
Someone loses the home they couldn't afford to buy in the first place? Here comes somebody in government saying "we must establish a program"to help them". Someone gets in over their heads with credit cards, booze, drugs, you name it and BAM, here comes somebody in the government to help with a program. People have kids but can't afford to raise them, you guessed it, somebody from the government demands a program to help them.
Now who among our population are the ones needing all these "programs"? Most likely, they are in the lower half of all income earners. Those who are in the lower 50% of income earners pay only 3% of all income taxes.
I and millions like me have do whatever it takes to support ourselves and our families. We have a hard enough time paying our own bills. We are sick to death of the government constantly coming up with new people to feel sorry for and support. Sure, let millions of illegal aliens pour across the border, but gee now that there here they need food stamps, health care, subsidized rent, education for their children and more prisons for their felons and, oh yes, more "programs".
If the government really wanted to help they would reduce taxes on businesses and on capital gains. This would allow businesses to expand and hire employees and it would cause investors to infuse more capital into business expansion. They would also enforce illegal immigration laws and deport every illegal alien in this country.
Our government all too often has taken it on themselves to be the solution to everyone's problems, and always at taxpayer expense. Government welfare programs should provide temporary, not permanent relief from life's demands on able bodied individuals. People who have worked for a living over forty years and paid their taxes and into Social Security, Medicare and unemployment compensation have earned their benefits. You don't earn benefits by just showing up with your hand out.
This is just another "welfare" program that Obama is proposeing for one reason,
and it's not to help parents and childern. IT'S FOR VOTES from the lower middle
class and minorties. Just more trickery and deception from Obama and his
socialist lackeys are still buying votes with our tax dollars.
Why would he be o.k. with supporting this and letting the D.C. scholarship for those kids die?
Because it is not about education, but power. Teachers unions don't like charter schools, so the Dems will destroy a program that works in favor of throwing a bone to their union supporters. An educated electorate is the bane of liberalism.