In a recent issue of Time, Joe Klein acknowledges the ignored reality that national-scale programs based on effective pilot programs frequently do not yield the same successful results. His case in point is Head Start—a “Great Society” pre-school program intended to provide a boost to disadvantaged children before they enter elementary school. Head Start was based on a few pilot programs, such as the Perry Preschool program, that were believed to be effective. Advocates asserted that a national preschool program for disadvantaged children would yield the same positive results. However, …
Sen. Harry Reid’s (D–NV) comments yesterday about cowboy poetry may have received the most attention on the Senate floor yesterday morning, but his pleas for the failed Head Start preschool program were just as preposterous. Arguing against the omnibus spending bill under consideration, the Senator said: Here are some of the consequences. … It will kick 200,000 Head Start students, the poorest of the poor—little boys and girls trying to get started in life—it will kick them off their ability to learn to read and do elementary math. Hundreds in …
House Republicans are attempting to live up to their pledge to cut $100 billion from the federal government’s current fiscal year 2011 budget. One of the proposed programs placed on the chopping block is Head Start – a “Great Society” pre-school program intended to provide a boost to disadvantaged children before they enter elementary school. The plan is to make a significant cut to a highly ineffective program that is plagued by fraud. Using Head Start’s budget of $7.235 billion in fiscal year 2010 as the baseline, the plan is …
The Washington Post reports today that the Obama administration is entering “the politically sensitive debate” on sex education by spending $110 million on 115 programs in 38 states and the District of Columbia that “teach about the risks of specific sexual activities and the benefits of contraception and others that focus primarily on encouraging teens to delay sex.” But as the Post later reports, only five of these 110 programs are “authentic” abstinence programs and they will receive less than $5 million. So how did the Obama administration choose which …
Delivering his first major address on education in March 2009, President Barack Obama promised the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce: “Secretary Duncan will use only one test when deciding what ideas to support with your precious tax dollars: It’s not whether an idea is liberal or conservative, but whether it works.” Supposedly keeping with this commitment to “evidence based” policy, former Director of the Office of Management and Budget Peter Orszag made the case expanded Head Start funding in a recent edition of Annals of the American Academy of Political and …
The Obama administration’s Race to the Top program presents states with a choice: adopt national standards for academic performance, or refuse desperately-needed federal dollars. The problem? National standards only standardize mediocrity, while taking power over educational choices out of the hands of parents and local school boards and transferring it to the cumbersome and often misled bureaucracy of Washington. Recent scandal over the corrupt and ineffectual Head Start program goes to show how ill-equipped the federal government is at directly administering a national school program; while the Obama administration’s shameless …
Head Start, which provides child development services primarily to low-income families and their children, is one of the few popular programs that came out of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. But following up on hotline tips alleging fraud and abuse, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) began an undercover investigation of Head Start centers in California, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin. Heritage Senior Policy Analyst David Muhlhausen details what the GAO found: In eight of the 13 eligibility tests, the fictitious families were told by Head Start staff that …
“Fraud,” “deceit,” and “exploitation.” Those words were used this week at a hearing about the Head Start program–the federal government’s long-standing preschool program for low-income children. An investigation carried out by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), revealed several cases of underreporting of income and the falsification of addresses by Head Start employees in order to “qualify” children for the program. Head Start grantees receive money based on the number of children they serve. As reported in an Education and Labor committee hearing on May 18, reports of two fraudulent cases …
The federal government’s Head Start program comes under scrutiny today by the House Education and Labor Committee, which will examine a Government Accountability Office investigation that discovered fraudulent behavior and unlawful actions in the program’s enrollment and eligibility processes. Chairman George Miller (D-CA) called today’s 1:30 p.m. committee hearing after learning of GAO’s undercover investigation. Last week Miller asked Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to conduct an immediate review of Head Start, an early childhood education program first started in 1965. The GAO report is not yet publicly available. These …
If you’ve heard the results of the recent Head Start Impact Study, congratulations. You are one of the few Americans who, no thanks to national media sources, are aware that your taxpayer dollars have been funding a failing federal program for the last 45 years. The Heritage Foundation recently hosted an event titled: Is Head Start Helping Children Succeed and Does Anyone Care?, to discuss the recently-released Impact Study that found no lasting impact for Head Start children after first grade. According to the study–which compared both three- and four-year-old …
