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Showing stories 1 - 15 of 203.
WV - Groups warn about cutting Head Start
Submitted by kkurth. Posted on Wednesday, June 06 @ 09:35:24 EDT by kkurth
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By next year, 257 West Virginia children could lose access to Head Start if its funding is cut 1 percent, according to an estimate by the private, nonprofit National Head Start Association.
Heads of several community organizations, including Kanawha County Head Start, plan to hold a press conference today to urge Congress to override a presidential veto, if necessary, to avoid cutting Head Start enrollment.
The U.S. House of Representatives has already passed a bill that would not cut Head Start. President Bush has threatened to veto spending bills needed to implement Congress’s budget plan.
“These programs have a direct effect on Kanawha County,” said Ted Boettner, policy analyst for the Mountain State Education & Research Foundation.
West Virginia had 7,610 children — mostly 3- and 4-year-olds from low-income families — enrolled in Head Start last year, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The program is designed to help preschoolers develop the basic skills they will need to succeed in school.
Volunteers outnumber paid staff five to one, according to the department’s statistics.
“Unfortunately in West Virginia, our Head Start programs have had to make some serious cuts to a range of critical services because of several tight budget years,” said Becky Gooch-Erbacher, director of the West Virginia Head Start Association, in a press release.
Full text available at the Charleston Gazette
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OR - Plan to expand Head Start program is gaining momentum
Submitted by kkurth. Posted on Monday, May 14 @ 10:04:33 EDT by kkurth
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Legislative leaders say an expansion of the Head Start preschool program is more likely to win passage this session than a competing idea to provide full-day kindergarten at all schools.
State Superintendent Susan Castillo says Oregon children need both programs. But her kindergarten proposal, which would cost the state about $50 million a year, is being stymied by competing demands for money and a belief by some influential groups that expanding Head Start should be the priority.
"My committee made the decision we wanted to invest in Head Start before we go about funding all-day kindergarten," Sen. Vicki Walker, D-Eugene, chairwoman of the Senate Education and General Government Committee, told The Oregonian. "I think everyone is on board with that."
Head Start, a program created in 1965, combines educational, social and health services for low-income children and families.
Gov. Ted Kulongoski proposed spending $39 million in the next two years to add 3,200 children to the roughly 9,800 Oregon children already served. He proposed raising the minimum corporate income tax to pay for the expansion. Republicans, however, have balked at raising any taxes.
Sen. Kurt Schrader, D-Canby, and Rep. Mary Nolan, D-Portland, co-chairs of the budget-writing Ways and Means Committee, have proposed spending $29 million to expand Head Start -- without raising the $10 minimum corporate tax. That would add 2,200 children to the program.
Legislative leaders say expanding Head Start over the next two years has a powerful coalition of business and civic leaders, law enforcement officials and child welfare advocates behind it.
"It's the early years that make the difference," said Swati Adarkar, the director of the Children's Institute of Oregon. "We know that the achievement gap is well established by kindergarten."
Full text available at the Statesman Journal
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NC - No resolution yet on Head Start property
Submitted by kkurth. Posted on Thursday, May 10 @ 08:42:55 EDT by kkurth
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Mountain Projects director Patsy Dowling hit another wall this week in her attempt to lease land from the county for an intergenerational Head Start and senior day care center.
Dowling has been working with the county for much of the past year to arrive at a lease agreement for a two-acre tract the county owns on lower Russ Avenue past K-Mart. But commissioners are divided on the idea.
Commissioners Larry Ammons and Kirk Kirkpatrick are reluctant to lease that particular site to Mountain Projects. Both see it as potentially incongruous with the expansion of the Russ Avenue commercial corridor in the future. The site could fetch top dollar as prime commercial land one day, whereas a Head Start and senior day care could go anywhere.
“I am certainly not opposed at all to this particular project and would like to see it go. I just don’t know if this is the best place,” Kirkpatrick said.
However, Commissioners Bill Upton and Mary Ann Enloe support leasing the site to Mountain Projects. Both said the county’s obligation to help disadvantaged toddlers and seniors who can’t stay home alone is more important than the future commercial value of the site.
“I think we need to look after our people. I think that’s what the taxpayers want us to do,” Upton said, calling it the “right thing.”
Meanwhile, Commissioner Skeeter Curtis has avoided weighing in. Curtis, apparently the swing vote on the issue, has not yet revealed which side he is leaning to, despite a recurring discussion of the issue at every commissioner meeting since March.
The issue marks the first major disagreement among the new board of commissioners — two of the five commissioners were newly elected to the board last fall.
In the meantime, Dowling is running out of time. The current Head Start in Waynesville is busting at the seams. Dowling wants to have a new center ready by May 2008 when the lease on the current building runs out.
“I am a year away from having to relocate a large number of children,” Dowling told commissioners this week. “I really need this issue clarified. If this is not something you are willing to accept, then I just really need to know.”
Full text available at The Smoky Mountain News
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House Votes to End Test Central to GOP's Shift on Head Start
Submitted by kkurth. Posted on Thursday, May 03 @ 10:53:48 EDT by kkurth
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The House dealt a blow to President Bush's chief early-childhood initiative yesterday, voting to end the standardized testing of 4-year-olds, which was at the heart of his efforts to refocus Head Start.
Supporters of the legislation, which would boost spending on the program and includes provisions to improve teacher quality, said it was aimed at ending Republican efforts to shift the focus of the 42-year-old program from nurturing social and emotional development to emphasizing literacy.
"We are back on the right track," said Sarah Greene, president of the National Head Start Association, a nonprofit group that promotes the program.
Head Start Director Channell Wilkins said he was pleased that the bill had passed but said he had some qualms, especially about the elimination of the testing.
"I'm still concerned that we don't have any kind of assessment tool to show the progress our kids are making," he said.
Democrats said the bill, which passed 365 to 48, signaled a new approach to social and education policy in Congress after control for years by Republicans.
"They tried to starve programs like this," said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.). "We are going to start unstarving them."
The bill, which would reauthorize the program for the first time since 1998, would increase spending on Head Start from $6.9 billion for the current fiscal year to $7.4 billion for fiscal 2008 and would require that at least 50 percent of Head Start teachers have a bachelor's degree by 2013.
It would also make room for as many as 10,000 more youngsters, reversing a participation decline, from 912,000 in 2002 to 909,000 last year. More money would also be directed to programs for younger children and migrant and Indian students, and the bill requires that 25 percent of the new money be used to raise teacher salaries and benefits.
Head Start, seen as the nation's leading preschool program for the poor, started 42 years ago to help children and their families prepare for school academically as well in the social, psychological and health arenas. Services include sending children to a dentist, doctor or mental health professional and teaching them how to hold a fork or use a toilet.
Full text available at the Washington Post
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House approves expanded Head Start
Submitted by kkurth. Posted on Thursday, May 03 @ 10:45:49 EDT by kkurth
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The House yesterday renewed and expanded the Head Start program for preschoolers, despite squabbling about student tests, the role of faith-based providers and whether states should have more control.
The bill, approved by a 365-48 vote, aims to improve the 42-year-old program by increasing competition among providers, boosting funding in order to serve more youngsters and requiring more highly qualified teachers.
Senate Democrats hope to introduce their own Head Start bill in the next few weeks.
The House bill "is a major revamping of the Head Start program," said Rep. George Miller, California Democrat and chairman of the Education and Labor Committee.
He said Head Start "continues to be a wise investment."
The program is intended to help 3- and 4-year-olds from low-income households start kindergarten on par with their more privileged peers.
The White House opposes the bill for several reasons, one being the omission of language protecting faith-based Head Start providers.
Democrats blocked a Republican amendment that would have solidified the ability of faith-based Head Start providers to hire workers of one particular faith. Democratic leaders said it would effectively legalize discrimination.
"No citizen should have to pass a religious test to qualify for a publicly funded job," said Rep. Kathy Castor, Florida Democrat.
Without protection, faith-based groups might drop out of the program, Republicans countered.
"It'll just force them out of participating," said Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, California Republican.
Democrats offered an amendment supporting faith-based groups' right to participate in Head Start, but Mr. McKeon said it was just "political cover." The amendment was approved on a vote of 229-195.
Full text available at the Washington Times
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Head Start test gets low grade
Submitted by kkurth. Posted on Monday, April 30 @ 09:19:51 EDT by kkurth
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Head Start teacher Enrique Renteria sits on the floor, holding up a book and asking the dozen 3- and 4-year- olds sitting around him about the flowers in the picture: What color is this flower? How do you say it in Spanish? What shape is this petal?
The children shout out the answers, and Renteria praises them or prompts them to try again.
Then, less than 10 minutes after sitting down, the kids are up, off to another activity.
Loudell Robb, a program director in charge of Head Start for Washington's Rosemount Center, where Renteria teaches, says young children learn best that way: through play and with activities suited to their short attention spans and bursts of energy.
What preschoolers aren't suited for, in Robb's opinion, is a 20-minute standardized test that requires them to sit and focus on a series of questions about letters, numbers and vocabulary intended to assess their school readiness. It's a test called the National Reporting System that's required of all Head Start students ages 4 and 5 every spring and fall, a program that Congress is considering doing away with.
A Senate bill to reauthorize Head Start that suspends the test was passed unanimously by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in February and is expected to go to a full Senate vote this spring. A similar bill passed the House Committee on Education and Labor, 42-1, last month and is expected to soon go to the full House for a vote. Meanwhile, toddlers will take the exam next month as Head Start teachers attempt to measure how much progress the youngsters have made since the beginning of the school year.
"I have found the test to be of no validity," Robb said. "It's such an intrusion into the lives of low-income children. ... It's unfair to children who do not have exposure to some of the vocabulary items they're testing for."
She points to words on the test such as decorating, nostril, horrified, nutritious and farm that children are asked to identify from four pictures. Nutritious is represented by a loaf of bread, a nostril is shown in a picture of a nose.
"Children don't use that word. They say nose," Robb said.
The National Reporting System has been in place since 2003. About 400,000 preschoolers enrolled in Head Start, a federal program started in 1965 to provide education, health and nutrition services to poor children and their families, take the test at the beginning and the end of the school year.
The test starts with a game of Simon Says, then progresses to asking the child to identify pictures of objects such as a frog or a bee. Children are tested on vocabulary by identifying a picture and are asked to identify letters. The math portion tests knowledge of numbers and ability to count, and has some elementary bar graphs.
Supporters of the test say it provides accountability, showing whether Head Start programs, which serve more than 900,000 children nationwide, are preparing those children for school.
"It gives us an opportunity to really assess how well our children are doing," said Channell Wilkins, the director of the federal office of Head Start, which is under the Administration for Children and Families. Wilkins said he believes some opposition stems from a misconception that test results will be used to shut poorer-performing programs.
The data from the assessments are intended to improve programs, not penalize them, he said.
Wilkins also disagrees with critics who argue that the test is not age-appropriate.
But Samuel Meisels, president of the Erikson Institute, a Chicago graduate school focusing on child development, says the test is flawed. It's too long for preschoolers' attention spans; it doesn't take into account that young children learn in uneven spurts, so a snapshot taken one day of what words they know may not be an accurate assessment of their vocabulary; many of the words are too hard for preschoolers; and the test doesn't measure the social or emotional development that Head Start provides, he said.
"I think this was an incredibly uninformed test," Meisels said.
Full text available at the Baltimore Sun
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VT - Sanders says Dems will boost Head Start funds
Submitted by kkurth. Posted on Tuesday, April 03 @ 12:15:39 EDT by kkurth
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The Democrat-controlled Congress will begin restoring cuts to programs like Head Start, the federal grants which provide for early reading and math training to children, Sen. Bernard Sanders said while visiting a Head Start center here on Brook St.
But it will take time and be made more difficult by tax breaks which disproportionately benefit the wealthy and spending on the war in Iraq, the Vermont Independent said.
A bill passed out of the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on which he sits adds six percent to the Head Start budget. But the program has seen a reduction in funding by 11 percent since 2002.
Those cuts – and even more drastic reductions in a related program called Even Start – matter in Vermont. Roughly one in six children in Vermont live in poverty. That is a little better than the national average of 20 percent, but Vermont has seen the largest increase in that population in the country in recent years, according to advocates who joined Sanders.
That is despite Vermont's reputation for strong social service programs, said Carlen Finn, head of Voices for Vermont's Children.
"In fact we are doing poorly and it is getting worse," she said.
Vermont gets about $14.7 million in Head Start money, which goes to services and education to ready children to enter school. But only about 35 percent of the eligible children find a spot in such a program in the state because of lack of funding, said Marianne Miller, Head Start and Early Start Coordinator for Central Vermont Community Action Council. Sanders used the group's classroom to make his pitch for the need for additional funding for Head Start and similar programs.
"The Head Start program itself has been starving," Miller said.
Even worse off is Even Start, a program that teaches parents of some of those same children to read.
A federal study of the program called its effectiveness into question and was part of the reason for proposed cuts. But that study was done before changes were made with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which reauthorized the program, said Wendy Ross, coordinator of Even Start for the Vermont Department of Education.
"We have done amazing work since No Child Left Behind, but the evaluations they are using to de-fund the program were done before," Ross said.
In her experience the program works, and it is important because the education of a child's parent is often "the determining factor of how that child will do," Ross said.
In 2004 Vermont received $1.1 million and served 172 families. This year the program in Vermont got $445,000 and serves 112, in part because a one-time carry-over from the previous year dulled the impact. With even more cuts proposed for the next budget year and no carry-over, the impact is likely to be severe, advocates and officials said.
"It's a heart breaker," Ross said.
Vermont got about $3.47 million in Head Start funding this year.
But even if the bill now in the Senate, which increases funding to the program, again becomes law, there will still be more need than there is money to pay for it, Sanders said.
"Even that is not enough," he said. "The way we treat children in this country is a disgrace."
Full text available at the Times Argus
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OR - Legislation could bolster Head Start
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Friday, March 30 @ 08:15:24 EDT by emohan
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Current budget constraints are limiting the number of children who can attend Head Start, but Gov. Ted Kulongoski wants to give all eligible children in Oregon the opportunity to attend the pre-kindergarten program.
With House Bill 2217, Kulongoski is urging the Legislature to fully fund Head Start. The governor's budget proposal would increase the $10 minimum tax for corporations in order to raise $39 million to fund Head Start—an amount that would enable more kids to be accepted into the program.
In Clatsop, Columbia and Tillamook Counties, about 300 families participate in the Head Start program. According to Joyce Ervin with Child and Family Development Programs, 187 children in the tri-county area are funded through federal dollars, while 70 are funded by the state.
"It is very good news," Ervin said. "There is a huge need. We have a waiting list of more than 200 children in the tri-county area. We're leaving a lot of children unserved out there, so it is really important to receive more funding."
In Clatsop County about 60 percent of eligible children—3 and 4 year olds from low-income families—are able to enroll in Head Start. To be eligible, the family must meet federal poverty guidelines. For example, a family of four cannot exceed $20,650 annual income. It is estimated that 3,000 eligible children in Oregon have not been able to get into a Head Start program.
"We know that by getting kids into school early we can help them get a strong start. Educators are able to identify children who need extra help, who may be at risk of falling behind, and get more time to work with them and their families early on," State Schools Superintendent Susan Castillo noted. "We can't waste any more time. We can't let those early years go by without making meaningful connections with these children and their families. Head Start fills that need."
Head Start provides comprehensive services to low-income families including early childhood development and education, child health and developmental services, family partnerships and referrals, and services to children with disabilities.
Full text available at the Seaside Signal
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Head Start test faces challenge
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Monday, March 19 @ 08:23:25 EDT by emohan
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Congress is moving to end a standardized test backed by the Bush administration and given to hundreds of thousands of preschool children in Head Start programs each year, amid complaints from early childhood experts that the exam is developmentally inappropriate and poorly designed.
The National Reporting System, a set of mini-tests said to measure verbal and math skills, has been given in Head Start programs each fall and spring since 2003.
Bush administration officials say the test is necessary to help determine how well the nearly 2,700 Head Start programs in the country are progressing. Before the national test was introduced, each Head Start program used its own assessments to monitor student progress.
This spring, the test is scheduled to be administered to 410,000 4- and 5-year-olds unless Congress moves to end it. On Wednesday, the House Education and Labor Committee voted to end the test in a vote on the reauthorization of Head Start, a preschool program started in the mid-1960s to improve the lives of at-risk children and their families. The full House is expected to vote on the measure as soon as this week.
A Senate subcommittee passed a bill with the same measure last month, and the full Senate is to take up the bill soon. It is expected that members will vote to suspend the test.
The Bush administration promoted an overhaul of Head Start and launched the National Reporting System as part of the president's major early-childhood initiative, a follow-up to his K-12 No Child Left Behind program, which emphasizes standardized tests. It was also seen as an attempt to shift Head Start's focus from nurturing children's social and emotional development to emphasizing literacy.
The controversy over the assessment underscores a key but often ignored component in the national debate about standardized testing: How is it determined whether a test measures what it is intended to measure? Experts say that one way is to do extensive field testing before an assessment is implemented, which was not done for the National Reporting System.
Another concern of early childhood experts is the practicality of testing young children, who are generally poor test takers.
Full text available at the St. Paul Pioneer Press
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AL - Head Start asks for state funding
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Thursday, March 15 @ 11:26:56 EDT by emohan
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Because of funding cuts by the U.S. Congress, officials with Head Start asked the Alabama Legislature Tuesday to pitch in $1 million in state money for the federally funded preschool program for low income children.
Anita Humphrey, president of the Alabama Head Start Association, said at a news conference Tuesday federal budget cuts have reduced funding to the 31 Head Start programs in Alabama by more than $1 million. She said about 18,000 children participate in the programs, designed to get children ready to attend school.
"The federal cuts are placing our children in jeopardy," Humphrey said.
State Rep. Laura Hall, D-Huntsville, said she is preparing a bill that would appropriate $1 million from the education budget for Head Start, which has not previously received state funding in Alabama.
Full text available at NBC15online.com
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VA - Big changes ahead for Head Start
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Thursday, March 15 @ 10:59:59 EDT by emohan
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Nearly 42 years after it began, the federal Head Start program continues to serve thousands of the region's poorest preschoolers, but local school officials worry about a shortage of funding as President Bush proposes more cuts while Congress considers raising standards and teacher qualifications.
"The programs are doing what is expected of them in many instances and have exceeded that," said Wendell Braxton, executive director of the Newport News Office of Human Affairs, which runs the local Head Start program. "I think the accountability has been there for the past 30 to 40 years."
Braxton was among more than two dozen Head Start educators, parents, local public school and college officials from the Peninsula, South Hampton Roads and Richmond who met this week in Newport News with U.S. Rep. Robert C. "Bobby" Scott, D-Newport News.
Scott sought their input as Congress this week began reviewing the legislation that directs Head Start, which offers children an academic foundation along with health, nutrition and family services. In 2004-05, the program served nearly 14,000 children in Virginia between the ages of 3 and 5.
Program supporters hope Congress will renew the law this year. The renewal will likely include significant changes including:
Requiring all Head Start teachers to have at least an associate's degree three years after being hired.
Requiring 50 percent of teachers nationwide to earn a bachelor's degree by 2013.
Establishing standards and assessments for how well-prepared children are for school tied to language skills, pre-reading and pre-mathematics ability.
Creating more rigorous standards for centers to receive financial support, with low-performing centers having to reapply for operational grants every five years.
Full text available at the Daily Press
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TX - U.S. budget woes threaten local Head Start kids
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Monday, February 26 @ 16:04:56 EST by emohan
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Local Head Start officials are keeping their fingers crossed about the upcoming budget year. They know they’re going to have to cut back services.
The real question is how much.
Most likely scenario: The program will lose 46 slots for children, director Debora Jones told the Tribune-Herald.
That will cause one center to close and, in a related blow, services for some remaining children to be cut from five to four days a week.
Although unpleasant, those cuts would allow the school readiness program to continue treading water, Jones said. A much worse scenario, she said, would be if federal officials approved her request for fewer slots, then docked the program’s funding as a result.
That’s unlikely, Jones said. But until she gets final word on her budget request later this spring, she isn’t taking anything for granted.
“I’m working on a Plan B, just in case,” Jones said.
Other Head Start directors are crunching equally dismal sets of numbers. A report issued this month by the National Head Start Association shows more than half of programs nationwide have cut services due to tightening federal finances.
The squeeze became most apparent last year when the federal government cut funding by 1 percent for all Head Start programs, officials say. That may not seem like much. But it came on the heels of several years in which funding was not increased at all, even to keep up with inflation.
The cumulative effect has been an 11 percent effective cut since 2002, according to the association. If programs receive the same level of funding for the upcoming fiscal year, it will amount to a 13 percent decrease.
Full text available at the Waco Tribune-Herald
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OR - Wyden Pledges to Seek Increased Funding for Head Start
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Thursday, February 22 @ 10:32:03 EST by emohan
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U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D- OR) joined state law enforcement leaders at a Head Start center today and pledged to work to substantially increase funding for the federal early education program proven to cut future crime and violence.
"When it comes to our future, the smart approach is always to put your first dollar into prevention, and that means programs like Head Start." Wyden said. "Head Start prepares children to succeed in school and in life, and it ultimately saves taxpayers money. I am going to continue fighting for the funding to ensure that every eligible child in Oregon can attend Head Start."
Joining Wyden at a news conference at the Hawthorn Center were Marion County District Attorney Walt Beglau and Marion County Sheriff Raul Ramirez, president of the Oregon Sheriffs Association. Beglau and Ramirez are members of Fight Crime: Invest in Kids Oregon, an organization of 137 police chiefs, sheriffs, district attorneys and crime survivors.
The law enforcement leaders said they would stand with Wyden to push for increased funding for Head Start and educational child care in next year's federal budget.
Currently, 54 percent of eligible children from low-income families in Oregon are not served by Head Start due to inadequate funds. A report by Fight Crime: Invest in Kids Oregon shows that 500 kids a year could be prevented from committing violent crimes as adults if Head Start were available to all of Oregon's eligible children.
Full text available at Red Orbit
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FL - Head Start Cuts Felt in Southwest Florida
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Tuesday, February 20 @ 11:31:10 EST by emohan
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Nationally, Head Start preschool programs are slashing programs, downgrading services and turning away thousands of needy children. Many Head Start teachers are paid less than fast food restaurant workers, and are forced to clean toilets and floors, because funding for janitors is no more.
The organization, which provides free and low cost early education for impoverished families and children with special needs, is in trouble.
Collier County's Head Start program is no exception.
Most of the nation's Head Start programs have endured some cutbacks, due to a steady decrease in the organization's federal funding since 2002. About 11 percent of the organization's budget has been sliced, and Head Start officials are bracing themselves for the loss of another 1 to 2 percent this year.
Collier County Head Start Director Laura Stacell said the local organization has felt the sting of the cuts. Though they haven't had to reduce salaries or layoff employees, Stacell said three classes have been eliminated from their program during the past few years, which amounts to a reduction of about 54 students.
"Our main focus is education, getting the child ready for kindergarten that already has come to us with some deficit," Stacell said. "Anytime we can't impact those children, we are sending more kids into the schools that aren't prepared."
Collier's Head Start program already has a wait list of 229 4-year-olds, Stacell said.
"It's really hard to get in the program. It's a shame they can't serve more children," said Renae Ryan, whose 5-year-old son, Ricky, attends Head Start at Golden Gate Elementary School. "I'm amazed by (Ricky's) progress.
"I can't imagine what it's like for those kids missing out."
The difficulties for Stacell's program heightened when Collier County School District officials awarded teachers and non-instructional staff with a 6 percent pay increase last year. Because Head Start is managed by the School District, officials are required to comply with pay raise schedules the district implemented.
"Anything attached to the School District, we have to do," Stacell said. "When we get cut, but we have to raise salaries, we have to come up with ways to balance things."
Full text available at Naples News
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OR - Bill on expanding Head Start clears one hurdle
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Friday, February 16 @ 15:12:57 EST by emohan
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A bill that would extend Head Start preschool programs to all eligible Oregon youngsters whose families want them sailed out of a Senate committee after glowing praise from teachers, children's advocates and even a police chief.
In fact, there was no opposition to Senate Bill 46 at the Senate Education and General Government Committee meeting. The only questions, said Chairwoman Vicki Walker, D-Eugene, are how to pay for it and deciding whether Head Start is the best place for the Legislature's limited pot of money for early childhood education.
Head Start provides preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds from low-income families, but it goes beyond that. It gives the children access to medical and dental care and good nutrition, and it provides their families with education on parenting and access to services such as career counseling and adult education.
Witness after witness on Thursday cited research on the value of Head Start to low-income families: more success in school, lower dropout rates, less need for remedial programs, higher earnings for graduates as adults.
"In my 20 years of child advocacy," said Swati Adarkar, "I have never seen this much clarity in terms of the merits of a program."
Adarkar, executive director of the Oregon Children's Institute, said many children of poverty arrive at kindergarten behind in their social and academic skills. They have not been exposed to reading and language as widely as other children. Research on brain development demonstrates the value of a rich home environment for young children -- and the deficit when it's not there, she said.
"We know that the achievement gap develops before kindergarten," she said. "Starting these kids in kindergarten is just too late."
Gresham Police Chief Carla Piluso told the committee that Head Start decreases the likelihood children later will become involved in crime because they have the tools to be successful in school.
"Head Start is among the most effective weapons we have in our crime-fighting arsenal," she said. Piluso cited a national survey that found that Head Start graduates were nearly 10 percent less likely as adults to be arrested for a crime as siblings who did not attend the program.
The testimony drew nods of agreement from committee members, some of whom served on the presession education commission that came up with SB46. The education committee passed the bill unanimously and sent it to the joint Ways and Means Committee.
The bill provides $40 million from the state budget to pay for 3,200 more children in Head Start in the next two years. It doesn't spell out where the money would come from.
Full text available at the Oregonian
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