Head Start

While there is little doubt that excellent early education sets students up for long-term academic success, the definition of “excellent” varies along with communities’ diverse needs. This is nowhere truer than with dual language learners.

On March 1, 2013, federal agencies were directed by the White House budget office to cut spending for the remainder of the 2013 fiscal year, through Sept. 30. The cuts, known as “sequestration” in Washington parlance, apply evenly to almost every program, so agencies do not have much leeway to protect certain programs at the cost of others. Now, two-and-a-half months later, the big question is how the cuts are affecting people on the ground. The answer: We have anecdotes, but no firm numbers.

According to recent budget documents from the Department of Health and Human Services, the Head Start program has surpassed a statutory requirement that half of Head Start teachers have bachelor’s degrees in early childhood by September 30, 2013. In fact, according to the Department, 62 percent of teachers had earned the degree by fiscal year 2012.

Correction: An earlier version of this post erroneously reported the total number of Head Start teachers with bachelor's degrees as 44 percent. Of the Head Start teachers subject to a 2007 requirement that half earn bachelor's degrees, 62 percent of Head Start teachers have bachelor's degrees as of 2013.

In addition to the president’s fiscal year 2014 budget request, released earlier this month, information on the administration’s education agenda can be gleaned from the new Congressional Justifications documents from the Departments of Education and Health & Human Services.

The Congressional Justifications typically contain details on the president’s latest proposals, but they also include a wealth of information about existing programs. According to the documents, Head Start and Early Head Start declined in enrollment between 2012 and 2013, before an across-the-board budgetary cut resulted in the elimination of seats in some centers around the country. Meanwhile, funding for each program increased slightly before the implementation of this year’s federal sequester.

This guest post was written by J.M. Holland, a Head Start teacher in Richmond, Va., recent graduate of the educational leadership doctoral program at Virginia Commonwealth University, and blogger at The Future of Teaching. 

At the start of this month, the Office of Head Start named 160 preliminary winners in the Obama’s administration’s new “re-competition” process for determining which institutions deserve continued funding to run Head Start and Early Head Start programs. These winners were a combination of 100 providers who had already been administering Head Start and Early Head Start grants and 60 “new” providers. Of those new grantees, only a handful -- three, by my calculation -- are organizations not involved in Head Start services before.

Updated 4/10/2013 5:00 PM to reflect newly published information about the state matching portion of the Preschool for All plan.

President Obama released his fiscal year 2014 budget request earlier today, which would include $75.0 billion* over 10 years for his “Preschool for All” proposal. On top of this, the president proposes other boosts for early learning, including funding increases for Head Start, Child Care and Development Block Grants, IDEA special education programs, and the home visiting program. He also proposes budget increases to several other programs under the Department of Education that could support early learning.

Debates on preschool can sometimes devolve into misinformed squabbles over whether children can benefit and by how much. But a debate hosted last Thursday at the Fordham Institute was a refreshing exception. For 90 minutes, speakers and the audience reckoned with several important policy questions, especially on the extent to which the federal government should get involved to improve quality and access for families. The one thing missing was a serious conversation about how to build a strong, professional workforce of pre-K teachers.

During the media frenzy that followed President Obama’s unprecedented call for expanding pre-K to all four-year-olds in the United States, we estimated that the additional cost to states and the federal government, combined, to be somewhere between $10-15 billion per year. We estimate that the feds and the states currently spend about $9 billion on pre-K for four-year-olds.

We wanted to explain exactly how we came to that conclusion.

It was exactly a month ago that President Obama proposed to dramatically expand access to preschool. A few days later, the White House followed up with a three-page plan.

Last night on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the political comedian and Comedy Central “fake news host” took on opponents to the Head Start preschool program. Amidst the ribbing, though, Stewart gets to the heart of the Head Start debate.