• Head Start Head Start Does it make sense to require preschoolers to ace a math and language exam before moving on to kindergarten? That’s one of the sticky questions raised by President George W. Bush’s insistence on adding mandatory
• Head Start
Head Start
Does it make sense to require preschoolers to ace a math and language exam before moving on to kindergarten? That’s one of the sticky questions raised by President George W. Bush’s insistence on adding mandatory testing to Head Start reauthorization legislation.
The House backed him in a bitterly fought 217-216 vote earlier this year over legislation that includes the testing and other unwelcome provisions in its Head Start bill. The Senate seems ready to put the brakes on this testing-happy administration. By a 21-0 vote early this month, the Senate Education Committee decided to scrap the administration’s ideas and try instead to improve Head Start’s quality without gutting its traditional focus on both cognitive and social skills. That’s a wise route, which not only might bolster Head Start, but also restore the bipartisan support its reauthorization traditionally has enjoyed.
Mr. Bush argues that some fourth-graders don’t know how to read because they don’t get enough language and literacy training in preschool. What he failed to mention were studies showing that Head Start grads are less likely to repeat grades, less likely to need special education services and more likely to finish high school.
As the president should know, a child’s success in school depends not only on mastery of cognitive skills, but on whether, as a 4-year-old, he or she learns how to sit still, interact with teachers, and behave and work with other children. Mr. Bush should not make Head Start the scapegoat for his disappointment with the skills of fourth-graders. He’d do better to look at what children are taught – or not taught – in the four years of elementary school after they graduate from Head Start.
The Senate bill calls on the Bush administration to talk to independent experts before messing with Head Start’s curriculum. The Senate bill also would stop efforts to make Head Start optional by giving states the freedom to use federal money once earmarked exclusively for Head Start for something else. In such lousy economic times, many cash-strapped states might be tempted to use Head Start money to patch other threadbare social programs. That could seriously undercut Head Start.
The Senate committee’s vote was a positive step and a signal to the president to stop trying to fix what’s not broken. Head Start has never been given enough money to serve more than 60 percent of the children who are eligible for it. If Mr. Bush really wants to help needy children succeed in school, he should strengthen and expand Head Start so that more of them can enjoy its lasting benefits.
