Delegates urge policy-makers to support Head Start’s broad mission and caution against standardized testing 

Ensuring that Head Start continues to offer a broad range of basic services for young children was a key topic in meetings between CSBA’s FIC delegation and federal officials.

The Bush administration proposed changes to the program that called for Head Start to focus on teaching academic skills to preschoolers and to give eight “demonstration” states control over federal grants to Head Start providers, rather than having the federal government allocate money directly to local communities.

The president also wants to introduce annual testing for 4-year-old Head Start graduates to assess their readiness for kindergarten as part of a new national reporting system for Head Start, a proposal that raised concerns among delegates.

“Testing, especially literacy testing, is not appropriate for kids this young,” said CSBA Vice President Dr. Kathleen Kinley in a meeting between Delegates and Dr. Wade Horn, Assistant Secretary for Children and Families for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The meeting also included Judie Jerald, Division Director for Program Support for the department — which oversees Head Start — and Ann Linehan, the department’s Division Director for Program Management.

“Children need to form a basic understanding of their physical environment and acquire basic language skills before they can begin learning math, literacy and abstract concepts,”Kinley added. “We need to ensure that Head Start continues to offer the wide range of basic services that have made it so successful over the years, rather than shift its focus to testing.”

Horn assured delegates that the proposed national reporting system would involve simple assessments of children’s skills rather than paper-and-pencil type testing. Delegates responded that even this system could have unintended and counterproductive consequences when dealing with young children.

Delegates also shared their concerns that allowing states to administer Head Start and to receive federal funds for this purpose in the form of block grants could possibly dilute the effectiveness of the program. Currently, federal funds go directly to the local agencies administering the services.

“Local school districts and local Head Start programs know better than the state what their kids need,” said Bill Farris, who serves on CSBA’s Board of Directors and is a board member from Sierra Sands Unified School District in Kern County. “We also have concerns that our state, which has had severe budget problems in recent years, would be tempted to use federal funds for its own preschool programs rather than allocate them to Head Start programs.”

FIC delegates also expressed concerns that the proposed change requiring preschool teachers to be credentialed could make it even more difficult to find and retain quality teachers. Horn agreed.

“I’m not a big proponent of credentialing for Head Start,”he said. “It’s about whether someone has the skills to help kids develop, not what degrees they may or may not have.”

The Bush administration also wants to allow religious organizations that administer Head Start services to use religious beliefs as part of their hiring criteria for program staff, which raised further concern among delegates.

“We want to ensure that organizations not use federal dollars to proselytize to the young children in their care and this provision could be perceived by some as blurring the line between church and state,”said Luan Rivera, CSBA President-elect.

Horn, Jerald and Linehan encouraged delegates to continue asking federal policy-makers the tough questions as Head Start approaches reauthorization.