That’s the suggestion of Danielle Ewen of the Center for Law and Social Policy in an interview on the Washington Post today. She says Title I requirements are flexible enough for school districts to spread them beyond the elementary school years, where they’ve typically been spent.
It’s an interesting proposal: Should Title I dollars be dispersed to help children from zero to five, in particular, kids whose parents don’t make the income cutoff for Head Start but who are still too poor to afford quality care?
In places like New Jersey, where the state is saving money during the fiscal crisis by reducing eligibility for early childhood programs, this might be a possibility. Then again, we’re in a fiscal situation where both/and is hard to do: School districts are also scrambling to keep the elementary programs that Title I helps to pay for intact.