EarlyStories examined some suggested new rules for Head Start recently, and now a leading expert on early childhood is lauding the Obama administration in a Washington Post op-ed for proposing a new system he says could force much-needed improvements to the $8 billion program for 3- and 4-year-olds. The op-ed makes it clear that what happens before children set foot in a public-school classroom is an integral part of the national debate on education.
“A substantial number of Head Start programs are so ineffective that they do little or nothing to boost child development and learning,” said W. Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Ron Haskins, co-director of the Brookings Institution’s Center on Children and Families, co-authored the op-ed with Barnett.
Center leaders have not entirely welcomed the proposals. Some are worried that competition would be costly, and could create more uncertainty and possibly chaos. Large centers have expressed concerns that they’ll be singled out simply because their size could lead to more problems.
The Post piece comes as a new, must-read collection of papers assessing federal policies for early childhood education and child care was released by NIEER, entitled “Investing in Young Children: New Directions in Federal Preschool and Early Childhood Policy.”
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at 7:03 pm
I can understand why the author would say that some Head Start programs are very nearly ineffective. I have observed Head Start classrooms where teacher in Room A had a dramatically different teaching style than the lady next door in Room B. Room A would be an authoritarian teacher barking out commands and insisting on order and total compliance. Then right next door is a laissez-faire teacher who spends her days letting the kids do mainly child-directed activities in the Learning Centers. Head Start has a reputation for allowing their teachers to direct their classrooms as they see fit. Some teachers control their classrooms like puppet shows where the kids do exactly as what the teacher says. I witnessed a class where the kids were supposed to take a large letter “D” made out of green paper and they were to apply dinasaur stickers to it as a literacy activity. The teacher made these little kids apply the dinasaurs with head upright and the feet straight down and spaced two on each side spaced evenly apart. She walked around hanging over each child to make sure that they “didn’t do it wrong”. The kids that applied their dinasaurs crooked or all one part of the paper were scolded harshly. Some of the kids started crying because she scolded them. She told them, “Now stop crying. Go clean your face. We don’t need no cry babies in here. Go get herself a wipe and clean your face now.” The teacher was more like a drill sergeant indoctrinating the new G.I.’s. I felt really bad for the kids and their wasn’t anything I could do about it. I was not in a position to complain to the center director since the center director was a relative and a long time friend of this particular teacher.