Response to Head Start Story

02/14/2003

"Love is the greatest refreshment in life."
–Pablo Picasso

RESPONSE TO HEAD START STORY

The February 6 edition of ExchangeEveryDay addressed the Bush Administration's plans for Head Start. This story generated a great deal of feedback from readers. Below we will share a sampling of readers' comments:

Marian Van Den Berg: I'm curious what the President thinks will happen nationally when all these people that support and have careers in Head Start become unemployed because of the transition from HHS to the Dept of Ed?.....Does he really think that the Dept of Ed, with its faultering budget will employ those now employed? What will happen to the core components of Head Start when it passes to the Dept of Ed?.......The Dept of Ed cannot meet the needs of the students it is now responsible for......And now we are going to trust it to meet the needs of our most vulnerable (and valuable) students? I think we need national attention on the importance of early childhood education.......A national campaign that informs the public of the new neuroscience information and the importance of those early first prenatal through 5 or 6 years........What a shame for our President to pass the buck like this.......but then, didn't he do that in Texas too?

Kirsten Haugen: As the Bush administration pushes for standardized assessment of four year olds and increased "accountability," consider the following statement from the NAEYC and NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics) in their joint position statement on "Early Childhood Mathematics: Promoting Good Beginnings" (2002):

"With the enormous variability in young children's development, neither policymakers nor teachers should set a fixed timetable for children to reach each specific learning objective. In addition to the risk of misclassifying individual children, highly specific timetables for skill acquisition pose another serious threat, especially when accountability pressures are intense. They tend to focus teachers' attention on getting children to perform narrowly defined skills by a specified time, rather than laying the conceptual groundwork that will serve children well in the long run."

Rae Pica: If state governments are to be more responsible for Head Start programs and funding, then I fear for the program here in New Hampshire. Not only are we still without statewide public preschool or kindergarten; we're also in the midst of a major education funding crisis. I don't believe for a moment Head Start will be allotted the funds it needs -- here and in other financially-challenged states

Jerry Parr: Have you seen the latest out of DOE? Man what a frenzy everyone is in... and tribes have no idea what their future is since they are not even acknowledged under the DOE plan... I think the quote that lead your email from Helen Keller (intentionally or not) should become our mantra for this evolutionary (revolutionary?) phase of head start's development... this is kind of like one of those 70's movies where man takes on the dinosaurs... but without Raquel Welch... alot of fosssil shaking going on.

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