Congress Does Right by Head Start Children

by Helen Blank

It didn’t get much attention in the media, but something remarkable happened in the Senate this week:  it quickly and unanimously passed a bill helping our poorest children and families.  The Senate bill reauthorizes and strengthens the Head Start program, and is similar to a bill passed by the House with overwhelming support earlier this year. Both bills are rooted in the reality of families’ lives as well as the research on effective strategies to improve the well-being of young children.  The bills make more children eligible for Head Start’s comprehensive supports by upping the program’s eligibility cut-off so that families won’t be penalized for going to work and increasing their very low incomes. The bills also recognize that waiting to act to help poor children until after they enter preschool could be too late.  They wisely open the door to serving more families with infants and toddlers through Early Head Start, which currently serves less than three percent of eligible children.  Children will have the advantage of learning from well-trained teachers with the bills’ increase in teacher requirements.  Finally, lawmakers listened to the advice of experts on the fallacy of testing young children and suspended the implementation of the National Reporting System, a much criticized test for all four-year-olds enrolled in Head Start.

The next step is a conference to work out the differences between the two bills and funding from Congress that will support the many constructive changes in the bills.