Proposed: Waiving Rules in Return for Innovations in Early Ed

For years, early childhood researchers have debated the effectiveness of Head Start, a discussion fueled anew this year with the release of disappointing results from the long-awaited Impact Study.  And for years, advocates have promoted policy ideas that would establish more cohesive and coordinated systems to deliver programs to young children before they get to kindergarten. 

This month two researchers brought these two themes together and proposed that the federal government should waive some regulations – for Head Start and other programs — to spur states to innovate and deliver programs most effectively.  

The idea was floated by W. Steven Barnett, co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, and Ron Haskins, co-director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution.  The proposal comes within the introductory chapter to a new volume of articles on federal early childhood programs, Investing in Young Children: New Directions in Federal Preschool and Early Childhood Policy, edited by Haskins and Barnett.

“We need to conduct randomized trials of innovations with waivers of regulations,” Barnett said at a forum on Capitol Hill earlier this month where the new volume was released. “Head Start, childcare programs and early intervention programs ought to be freed up to create more coherent systems,” he said.

In the introductory chapter, the idea takes two forms. The first is related specifically to Head Start.  The researchers recommend that the federal government develop a competitive research program that would use randomized trials to “systematically test new models of Head Start services.” To encourage new models, the research program would “permit generous waivers” of the Head Start Performance Standards, a set of over 1,000 regulations governing how Head Start programs operate.

The second iteration of the idea encompasses not just Head Start but also all federal programs that provide funds for early childhood programs, including the Child Care Development Block Grant and Title I programs for disadvantaged children that are funded by the U.S. Department of Education. (Although Title I funds are typically used within K-12 schools, districts are also allowed to use them for programs serving children before they enter school. About 3 percent do so, according to the Center for Law and Social Policy.)

Haskins and Barnett propose that the federal government give some states – say three or four – the authority to use funds from those programs to build a “coordinated early care and education system with an emphasis on program effectiveness.” They envision a competitive grant program for states that want to test this idea, with the federal government waiving the “barriers to co-mingling funds” from the separate programs.

A few of the winning states, according to the proposal, would agree to rigorous evaluations “in which they follow children for several years after they enter the public schools and perhaps all the way through their college years.” The federal government, not the states, would pay for these evaluations.

The proposal, the authors said, could be included within legislation for the Early Learning Challenge Fund if that fund were to be re-introduced or it could be included in some other piece of legislation. (The Challenge Fund passed the U.S. House of Representatives last fall but was dropped by the Senate when the health-care legislation passed in March.  Yesterday, 110 members of Congress sent a letter to House appropriation leaders urging them to include the Challenge Fund in the budget for fiscal year 2011, which still has not been approved.)  

Proponents of more public investment in early childhood programs are still digesting the idea – and many are awaiting the results of the Nov. 2 Congressional elections before tackling any new legislative proposals.  But at the panel discussion this month, it was clear that the Early Learning Challenge Fund is viewed favorably for many of the same reasons that Haskins and Barnett laid out: It encourages states to create more coherent systems using already-existent publicly funded programs by holding a competition among states for extra federal dollars.

Harriet Dichter, national director for the First Five Years Fund, who appeared on the panel, said that the Challenge Fund would help with many of the coordination issues raised in the Investing in Children papers.

“I have a highly optimistic view that it is possible to create a more coherent approach,” said Dichter, newly arrived from Pennsylvania where she led early childhood policy for various departments in the state.

One outstanding question is whether “barriers to co-mingling” of funds are actually to blame for the variations in quality that plague today’s programs or whether other issues are the culprit. It is true that Head Start programs are primarily only for children in families at or below the poverty level, whereas state-funded pre-k programs and childcare subsidies are often available to families at slightly higher income levels (or, in the case of universal programs, are not tied to income at all). The differing eligibility levels can be a real damper on efforts to combine resources toward a common goal.

Yet examples are already appearing of states and districts that have combined Head Start dollars with other childhood program monies to create more coherent programs. Dichter pointed out that “there is the ability now to blend funding.”

“A waiver would be unnecessary,” said Ben Allen, director of public policy and research for the National Head Start Association, who was also on the panel. “A lot of collaboration is already happening.”

(For example, see Early Ed Watch’s post this summer about the District of Columbia Public Schools blending Head Start and universal pre-k dollars to establish classrooms in which Head Start and non-Head Start preschoolers learn together.)

What wasn’t broached during the discussion, however, is exactly what kinds of financial gymnastics are currently required of states, cities and school districts to make this collaboration happen. As many early education advocates have suggested in the past, states could use some incentives from the federal government to spur even more coordination.

Another issue is how to ensure that children in the most disadvantaged circumstances – the most important clientele for the majority of publicly funded programs – are still given priority when regulations regarding income eligibility are loosened.

And yet one more question is how the Challenge Fund or other competitive grant programs could instill a better sense of cohesion between the early grades of elementary school and pre-kindergarten programs that often operate apart from school districts. The need for improvement in those early elementary grades was voiced during the panel discussion by Roberto Rodriguez, special assistant on education to President Obama. (See yesterday’s post for more details.)

In short, the devil is in the details, and the details aren’t yet fleshed out. But the ideas floated this month are intriguing and deserving of more discussion. In a time of limited public funding, the federal government should be considering any options that leverage the resources in programs that already exist while putting the emphasis on high-quality educational experiences for children instead of rules compliance.

What is your take on the Haskins and Barnett proposal? How does it jibe with what you know is already happening in the early childhood field? What regulations, if any, should be waived? Please comment and let us know what you think.