What Obama’s Pre-K Proposal Could Mean for Head Start

This guest post was written by J.M. Holland, a Head Start teacher in Richmond, Va., recent graduate of the educational leadership doctoral program at Virginia Commonwealth University, and blogger at The Future of Teaching. 

To be honest, President Obama’s recent re-commitment to improving quality and increasing access to early childhood education was a surprise to me. I knew that he had an interest in early childhood, because as a Head Start educator I have experienced first hand his interest in early childhood through the Designation Renewal of Early Head Start and Head Start grantees.  And when the Obama administration set accountability as a priority in its efforts to strengthen Head Start it made sense to me. There have been calls for revisions of Head Start funding for years. I am not sure if there will be unintentional negative consequences down the line but any effort toward change takes that risk.

What was surprising about Obama’s state of the union speech and the plan outlined by the executive office is the focus on state and federal partnerships. This surprised me because it seemed that the president had let the idea of increased access to preschool drop from his platform in his second term election. Head Start has always been the federal initiative while pre-K fell under state early childhood policy. Collaboration between the two types of programs has always been handled on a program by program basis.  Scaling up collaboration to the national level is a truly innovative idea.

The president’s plan would offer grants to increase access and quality of preschool services through state funding to students up “to extend federal funds to expand high-quality public preschool to reach all low- and moderate-income four-year olds from families at or below 200% of poverty.” In order to obtain these grants some requirements would need to be met.

If the president’s education agenda were to be realized I think we could see a real shift in increased school readiness at a national level. This shift could have countless benefits both financial and social for America. This proposal could also influence Head Start, which was designed to serve the poorest of the poor. (Although there are some exceptions, Head Start primarily serves children in families at 100 percent of the poverty line or below, which is a little over $22,000 a year for a family of four.)

Potential changes to Head Start include:

• States and localities that use braided funding could expand Head Start slots in locations where there are not enough children to make up a full class. Under this plan, organizations that run Head Start centers could apply for state grants to serve additional children in families that are “too rich” for Head Start but who are at-or-below the level of 200 percent of poverty. In these situations there may be market demand for public pre-K but the number of students that meet the guidelines for Head Start enrollment is not enough to fund a full class. The president’s proposal would help to open up the additional 10 to 12 slots it would take to fund a full-time preschool teacher.
• In many Head Start programs, teaching staff are not paid on par with local Kindergarten and early childhood teachers. This gap in pay leads to the most qualified preschool teachers leaving Head Start for public schools. In a public pre-K program that served both Head Start and state-funded students, teachers’ salaries would need to be raised to meet the president’s requirement of comparable compensation.
• The lowering of the average age of Head Start enrollment could also be an effect of Obama’s plan. If more slots for 4-year-olds in moderate poverty were to be available through state programs, then Head Start could have the opportunity to expand the now-open slots to 3-year-old children in extreme poverty. These students would get the benefit of two years of Head Start without competing with as many applicants for 4-year-old slots in their second year. Extreme poverty 4-year-olds would also have a better opportunity to receive the comprehensive services of Head Start without competing with more moderately poor and working poor families who tend to be better at securing the resources they need, such as a pre-K slot in a public program.
• The Head Start Impact Study 2012 highlights the very real difficulty of influencing academic ability in third grade with just one year of Head Start for students living in poverty. Regarding the study, Grover Whitehurst, a director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings and general supporter of early childhood education, went as far as to say, “There is no measurable advantage to children in elementary school of having participated in Head Start.”  I believe this statement would be more true if it said, “There is no measurable advantage to children in elementary school of having participated in Head Start who have participated for only one year.” One benefit of the president’s expansion of pre-K services would be increased access for more 4-year-olds in state programs which could increase the availability of Head Start slots for 3-year-olds (as described in the bullet above) and provide the program with two years to increase child outcomes.
• An expansion of quality rating measures for state funded pre-K would necessitate a re-valuing of Head Start’s oversight program as it is currently implemented. The program oversight of Head Start is stronger than any accountability system I have seen in any state pre-K program. Every Head Start program in the country undergoes a triennial review that includes examination of fiscal wherewithal, staff credentialing, assessment and monitoring systems, staff and parent interviews, and direct observation of Head Start staff using a rigorous observation tool known as the Classroom Assessment Scoring System.
• If state-funded pre-K programs were to implement some of these measures it could increase the quality of state pre-K programs. It could also bring to the forefront the significant quality measures Head Start has implemented to ensure federal dollars are spent in a worthwhile way. The quality of Head Start across the country may be widely ranging but, with the implementation of the Head Start Designation act, it will also be constantly increasing. If Head Start and state programs adopted braided funding the mean quality of classrooms would need to rise to the level of Head Start accountability. Interdependent systems enable differing expectations.
• What is often overlooked, especially when Head Start is compared to state and private pre-K is that it is a comprehensive child development program which supports children and families. It builds capacity in our country in small ways through providing nutrition and health services to children, through family engagement geared towards helping parents to become stronger supporters of their children’s development, and through escaping poverty by way of job training and education. State funded pre-K programs do not typically offer the same types of services.

The Obama administration’s plan to expand pre-K slots might create an opportunity for Head Start to become even more accurate in its targeted approach. State funded programs that serve children in low and moderate poverty would provide a comparison, because school readiness is so closely correlated with income, for the types of gains some children make in Head Start. If this were the case it might strengthen understanding and support for the program through comparison of Head Start and state pre-K student outcomes as differentiated by economic subgroup. Obama’s education plan — which also includes Early Head Start, home visiting, braided funding, and increased access for children in low-income families ineligible for Head Start — would enable Head Start to focus more on the children in extreme poverty it was designed to serve and demonstrate fulfillment of its mission to break the cycle of poverty.