52006200 Families and Social Policy 113006 Children and Policypromotion

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5200/6200Families and Social
Policy11/30/06Children and Policy--promotion
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Announcements

• Rest of Semester at a glance
• This week
• Today
• Children and social welfare policy--promotion
• Last week (paper can come in on Thursday dec 7th)
• Tuesday
• Exam available by 1130AEB 244. Will use the
  class email function to email exam out Tuesday.
• Class time spent consulting with me on paper
  issues or working on your paper. Office 244
• Final due DUE 12/14 BY 3 PM
• Book reports to hand back (dieu)
• Email me a copy please
• Thursday
• Policy round up
• Pizza and paper panel

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Head Start Created

• 1964--EOA
• Served 4 year olds
• Families in poverty
• Comprehensive services
• Preschool education
• Nutrition
• Health
• Social, special needs

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What is Head Start?

• Family based intervention policyprobably longest
  in existence
• Federally funded preschool program for children
  ages 3-5
• Serves low-income children and families
• Serves children with disabilities
• Comprehensive service approach
• Strong focus on social competence and school
  readiness

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The nurture belief

• Education as the key to equalization
• Early childhood as a magical period of
  development
• Head Start as centerpiece of arsenal against
  poverty

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Key characteristics

• Low adult to child ratios
• Comprehensive approach
• Central role of parents
• Community builder

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Two generation programs

• Programs that address parents and children
• Two kinds of family support
• self-sufficiency services
• child development services
• Premise--stronger capacity to improve long-term
  outcomes
• Expanded over the years, to include early head
  start

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• EVALUATION AND PUBLIC POLICY
• Commitment to policy/programs requires evidence
  of success
• Is increased intelligence success? Or is
  increased social competence success? How to
  measure?
• By late 70s policy makers were more realistic
  but less excited
• Loss of excitement co-occurred with conservative
  administrations, Program deteriorates
• 90s--educational reform
• RESEARCH RESULTS
• Children/1 year show sig short-term benefits in
  cog, social, and physical develop health
  services.
• Eval of head start often confused with the eval
  of another preschool programPerry Preschool
  Project

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Perry Preschool Project

• Ypsilanti Michigan
• Studied 58 children who spent 1-2 years in a
  preschool enrichment program in the 60s
• Similar to other programs before Head Start
• Unique in long-term follow up of subjects

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Perry kids at 27

• When compared to a control group looked better in
  terms of
• criminality
• family structure
• career success
• Estimated savings to society
• By 19, 3-6 for every 1spent in early childhood
• -At 27, 7

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What happened after Welfare Reform

• Kicking around Two bills with similar overarching
  goals
• Focus on school readiness, child outcomes,
  setting and measuring goals
• Increased state role
• Higher teacher education requirements
• Difficulty in getting funds--accountability
• Only incremental increases in authorized funding
• Move to put head start in department of
  education..

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This just in

• For 40 years, Head Start has sought to improve
  the life prospects of low-income children.
• About 20 million children have gone through the
  program at a total cost of more than 100
  billion.
• Head Start was supposed to be reauthorized in
  2003, but Congress was immobilized by arguments

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Recent news

• impasse was broken last year when key Republicans
  gave up their efforts to change the program.
• both houses have voted to expand eligibility for
  Head Start. Bills propose to
• raise the income-eligibility cap from the poverty
  line to 130 of pov (a roughly 35 increase in
  the of children eligible)
• allow programs to enroll more 1-2-yr-olds, rather
  than their traditional target group of 3- and
  4-year-olds (doubling the number of eligible
  children).

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However.

• weeks after votes, large-scale evaluation results
  released.
• Commissioned by Clinton, the study was a
  383-site randomized experiment involving about
  4,600 children.
• Confirming the findings of earlier, smaller
  evaluations, this report found that Head Start
  has disappointingly small impacts on
  disadvantaged children.
• For 4-year-olds (half the program), only six of
  30 measures of social and cognitive development
  and family functioning showed statistically
  significant gains. Results were somewhat better
  for 3-year-olds but most of the differences were
  not statistically significant.

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Supporters say

• On the offensive, The Head Start Association, for
  example, claimed that the study is "good news for
  Head Start" and warned that "those who have
  resolved to trash Head Start at every turn will
  twist this data to their ends" as part of their
  "continued attempts to dismantle the program."
• Sticky situation

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Critics say

• that instead of expanding eligibility, Congress
  should mandate a systematic research and
  demonstration effort aimed at making Head Start
  more effective.
• Distinctions among children will be crucial, for
  one of Head Start's key weaknesses is its
  one-size-fits-all approach to early education.
• Not all poor children need the same level of
  remedial assistance.

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Chapter 7 from OPKUniversal Preschool for all 4
year olds

• Rationale
• Good for all children, regardless of income
  status
• 0-5 key time for children to develop (neurons to
  neighborhoods)
• Chicago Child Parent Center Study
• Participation in PRE-K _at_ age 3-4 is associated
  with significant returns to high school
  completion rates and lower delinquency

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The Proposal

• full day of preschool, with a part-day
  education-intensive component taught by early
  education specialists and a child care component
  delivered by aides (under the supervision of
  teachers) for the remainder of the day.
• The gross cost of this proposal, 20.8 billion,
  will be partially offset by the reallocation of
  current child care funds for four-year-olds (5.4
  billion in savings) for a net cost of 15.4
  billion.
• Costs could be even lower if parents are asked to
  contribute.
• May increase tax rate by 1 of affected families

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International comparisons

• Belgium, France and Italy provide to 95 of 3-6
• Full day programfocus on child development, not
  daycare for working parents.

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discussion

• Is it a good use of moneywhat about the results
  of head start evaluation
• Should head start be moved to department of
  education for oversight.
• Back to the question of what money cant buyis
  this the answer?