The Importance of Head Start and Title I

The US Deficit and Budget have been all over the news for the last several weeks and while I have thoughts on a bunch of the proposed or House passed budget cuts one in particular ties into the purpose of this blog.
 Last week Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and his colleagues passed $63 billion in budget cuts for the end of fiscal year 2011, with the understanding being that the cuts would continue into 2012.  These cuts are all to non-security programs and don't differentiate between successful and failing programs. The Department of Education is undergoing such cuts, particularly to Title I schools and Head Start.  Over all the Department of Education will lose almost $5 billion.  Source

Head Start and Title I assist people living in poverty and the schools who educate them.

Head Start provides a variety of services, but is most known for their pre-schools and before and after school care.  Most low-income families require both parents or all responsible adults to work, many times several jobs.  Therefore they can't provide care for young children and often don't have the time or energy to educate them on pre-literacy and pre-numeracy skills.  (I'll do another post later about the necessity of these skills being learned before kindergarten.)  Head Start provides pre-school care for the children of these families.  They can't reach everyone and Head Start locations are run differently from each other, but once you get in the program you can stay in it, throughout all levels of school.

Head Start teaches skills necessary to academic achievement, they provide safe and supervised places for children of all ages, they provide homework help and academic enrichment.  Head Start even helps with college applications and scholarships.  Children enrolled in the program often achieve better in academics and are more likely to graduate from high school.  Head Start specifically assists children and families who do not have the resources to pay for or find this help from other places.  They combat the cyclical and systematic results of poverty and institutionalized racism.  For more information about Head Start and the affects of the budget cuts visit their web site here.

A Title I school is a school where 40% or more of the students live at a proverty level where they qualify for free or reduced lunches.  Basically this means approximately half or more of the students live at such levels of poverty that their families cannot afford to feed them.  When this is the case the schools receive assistance from the federal government, through Title I, to meet the specific needs of children living in poverty.  Title I started in the 1960s under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) states that schools must make adequate yearly progress to continue receiving funds.

How Title I funds are used is up to the discretion of the school.  They can be used for curriculum enhancement, counseling, increasing parental involvement, more staff and general program improvement.  Generally the funds are used for extra instruction in math and reading as these are some of the most important subjects, and since NCLB the test scores for these subjects affect the Title I funds received by the school.  Millions of children are assisted anually through Title I funds.  For more basic inforamtion visit here. Or the US Department of Education's site here.

Personally, I spent two years working at a Title I school where numerous children where enrolled in Head Start.  At this school over 80% of the children received free and reduced lunches and I helped run an after school program which improved children's literacy.  Parents had to enroll they're children in our program, and Head Start children did not attend as they received after school care and academic assistance through the Head Start Porgram. The school was making adaquate yearly progress so they were receiving the maximum Title I allotment. The school was also receiving grant money for being a community school (meaning they provided help for the whole community) and there were several other grants helping the school meet the needs of all the children.  My program and position was funded by one such grant. 

With these four programs providing extra money to the school they were able to provide 2 meals a day to the students who qualified, health services to the students and their families, run before and after school care with sports, arts, and academic programs.  They also were able to hold occasional events to promote community involvement and find out how they could better help the needs of the community. 

When I compare the kids I worked with at this school to others from similar backgrounds the differences are staggering.  They are more confident and happy, they're less likely to skip school or drop out, they could make goals and figure out how to reach them.  They also tested very high in the state standardized testing.  Which means most of them are at grade level. These children are having their basic health needs met, receiving academic assistance and getting adult support, and it took more then the Title I funds or Head Start to reach all the children in the school.  So the idea of cutting funding to Title I and Head Start, to further limiting the number of children they can help, is horrifying.  The effects of the budget cuts will be staggering and so hurtful to low income families and eventually the rest of the country.  Because everything is connected in some way, and the more one group falls into poverty, crime and illiteracy, the more everyone else does too.

Because of all of this I've signed the petition to save Head Start and I hope others will too.