Bad Start

lizabeth Sears, an educational specialist at a Head Start program outside of San Antonio, remembers the day when everything crystallized for her. One of the children in her program-a 4-year-old girl-was withdrawn. She refused to listen to her teachers or her peers. She wasn't learning, and the teachers didn't know what to do. Then, as all Head Start children do, the girl went for her free dental screening. "The dentist was amazed," Sears recalls. "Every tooth in her head was rotted." Immediately, the Head Start program was able to get dental care for the girl, and Sears says, "it was like a different child, and it proved to me the importance of these wraparound services." If the young girl had been in Texas's state-run preschool program, Sears says, she would not have received the dental screening. The state-run program doesn't provide them.

That's why Sears, and many of her colleagues in the Head Start community, are deeply concerned about a Bush administration proposal that would allow some states to take over administration of the Head Start program. They believe that Head Start far exceeds the quality of most state-run preschool programs, providing early education, health care, nutritious meals and other benefits that the state-run programs don't, and they worry that Bush would allow states to 'dumb down' the program.

Still, Bush has proposed, and House Republicans have introduced, legislation that would allow states to submit to the Health and Human Services Department plans to directly administer Head Start funding. The combination of state and federal funding would provide better coordination among preschool programs, according to the Bush team. "One of the problems without good coordination is inefficiencies," says Wade Horn, HHS assistant secretary for children and families. For example, he says, last year, the typical Head Start program was under-enrolled by 7 percent. "In other words, there were 62,000 funded slots with no children in them," he says. "By allowing states to coordinate, we would be able to serve more children."

Under the Republican plan, the states would have to maintain their current spending on preschool programs. This requirement, say the GOP backers, would provide states an incentive to keep their preschool programs going even as many states are looking to cut those programs to alleviate large budget deficits. The states would not be allowed to divert Head Start funding for other needs, and they would be required to continue to provide the comprehensive services Head Start children currently receive. The Republicans are touting the proposal as a demonstration project and say that only eight states would likely receive approval to administer the Head Start funding.

Nonetheless, Sears' concern that the plan would weaken Head Start is widespread. The National Head Start Association, the Virginia-based group that represents state directors, has called the plan an "extreme legislative attack on Head Start." States, many of which are facing budget deficits, are in no place to take over Head Start, says Sarah Greene, chief executive officer of the association. "Obviously, we believe there is another agenda here," she says, adding that she fears the plan really is a way of "giving the states money for their deficit problems." The association has started a Web site, www.saveheadstart.org, to support its lobbying campaign, and has held rallies nationwide.

A 2002 paper by Yale University researchers Walter Gilliam and Carol Ripple partly supports Greene's claims. It found that some states have built high quality preschool programs, "sometimes rivaling Head Start," but also that several states do not have any state-run preschool system at all, even though the federal government offers states funding assistance to start their own programs. In an examination of quality standards in state-run preschool programs, Ripple and Gilliam found that most states have a higher teacher-to-student ratio than Head Start. But the researchers also found that less than 60 percent of states mandated comprehensive services, such as dental referrals, nutritious meals, mental health referrals, and vision and hearing tests.

HHS' Horn says he understands the association's "natural anxiety about change," but argues that Greene is "circulating inaccurate information" that "is leading to anxiety that is not warranted." In May, the administration fired back in the form of a memo from Head Start Bureau Director Windy Hill to Head Start directors nationwide deriding the association's lobbying efforts. She reminded the directors that federal law forbids them from lobbying or using staff resources to lobby on the Head Start reauthorization bill pending before Congress.

The Head Start association then responded with a letter from Greene and a protest rally in New York City, accusing the administration of trying to chill free speech. In early June, the association asked a federal district court to bar Hill from taking any action pursuant to her memo. Hill responded that the letter merely restated existing policy. But with Democratic members of Congress so far siding with the association, the state demonstration project may prove a stumbling block in the reauthorization push.