Published on January 7, 2010 by Lindsey Burke
In a November address to the National Association for the Education of Young Children, Education Secretary Arne Duncan talked about doing a better job of working with Health and Human Services to ensure successful early education reform. Duncan stated, "If we are going to do what works – and abandon what doesn’t – early learning systems need to document, assess and adapt more readily." If Duncan is serious about doing what works and abandoning what doesn’t, he should be interested in the long-overdue findings of the government’s largest early education initiative – the federal Head Start program.
This shouldn’t be a problem for the education secretary, who in the same speech lauded the new "willing partnership" between his Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services managed by Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. But does this new partnership mean that Duncan has all of the information he needs to implement meaningful early education reform?
Is Secretary Duncan aware that a crucial, federally-mandated evaluation of the Head Start program is long overdue?
With the Obama administration on the verge of one of the biggest expansions of the federal government’s role in early childhood education since the creation of Head Start in 1965, it would seem an evaluation of the annual $7 billion preschool program would be relevant for the President’s decision to dramatically increase early childhood spending.
In 1998, Congress mandated an evaluation of the program, which was completed in 2005. The 2005 evaluation showed some gains for Head Start participants, but provided no information on the program’s long-term impact. To answer that question, data was collected on cohorts of first- and third-grade students who had been through the program as preschoolers. First-grade data collection was completed in 2006 and third-grade data collection was due out in March of 2009. Neither the first- nor third-grade data has been made public.
The Missing $100 Billion Study
On 01.07.10 12:52 PM posted by