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Posted on 01/12/2012 7:17:11 PM PST by neverdem
“Head Start” has been the poster child of federal aid to education ever since the Lyndon Johnson administration introduced it as part of the Great Society. And for decades liberals have pointed to it as one of the great advances that the federal government has brought to education, and as evidence that creative social engineering by smart professional interventionists can change the world.
But a long-suppressed government report finally released by the Obama administration report is shaking the foundations of Head Start, and the news isn’t coming from right wing conservatives but from Joe Klein at Time magazine. As Klein reports,
We spend more than $7 billion providing Head Start to nearly 1 million children each year. And finally there is indisputable evidence about the program’s effectiveness, provided by the Department of Health and Human Services: Head Start simply does not work.
These days, defenders of Head Start say less about what it does for kids (essentially nothing) but about the jobs it creates in poor neighborhoods. This is blue liberal thinking at its most self-parodic: we can’t develop social programs that will accomplish something worthwhile, but we can at least use the illusion that such programs work to create jobs for people who will then vote for the politicians who give them make work jobs.
True enough, as far as it goes, but it would just be cheaper to send them all checks. While it might be utopian to hope that a huge government boondoggle would shut down just because it’s been proven useless, even federal bureaucrats seem disturbed by the thought that limited antipoverty resources are being spent on a known flop. The L.A. Times has the story:
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the Head Start program, enacted reforms in December to address concerns about quality and accountability, among other things. They include a provision that, for the first time, requires low-performing agencies to compete for funding. Previously, funding for grantees was automatic.
It’s a start. The bigger story, though, is that the fundamental assumptions behind decades of government policy in education are coming unglued. The tools we’ve been using to address some of our most serious social problems don’t work. The money we’ve spent has been wasted.
It isn’t the just the Tea Party and Ayn Rand acolytes saying these things. It’s President Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services. It’s Time magazine.
A paradigm is falling apart.
That knowledge won't reduce a pair of dimes worth of spending though.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist.....
Just listen to a few after the NBA game interviews.
These programs are nothing more than another way to “redistribute the wealth”. Whether they work or not is immaterial.
I’ve always viewed HeadStart and mandatory kindergarten as more government attacks on the family and as a means to more thoroughly indoctrinate the populace.
The liberal answer to this will be: Increase the annual budget to 14 Billion dollars and double the staff.
Yeah, that’s the ticket!
Whaddya know!
A village CAN’T raise a child. Guess we have to rely on parents. That’s parentS, not A parent.
But, but - Da Gooberment subsidized generations of sluts raising bastards. And now we have a bumper crop of ‘em. ‘Course here on FR we know them as Urban Ferals.
Da Gooberment gives, the Urban Feral takes. Somehow, the “Chicago Way” isn’t working.
Whaddya know!
Here is an article questioning Head Start.
“The liberal answer to this will be: Increase the annual budget to 14 Billion dollars and double the staff.
Yeah, that’s the ticket!” You got two dead on. Here’s the third: All staff will be either TEA Party members or other variety of strict Constitutionalist.
The parents of the students were allowed input into the program, which sounds good. However, the reality was that many of the parents were not only uneducated, but ignorant as sin, and came to the meetings as an act of self aggrandizement rather than to suggest ways to improve the program for their children. Having parental input sounds lovely, but like the Communist Manifesto, is not so hot in its implementation.
Then, there was the opening for a high admin. position, and the board interviewed them. The considered top applicant had a PhD and could not speak good English (not foreign born).
The only upside seemed to be free baby sitting and as the article mentions--local jobs. What the applicants had to do, and all the jumping through hoops to get a teaching job with Head Start, one would have thought it was a full professorship at Harvard.
vaudine
How to destroy an economy; tax productive people and then waste their capital on useless programs. It's the political equivalent of parasitic drag.
Indisputable proof...that another study is needed.
This is nothing new. The failure of Head Start to create any lasting academic benefit was known 10 - 20 years ago.
Hard to believe it’s been 50 years...you’re both right, just a different focus...whatever foundations of the Head Start program that the Obama admin. is “shaking”—its “ineffectiveness,” blah, blah—you can be sure that their agenda of “change” will incorporate both of your points to a greater degree. They need the money for the ACORN stuff, etc.
” - - - smart professional interventionists - - - “
WHOA, Walter Mead! You lost me with that contradiction in terms. Start over.
Say after me: “There are interventionists.”
Good. “There are professionals.”
You are getting the hang of it! “There are smart professionals.”
Great! “There are are professional interventionists.”
Almost there - - ! “There are no smart professional interventionists.”
Let’s try again. “There are ————.
((And on into the night, the verbal struggle continued - - - )).
Head Start is basically an attempt to make a silk’s purse out of a sow’s ear. It was the belief that the right environment can compensate for low intelligence — and that a child born from such parents can magically transform into a genius.
While I don’t deny the importance of nurturance or stimulation, heredity seems to be the Evil Word no one dares to pronounce. It’s like liberals are angry at truth or something.
Isn’t it just daycare? I suppose free daycare is considered a great boon by some. On the free market it’s very expensive, in fact ridiculously expensive, considered in proportion to the after tax wage of many of the working mothers who avail themselves of this service. It’s a strange world.
As I recall, Lady Bird Johnson declared Head Start her favorite program and spoke everywhere about its effectiveness. She was also able to make Republicans speechless and to cower in cowardice when it came to failed social programs. I don’t think the message will ever come through on Head Start.
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