Growls

Kudos to Adam Schaeffer (here) and Andrew Coulson (here and here) of the Cato Institute in getting a 452-page, long overdue report on the Head Start program (requires Adobe) released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). For those unfamiliar with Head Start and the “long overdue report,” here’s a brief overview from the study’s overall summary:

“Since its beginning in 1965 as a part of the War on Poverty, Head Start‘s goal has been to boost the school readiness of low-income children. Based on a "whole child" model, the program provides comprehensive services that include preschool education; medical, dental, and mental health care; nutrition services; and efforts to help parents foster their child‘s development. Head Start services are designed to be responsive to each child‘s and family‘s ethnic, cultural, and linguistic heritage.”

“In the 1998 reauthorization of Head Start, Congress mandated that the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) determine, on a national level, the impact of Head Start on the children it serves . . . “

Coulson provides this brief summary of the study:

“We have spent more than $100 billion on the program to date (ballpark estimate from Table 375 here) and HHS’s own research shows that its results diminish to essentially nothing by the end of the first grade.

“There are other government education programs whose effects actually grow substantially over time, and that are comparatively economical. Consider the federal DC voucher program. Just a year or two after switching from public to private schools, the effect of the private schooling was not big enough to rise to the level of statistical significance. But by their third year in private schools, the evidence was clear that voucher-receiving students were reading more than two grade levels above a randomized control group that stayed in public schools.  This program, as I’ve previously documented, costs 1/4 as much per pupil as DC spends on public education: about $6,600 vs. $28,000.

“But Congress, and particularly Democrats, have defunded the DC voucher program while raising spending on Head Start. President Obama is at the forefront of this travesty. If you weren’t already jaded and disgusted by education politics and its domination by employee unions opposed to educational choice, start now.”

Yesterday, Coulson added that the mainstream media has not covered “the HHS study showing that America’s $100 billion plus investment in Head Start is a failure.” The study did draw the attention of several high profile blogs, though. He also made the following comments:

“What’s really interesting, though, is that the HHS had the moral fibre to actually issue a press release about this damning study. That showed courage — and a certain panache. I particularly liked this, from HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius: “Research clearly shows that Head Start positively impacts the school readiness of low-income children.”

“Umm, yes Ms. Secretary, but the same research shows those effects vanish by the end of first grade. I guess that information is on a need-to-not-know basis. The public needs to not know about it or the administration hasn’t got a snowball’s chance in Kauai of getting American tax payers to throw another $100 billion or so at government pre-K, as President Obama is so very keen to do.”

Despite the results of the Head Start study highlighted above, when HHS finally released the study, they “announced plans to strengthen the Head Start and Early Head Start programs as part of an Administration-wide effort to close achievement gaps and promote early learning through the first eight years of life for the nation’s most vulnerable children,” according to this HHS press release. Instead of closing the achievement gap, however, it’s more likely that what will be expanded is the budget deficit.

To read more about early education tax credits, here is the link to the August 2009 Policy Analysis by Adam Schaeffer.