Now comes the punch to the stomach. If we really want to help poor kids, I think we should scuttle the Head Start program. Born in 1965 as part of the Great Society, the Head Start was intended to be a poverty fighting tool working to ready low income kids for kindergarten. Head Start has been reauthorized and expanded over the years. Over 20 million kids have participated in Head Start programs. The unfortunate reality for Head Start is that it doesn't work. Studies for decades have proved this point. Most recently a 2010 HHS study clearly showed that the impact of Head Start on the achievement of its participants is fleeting at best. This is only one of many studies over decades that have consistently shown that Head Start has no meaningful impact on the achievement of disadvantaged kids. Yet we continue to spend billions.
Now comes the unfortunate reality of politics today. How would you like to run for office with a plank of your platform to defund Head Start? Can you imagine the outrage? I can only imagine the insults that would be hurled your way. No campaign for office could suceed by promising to defund Head Start. It makes me cringe just thinking about the media outcries and vilification that would ensue. But ending Head Start is exactly what we should do...just not right now.
Here's my gripe: we spend billions in federal money to help kids who desperately need help, and we get no results, we don't help the kids in any substantive or sustainable way. So we all feel better about ourselves because we fund Head Start to help disadvantaged kids, but at the end of the day, the kids we want to help are no better off than when we started. This is tragic, not in the wasted funds but in the outcomes for the kids.
What to do? I am a big believer that if you raise an issue or have a gripe, you need to have a suggestion to fix the problem. I don't know how we solve this problem. I know that we spend billions annually to help kids who really need it, and they get no help. The opportunity cost of these misallocated funds is huge in terms of wasted funds, but staggering and tragic in terms of lives that are not advanced and kids continuing to go wanting. I think that's why we don't defund Head Start right now, but rather we set a date at which time we defund Head Start - two years, three years down the road so we have a hard deadline, and then we start working on alternative uses for the Head Start funds that actually might help the kids to which they are directed. We can't do any worse than we are doing today as studies show that any gains for Head Start kids are gone by the end of first grade. The down side is pretty flat on this one. Give the families vouchers for regional schools and programs, hold the funds for vouchers for college as a carrot to get through school...I don't know the answer, but I know what we are doing today is a double whammy against the kids we are trying to help. They kids get no help and the pressure is off the rest of us to solve the problem because Head Start is fully funded.
BTW, let's not just pick on Head Start. There are a multitude of ineffective federal programs that cross the idealogical spectrum that need to go through this same process. Teen pregnancy prevention programs, smoking cessation programs etc, none of which solve their intended problems, but we keep shoveling cash out the door, feeling better all the while that we are doing "something".
I hate the cliche, "something is better than nothing." I think we can prove that incorrect with Head Start and other well-meaning federal programs. "Something" is worse than nothing when "something" delivers no results, wastes scarce funds, and take the pressure off finding an actual solution. I think we can do better than "something".
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