I was doing research about what the United States has done for education in low-income areas, when I came upon the article, "A Real Head Start" by Sara Mead, an opinion contributor.
Head Start is a government-funded program aimed to benefit underprivileged families by providing education, health, and family services. They lend a helping hand to around a million children each year. The overwhelmingly positive effects seem almost too good to be true; CCR Analytics' Family Outcomes Survey completed by almost 11,600 parents involved with the Head Start program in California showed "90% of parents surveyed said that Head Start helped them to get or keep a job. 92% of parents surveyed said that Head Start helped them to enroll in an educational or training program. 99% of families surveyed said that Head Start helped them to improve their parenting skills, such as responding to children's misbehavior and helping their children to learn." They also found that "providing two years of Head Start to a child increases the probability by between 13% to 86% that the child will meet age appropriate expectations."
However, many of the initial effects brought about by Head Start fade rather quickly because the children move onward to lower quality schools. As the Head Start Impact Study concludes, "Head Start has benefits for both 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds in the cognitive, health, and parenting domains, and for 3-year-olds in the social-emotional domain. However, the benefits of access to Head Start at age four are largely absent by 1st grade for the program population as a whole. For 3-year-olds, there are few sustained benefits, although access to the program may lead to improved parent-child relationships through 1st grade, a potentially important finding for children's longer-term development." This made me realize how difficult it is to fully equalize the youth's opportunities between the upper and lower class. Even if programs like Head Start are able to provide three and four years olds extensive benefits, they eventually go to elementary, middle, and high schools that regress to a lower quality of education and support. Creating longterm assistance to the underprivileged children and families with the limited federal funding is a challenging issue that we have yet to successfully resolve. Even creating a fair playing ground between middle to upper class people is virtually impossible in modern society. Some of us are able to afford SAT camp, amazing tutors, unique academic summer programs, and college counselors, while others simply do not have those same opportunities. This is unfair, but the degree to which it is unfair is in the hands of the educated.
- Sarah
Head Start is a government-funded program aimed to benefit underprivileged families by providing education, health, and family services. They lend a helping hand to around a million children each year. The overwhelmingly positive effects seem almost too good to be true; CCR Analytics' Family Outcomes Survey completed by almost 11,600 parents involved with the Head Start program in California showed "90% of parents surveyed said that Head Start helped them to get or keep a job. 92% of parents surveyed said that Head Start helped them to enroll in an educational or training program. 99% of families surveyed said that Head Start helped them to improve their parenting skills, such as responding to children's misbehavior and helping their children to learn." They also found that "providing two years of Head Start to a child increases the probability by between 13% to 86% that the child will meet age appropriate expectations."
However, many of the initial effects brought about by Head Start fade rather quickly because the children move onward to lower quality schools. As the Head Start Impact Study concludes, "Head Start has benefits for both 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds in the cognitive, health, and parenting domains, and for 3-year-olds in the social-emotional domain. However, the benefits of access to Head Start at age four are largely absent by 1st grade for the program population as a whole. For 3-year-olds, there are few sustained benefits, although access to the program may lead to improved parent-child relationships through 1st grade, a potentially important finding for children's longer-term development." This made me realize how difficult it is to fully equalize the youth's opportunities between the upper and lower class. Even if programs like Head Start are able to provide three and four years olds extensive benefits, they eventually go to elementary, middle, and high schools that regress to a lower quality of education and support. Creating longterm assistance to the underprivileged children and families with the limited federal funding is a challenging issue that we have yet to successfully resolve. Even creating a fair playing ground between middle to upper class people is virtually impossible in modern society. Some of us are able to afford SAT camp, amazing tutors, unique academic summer programs, and college counselors, while others simply do not have those same opportunities. This is unfair, but the degree to which it is unfair is in the hands of the educated.- Sarah
