[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
STRENGTHENING HEAD START FOR
CURRENT AND FUTURE GENERATIONS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
AND THE WORKFORCE
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, OCTOBER 7, 2015
__________
Serial No. 114-29
__________
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COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE
JOHN KLINE, Minnesota, Chairman
Joe Wilson, South Carolina Robert C. ``Bobby'' Scott,
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Virginia
Duncan Hunter, California Ranking Member
David P. Roe, Tennessee Ruben Hinojosa, Texas
Glenn Thompson, Pennsylvania Susan A. Davis, California
Tim Walberg, Michigan Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona
Matt Salmon, Arizona Joe Courtney, Connecticut
Brett Guthrie, Kentucky Marcia L. Fudge, Ohio
Todd Rokita, Indiana Jared Polis, Colorado
Lou Barletta, Pennsylvania Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan,
Joseph J. Heck, Nevada Northern Mariana Islands
Luke Messer, Indiana Frederica S. Wilson, Florida
Bradley Byrne, Alabama Suzanne Bonamici, Oregon
David Brat, Virginia Mark Pocan, Wisconsin
Buddy Carter, Georgia Mark Takano, California
Michael D. Bishop, Michigan Hakeem S. Jeffries, New York
Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin Katherine M. Clark, Massachusetts
Steve Russell, Oklahoma Alma S. Adams, North Carolina
Carlos Curbelo, Florida Mark DeSaulnier, California
Elise Stefanik, New York
Rick Allen, Georgia
Juliane Sullivan, Staff Director
Denise Forte, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on October 7, 2015.................................. 1
Statement of Members:
Kline, Hon. John, Chairman, Committee on Education and the
Workforce.................................................. 1
Prepared statement of.................................... 3
Scott, Hon. Robert C. ``Bobby'', Ranking Member, Committee on
Education and the Workforce................................ 3
Prepared statement of.................................... 5
Statement of Witnesses:
Biel, Dr. Matthew, MD, MSC, Division Chief, Child and
Adolescent Psychiatry, Georgetown University, Washington,
DC......................................................... 12
Prepared statement of.................................... 15
Mead, Ms. Sara, Partner, Bellwether Education Partners,
Washington, DC............................................. 17
Prepared statement of.................................... 19
Nolan, Mr. Timothy M., PH.D., Chief Executive Officer and
Executive Director, National Centers for Learning
Excellence, Inc., Waukesha, WI............................. 7
Prepared statement of.................................... 9
Sanchez Fuentes, Ms. Yvette, President, National Alliance for
Hispanic Families, Gaithersburg, MD........................ 23
Prepared statement of.................................... 25
Additional Submissions:
Walberg, Hon. Tim, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Michigan:
Letter from Michigan Head Start Association.............. 35
Vinci, Ms. Yasmina, National Head Start Association:
Prepared statement of.................................... 52
Mr. Nolan:
Four Points in Time: Defining the Success of Our Nation's
Head Start Investment.................................. 70
Article: Quality Early Childhood Education: Enduring
Benefits............................................... 74
STRENGTHENING HEAD START FOR
CURRENT AND FUTURE GENERATIONS
----------
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
House of Representatives,
Committee on Education and the Workforce,
Washington, D.C.
----------
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in Room
HVC-210, Capitol Visitor Center, Hon. John Kline [chairman of
the committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Kline, Foxx, Roe, Walberg, Salmon,
Guthrie, Rokita, Heck, Brat, Carter, Bishop, Grothman, Curbelo,
Stefanik, Allen, Scott, Hinojosa, Grijalva, Courtney, Fudge,
Polis, Bonamici, Jeffries, Clark, Adams, and DeSaulnier.
Staff Present: Lauren Aronson, Press Secretary; Janelle
Belland, Coalitions and Members Services Coordinator; Kathlyn
Ehl, Professional Staff Member; Nancy Locke, Chief Clerk;
Dominique McKay, Deputy Press Secretary; Brian Newell,
Communications Director; Krisann Pearce, General Counsel; Alex
Ricci, Legislative Assistant; Mandy Schaumburg, Education
Deputy Director and Senior Counsel; Alissa Strawcutter, Deputy
Clerk; Juliane Sullivan, Staff Director; Sheariah Yousefi,
Staff Assistant; Tylease Alli, Minority Clerk/Intern and Fellow
Coordinator; Austin Barbera, Minority Staff Assistant; Denise
Forte, Minority Staff Director; Tina Hone, Minority Education
Policy Director and Associate General Counsel; Brian Kennedy,
Minority General Counsel; Kevin McDermott, Minority Senior
Labor Policy Advisor; Alexander Payne, Minority Education
Policy Advisor; Michael Taylor, Minority Education Policy
Fellow; and Arika Trim, Minority Press Secretary.
Chairman Kline. A quorum being present, the Committee on
Education and the Workforce will come to order.
Good morning, everyone. Having a hearing here in these
quarters is still an adventure for some of us. I suspect that
some of my colleagues are wandering around over in the Rayburn
House Office Building even now.
Well, this year marks the 50th anniversary of Head Start, a
program that plays an important role in the lives of many
children and families. Head Start was designed to offer
comprehensive services to 3- and 4-year-old children from low-
income families so they could start school on a level playing
field with their peers. What began as a summer school program
has grown into a multibillion-dollar effort, serving roughly 1
million children at approximately 1,600 centers across the
country.
Today, Head Start is one of the largest, most significant
investments in early childhood education and development, both
in the number of children being served and taxpayer dollars
being spent. We know a great education can be the great
equalizer, but we also know some children have a tough time
adapting to the pressures of school, and that can be especially
true for children living in poverty. Without the proper
support, these students are more likely to fall behind in
school and to fall through the cracks later in life.
Helping these children succeed in the classroom is a
priority that has stretched across party lines for decades, and
that has been reflected in the longstanding bipartisan support
for Head Start. It's an important program, but it's also a
program that faces a number of challenges.
The most glaring example is the continued concern that Head
Start isn't providing children with long-term results. A 2010
study by the Obama administration found that the gains children
receive in Head Start are largely gone by the time they reach
the first grade. A follow-up study tracked the same children
through the third grade and concluded, quote: ``By the end of
third grade there were very few impacts in any of the four
domains of cognitive, social-emotional, health, and parenting
practices. The few impacts that were found did not show a clear
pattern of favorable or unfavorable impacts for children,''
close quote.
As policymakers, we have to answer a number of important
questions. How do we do better for both current and future
generations? How do we ensure Head Start provides taxpayers a
good return on their investment? How do we ensure Head Start
delivers the long-term positive impact these vulnerable
children desperately need?
To help answer these questions, the committee earlier this
year urged the public to submit ideas for reforming the
program. At the same time, we outlined a number of key
principles for reauthorizing the Head Start Act, such as
reducing unnecessary regulatory burdens, encouraging local
innovation, and enhancing parental engagement. We asked
stakeholders and concerned citizens to tell us how we can turn
these principles into a responsible legislative proposal.
Little did we know that as we were trying to strengthen
Head Start through the legislative process, the administration
was crafting a scheme to fundamentally transform Head Start
through the regulatory process. No doubt we will discuss in
greater detail the pros and cons of the administration's
regulatory proposal.
However, we should all be deeply troubled by what are
expected to be very harsh consequences if this proposal is
implemented, including 126,000 fewer Head Start slots and 9,000
fewer instructors. I am pleased the administration recognizes
the need to improve Head Start, but I strongly urge Secretary
Burwell to work with us on that effort through the
reauthorization process. By working toward a legislative
solution, I am confident we can provide low-income children the
strong head start they deserve.
I want to thank our witnesses for being a part of that
effort as well, and I look forward to your testimony.
With that, I will now yield to Ranking Member Bobby Scott
for his opening remarks.
[The statement of Chairman Kline follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. John Kline, Chairman
Committee on Education and the Workforce
Good morning. This year marks the 50th anniversary of Head Start, a
program that plays an important role in the lives of many children and
families. Head Start was designed to offer comprehensive services to
three- and four-year-old children from low-income families so they
could start school on a level playing field with their peers. What
began as a summer school program has grown into a multi-billion dollar
effort serving roughly one million children at approximately 1,600
centers across the country.
Today Head Start is one of the largest, most significant
investments in early childhood education and development, both in the
number of children being served and taxpayer dollars being spent. We
know a great education can be the great equalizer. But we also know
some children have a tough time adapting to the pressures of school,
and that can be especially true for children living in poverty. Without
the proper support, these students are more likely to fall behind in
school and to fall through the cracks later in life.
Helping these children succeed in the classroom is a priority that
has stretched across party lines for decades, and that has been
reflected in the long-standing, bipartisan support for Head Start. It's
an important program, but it's also a program that faces a number of
challenges.
The most glaring example is the continued concern that Head Start
isn't providing children with long-term results. A 2010 study by the
Obama administration found that the gains children receive in Head
Start are largely gone by the time they reach the first grade. A
follow-up study tracked the same children through the third grade and
concluded:
``By the end of third grade there were very few impacts . . . in
any of the four domains of cognitive, social-emotional, health, and
parenting practices. The few impacts that were found did not show a
clear pattern of favorable or unfavorable impacts for children.''
As policymakers, we have to answer a number of important questions.
How do we do better for both current and future generations? How do we
ensure Head Start provides taxpayers a good return on their investment?
How do we ensure Head Start delivers the long-term, positive impact
these vulnerable children desperately need?
To help answer these questions, the committee earlier this year
urged the public to submit ideas for reforming the program. At the same
time, we outlined a number of key principles for reauthorizing the Head
Start Act, such as reducing unnecessary regulatory burdens, encouraging
local innovation, and enhancing parental engagement. We asked
stakeholders and concerned citizens to tell us how we can turn these
principles into a responsible legislative proposal.
Little did we know that as we were trying to strengthen Head Start
through the legislative process, the administration was crafting a
scheme to fundamentally transform Head Start through the regulatory
process. No doubt we will discuss in greater detail the pros and cons
of the administration's regulatory proposal. However, we should all be
deeply troubled by what are expected to be very harsh consequences if
this proposal is implemented, including 126,000 fewer Head Start slots
and 9,000 fewer instructors.
I am pleased the administration recognizes the need to improve Head
Start, but I strongly urge Secretary Burwell to work with us on that
effort through the reauthorization process. By working toward a
legislative solution, I am confident we can provide low-income children
the strong head start they deserve. I want to thank our witnesses for
being a part of that effort as well, and I look forward to your
testimony.
With that, I will now recognize Ranking Member Bobby Scott for his
opening remarks.
______
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank you and the
panelists that have come to our committee hearing today, and I
look forward to their testimony.
Today's hearing focuses on Head Start, a program whose
mission is to promote school readiness of young children from
low-income families. The program is unique from other early
learning efforts in that it works to address infant and toddler
emotional development through a two-generation approach. Not
only does Head Start and its companion, Early Head Start, serve
children from birth to 5, but also these children's parents,
through parenting support, goal setting, and assistance in
assessing comprehensive services.
This two-generation structure that assists families in
health and well-being efforts assists also in accessing other
assistance programs, and promoting a nurturing home environment
is the reason why the Department of Health and Human Services
operates Head Start and not the Department of Education.
The importance of high-quality early learning opportunities
cannot be overstated. The achievement gap starts as early as 9
months old when babies from low-income families show a
significant difference in cognitive skill function than those
born in high-income families. That difference contributes to
the 30-million word gap, which references the difference in
number of words an infant from a low-income families will hear
by age 3 when compared to infants in high-income families. The
gap continues into the K through 12 system and is evident
through differences in State test scores, SAT scores, college
attendance, graduation rates, and even employment rates. In
other words, if we are serious about closing the achievement
gap, we must start early.
Quality Head Start programs eliminate the gap that exists
in kindergarten between low-income toddlers and toddlers from
more affluent families. Long-term benefits from early childhood
learning opportunities like Head Start are also well
documented. Not only do high-quality early learning programs
produce academic results, they produce personal and
professional results that last over a person's lifetime.
Early childhood education helps close not only the
achievement gap, but the employment and income gaps. Decades of
research shows that properly nurturing children in the first 5
years of life through high-quality programs like Head Start is
instrumental in supporting enhanced brain development,
cognitive function, emotional and physical health, but all too
often low-income families lack access to high-quality
affordable early childhood education, and these children tend
to fall behind.
We know that children who don't participate in high-quality
early learning programs are more likely to have weaker
educational outcomes, lower lifetime earnings, increased
involvement in special education services and the criminal
justice system. The cost to society can be quantified. Every
dollar we spend can save up to $7 later on.
Just two programs provide the bulk of the Federal role in
early education, the Head Start program and the Child Care and
Development Block Grant. Unfortunately, because of limited
funding, too few children have access to these programs. This
unmet need continues to grow. Less than half of eligible
children have access to Head Start, and only 5 percent of
eligible students have access to Early Head Start.
We have decades of evidence that investing in early
learning programs like Head Start works, and it's time to
increase the investments in early learning programs, not just
Head Start, but Early Head Start, childcare partnerships, Child
Care Development Block Grants, Preschool Development Block
Grants, home visiting programs, and IDEA Part C.
We must ensure that we are giving all children a chance to
succeed. The only way to ensure that all children have an
opportunity is to improve quality and lyrobust fund early
childhood opportunities. So I thank our panelists for coming
and I look forward to their testimony. And yield back the
balance of my time.
[The statement of Mr. Scott follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Robert C. ``Bobby'' Scott, Ranking Member,
Committee on Education and the Workforce
Thank you Chairman Kline, and thank you to the panelists for coming
to this Committee hearing today. I look forward to your testimonies.
Today's hearing focuses on Head Start, a program with an
exceptional mission to promote the school readiness of young children
from low-income families. The program is unique from other early
learning efforts in that it works to address infant and toddler
emotional development through a two generation approach. Not only does
Head Start, and its companion, Early Head Start, serve children from
birth through age five, but also those children's parents through
parenting support, goal setting, and assistance in accessing
comprehensive services.
The importance of high-quality, early learning opportunities cannot
be overstated. The achievement gap starts as early as nine months old,
when babies from low-income families show a significant difference in
cognitive skill function than those born into high-income families.
That difference contributes to the 30 million word gap, which
references the difference in the number of words an infant from a low-
income family will hear by age three compared to an infant from a high-
income family. The gap continues into the K-12 system and is evident
through the difference in state test scores, SAT scores, college
attendance and graduation rates, and employment rates. In other words,
if we are serious about closing the achievement gap, we must start
early.
Quality Head Start programs eliminate the gap that exists in
kindergarten between low-income toddlers and toddlers from more
affluent families.
The long-term benefits of early childhood education programs, like
Head Start, are also well-documented. Not only do high-quality, early
learning programs produce academic results, they produce personal and
professional results that last over a person's lifetime.
Early childhood education helps close not only the achievement gap,
but the employment and income gaps. Decades of research shows that
properly nurturing children in the first five years of life through
high-quality programs like Head Start is instrumental to supporting
enhanced brain development, cognitive functioning, and emotional and
physical health. But all too often, low-income families lack access to
high-quality, affordable early childhood education, and these children
tend to fall behind. We know that children who don't participate in
high-quality, early education programs are more likely to have weaker
educational outcomes, lower lifetime earnings, and increased
involvement in special education services and the criminal justice
system. But the cost to society can be quantified. Every dollar we
spend today on high quality, early learning programs can save us up to
$7 later on.
Just two programs provide for the bulk of the federal role in early
education: the Head Start Program and the Child Care and Development
Block Grant. Unfortunately, because of limited federal funding, too few
young children have access. This unmet need continues to grow - less
than half of eligible children have access to Head Start and only five
percent of eligible children have access to Early Head Start. We have
decades of evidence that shows investing in early learning programs
like Head Start works. It is time to increase investments in early
learning programs - not just Head Start but Early Head Start-Child Care
Partnerships, Child Care Development Block Grants, Preschool
Development Grants, home visiting programs, and IDEA Part C. We must
ensure that we are giving ALL children the chance to succeed. The only
way to ensure all children have that opportunity is to improve quality
and robustly fund those programs.
Thank you again to our witnesses for coming - I look forward to
hearing from you all today.
______
Chairman Kline. I thank the gentleman.
Pursuant to Committee Rule 7(c), all members will be
permitted to submit written statements to be included in the
permanent hearing record. And without objection, the hearing
record will remain open for 14 days to allow such statements
and other extraneous material referenced during the hearing be
submitted for the official hearing record.
Chairman Kline. It is now my pleasure to introduce our
distinguished witnesses.
Dr. Tim Nolan is executive director for the National
Centers for Learning Excellence, Inc., a Head Start grantee in
Waukesha, Wisconsin. In this role, he oversees over 330 Head
Start and Early Head Start slots. Dr. Nolan also is co-chair of
the Wisconsin Head Start Association's Advocacy Work Group.
Dr. Matthew Biel serves as director of child and adolescent
psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical Center and as the
assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Georgetown
University School of Medicine here in Washington, D.C. Dr.
Biel's work focuses on child development, trauma and
resilience, mood and anxiety disorders, autism spectrum
disorders, and psychiatric care of children with medical
illnesses.
Dr. Biel has published extensively on access to mental
health care for underserved populations, trauma and resilience,
and family engagement. Very busy man.
Sara Mead is a partner in the Policy and Thought Leadership
Practice with Bellwether Education Partners here in Washington,
D.C. Ms. Mead has written and conducted several policy analyses
on early childhood education, charter schools, teacher quality,
and State and Federal education policy issues.
Yvette Sanchez Fuentes is the president of the National
Alliance for Hispanic Families in Gaithersburg, Maryland. In
this position, Ms. Sanchez Fuentes guides the Alliance's
research programs and public policies in order to better serve
Hispanic communities in need. Prior to joining the Alliance,
Ms. Sanchez Fuentes served as director for the Office of Head
Start in the Department of Health and Human Services from 2009
to 2013.
I will now ask our witnesses to stand and to raise your
right hand.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Chairman Kline. Let the record reflect the witnesses
answered in the affirmative. Please be seated.
Before I recognize each of you to provide your testimony,
let me briefly explain our lighting system. We allow 5 minutes
for each witness to provide testimony. When you begin, the
light in front of you will turn green. When 1 minute is left,
the light will turn yellow, and at the 5-minute mark, the light
will turn red, and you should wrap up your testimony. And here
in this very fancy hearing room, you actually have a clock in
front of you. You can watch that wind down as well. Don't get
too fascinated with it.
I loathe to gavel down any witness during their opening
testimony, but I would ask you, when you see that red light, to
please move very quickly to wrapping up so that we can get on
with the rest of the hearing and my colleagues can ask
questions. All of us are restricted to the 5-minute rule as
well.
Okay. I think we're ready to get started. Dr. Nolan, you're
recognized.
TESTIMONY OF DR. TIMOTHY M. NOLAN, PH.D., CHIEF EXECUTIVE
OFFICER & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL CENTERS FOR LEARNING
EXCELLENCE, INC., WAUKESHA, WISCONSIN
Mr. Nolan. Good morning, Chairman Kline, Ranking Member
Scott, and members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me
to provide testimony this morning on the very important topic
of this hearing.
2015 marks the 50th anniversary of Head Start creating
opportunities for at-risk children and families. As of today,
10 percent of all Americans have now attended Head Start,
including such notables as Darren Walker, president of the Ford
Foundation, and the Honorable Sylvia Burwell, Secretary of
Health and Human Services. This topic could not be more
important as we look forward to shaping the future.
I'm a Head Start director here to share my thoughts and
observations based upon extensive experience. I'm a local
program director, a psychologist by training, a State national
leader, a consultant, and an author.
I first showed up for work in my Head Start program on
September 1, 1968. I arrived with a sense of curiosity and awe
about Head Start and the possibilities that it presented for
the future. Today, 46 years later, I still arrive at work
feeling the same sense of possibility. We must work together to
preserve and deepen this unique national capability.
Head Start was created in `64 and launched in `65 as an
intervention program. Those invited to the table to shape the
program were physicians and psychologists. There was not an
educator among them. Head Start has always been an intervention
program that would include but not be limited to cognitive
learning gains.
To accomplish this, we deal with the whole child,
nutrition, medical and dental health, mental health,
interpersonal skills development, and the several domains of
cognitive development. Young children simply cannot learn if
their teeth hurt, if they are hungry, or if they are regularly
absent because of unstable housing or family challenges.
Only the most needy are served by Head Start. We enroll the
children others too often reject, suspend, or expel. We enroll
the family, not just their child, identifying the needs and
goals of the family and working regularly with them throughout
the year in order to help them succeed in achieving their
goals.
In my agency, we partner with the Medical College of
Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Children's Hospital, who provide
weekly mental health consultation services to my staff. Poverty
has a major impact upon mental health in both the enrolled
child and their parent.
Head Start programs partner with public schools. In my
agency, we have 107 4-year-olds with a half-day of Head Start,
plus a school-funded half-day of 4-year-old kindergarten. We
also provide leadership locally in this effort, including
teacher training.
We individualize instruction in concert with parent input,
assuring that the parent is a key part of this process. Parents
are their child's primary teacher, and we have high
expectations of parents. We support their development. This
family-centric approach is not evidenced by other public
entities serving young children at risk.
In 1991, in an effort to share innovative best practices, I
wrote a thought piece titled ``What Really Makes Head Start
Work.'' In it, I identified a secret to Head Start's success
based upon my experience and extensive observation. We create
what we call compassionate partnerships between a Head Start
staff member and a parent or guardian on behalf of their child.
These relationships are based upon respect, trust, and a focus
upon the child. Hundreds of thousands of individualized
compassionate partnerships are created each year across the
Head Start world.
As I complete my thoughts on strengthening Head Start for
current and future generations, several thoughts come to mind.
You can mandate compliance. You cannot mandate excellence. We
must achieve excellence, and we know how to do this.
We should not seek to make Head Start more like the public
schools, but to make the public schools more like Head Start.
Involved parents, create compassionate partnerships between
teachers and parents, don't send Head Start eligible 4-year-old
children into public school kindergarten instead of Head Start
when they need a full range of intervention services
unavailable in practically every LEA. Our local schools love
having us work with the children most in need in their
district. We love it too.
Innovation is in our DNA. Standardization kills creativity.
Head Start programs annually study their marketplace through a
community needs assessment and adjust services accordingly.
Don't allow one-size-fits-all program designs. We want to
continue to deliver upon the promise that every child can
succeed. I look forward to working with the committee on this.
Thank you.
[The testimony of Mr. Nolan follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Kline. Thank you, sir.
Dr. Biel, you're recognized.
TESTIMONY OF DR. MATTHEW BIEL, MD, MSC, DIVISION CHIEF, CHILD
AND ADOLESCENT PSYCHIATRY, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON,
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Dr. Biel. Good morning, Chairman Kline, Ranking Member
Scott, members of the committee, thank you very much for the
opportunity to--
Chairman Kline. Microphone. Check your microphone, please.
Dr. Biel. Thank you.
Chairman Kline. There you go.
Dr. Biel. I am very grateful for the opportunity to join
today's hearing. Thank you.
In my clinical work caring for children and families, and
in my research, I focus on identifying strategies to build
resilience and enhance childhood outcomes in the face of
adversity. Converging evidence from neuroscience research
identifies the infant, toddler, and preschool years as a time
of great promise and also of great vulnerability. Experiences
in the first 5 years of life, both positive and negative, have
critical effects on outcomes across the lifespan. Early
childhood truly sets the course for physical and mental
wellbeing or dysfunction.
The building blocks for successful early development
include an environment that provides basic resources and
capable care from adult caregivers. Nurturing relationships
with adults stimulate brain development beginning in infancy,
creating the neurological foundations for health, learning, and
positive social interactions.
However, early exposure to toxic stressors, such as extreme
poverty, abuse or neglect, or living with a parent with mental
illness or substance abuse, disrupts developing brain
architecture. Children who have not received appropriate
nurturance and stimulation in the first 5 years are already
significantly disadvantaged. They are likely to have less
emotional stability, greater risk for physical health problems,
and more ground to make up in academic readiness. The deck is
truly stacked against them before their first day of
kindergarten.
Experiencing severe adversity in early childhood may be the
single most modifiable risk factor for future problems,
including obesity, diabetes, depression, addiction, school
failure, lost productivity, and incarceration. As you know,
these are among the most pernicious and costly problems that
our society faces, and science tells us that they often have
their origins in early childhood.
Meaningful interventions to reduce the damage caused by
early adversity can produce significant benefits for society,
including increasing individuals' capacities to learn and earn,
lowering crime rates, saving spending on special education and
social safety nets, and reducing the cost of common and
expensive chronic health conditions.
Many communities do not have well-coordinated resources to
help families and children buffer the effects of adversity. Too
often, efforts to identify vulnerable children in one sector
ignore parallel efforts in another sector.
This fragmented approach is exacerbated by structural
barriers that separate service delivery systems in the domains
of physical health, mental health, and early childhood
education. These artificial silos persist despite glaring
evidence from the scientific literature that child development
observes no such separation. Children living in highly stressed
environments struggle in ways that simultaneously impact
learning, physical health, and emotional stability.
The good news. A number of clearly effective interventions
to prevent and ameliorate the impact of toxic stress in young
lives have been developed and are deliverable in Head Start.
Nationwide, there is a great need to effectively integrate
evidence-based strategies in order to limit the harmful effects
of toxic stress and to create buffers for young children and
their families.
The early childhood educational setting, like Early Head
Start and Head Start, is an ideal arena for such interventions.
Early childhood brain development predicts later social
success, psychological health, and academic achievement. The
capacities for self-control, for positive social interactions,
emotional stability, paying attention, following instructions,
all crucial skills for functioning in school and in the
community, are brain-based capacities that have to be mastered
in early childhood. Delays in these areas are readily relevant
in the early childhood education setting and can be corrected
through intervention.
High-quality Head Start programming, enriched by proven
intervention strategies, can have an immensely positive impact
by helping children to catch up on these crucial skills before
it is too late.
Based upon my work and the work of my colleagues, I submit
four recommendations to this committee in assessing Head Start
and other similar programs under your jurisdiction.
One, Head Start providers require training to equip them to
identify children who may be experiencing toxic stress and to
implement effective techniques to respond to these difficulties
within the classroom. Early childhood providers receive
limiting training in understanding and responding to social and
emotional challenges facing their students. Enhanced
professional development in these areas should be a priority.
Two, evidence-based interventions to promote social and
emotional health should be supported across early childhood
educational settings, including Head Start. Initiatives
deserving support include in-school clinical consultation from
mental health professionals, as well as teacher-delivered
interventions that support the development of brain-based
skills that are crucial to social and academic competence.
Three, efforts to enhance early childhood outcomes require
effective coordination and integration. We need local
approaches that effectively identify community needs, unify
available programs and resources, and address gaps in
programming with high-quality evidence-based approaches. The
challenges of early childhood vulnerability require holistic,
community-based strategies.
Four, while Head Start providers are important contributors
to a child's health and development, the family is the first
and most consistent influence. Interventions that do not engage
the family are destined to be less effective. To truly improve
child outcomes, it is critical to enlist families in the
educational enterprise taking place in early childhood centers,
to include families in their children's educations, and to
effectively collaborate with other community resources that are
available to support families' diverse needs. Interventions
that effectively include families in early childhood education
deserve additional development and support.
In closing, I recommend specific support for provider
training in understanding and addressing emotional and
behavioral concerns in young children, high-quality behavioral
health strategies to support early learning environments,
integration rather than siloization of programming efforts, and
special education to strengthening families through engagement
efforts emerging from early childhood educational settings.
Thank you very much for your time and consideration.
[The testimony of Dr. Biel follows:]
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Chairman Kline. Thank you, sir.
Ms. Mead, you're recognized.
TESTIMONY OF MS. SARA MEAD, PARTNER, BELLWETHER EDUCATION
PARTNERS, WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Ms. Mead. Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity
to speak with you this morning. My name is Sara Mead, and I'm a
partner with Bellwether Education Partners, a nonprofit that
helps education organizations improve results for high-need
students. I conduct research on Head Start and other early
childhood policies and advise foundations, advocacy
organizations, and others, including Head Start grantees,
working to improve early learning.
Serving nearly a million children, Head Start plays a
crucial role in our early childhood system and in improving
outcomes for children in poverty. Children in poverty, as
you've heard this morning, are more likely to experience trauma
and toxic stress, have less access to learning experiences, and
hear 30 million fewer words by age 3 than affluent children.
Achievement gaps for disadvantaged youngsters emerge as early
as 9 months in age, and by the time they enter kindergarten
they are already far behind.
Given these challenges, all children in poverty need access
to high-quality early learning programs, including Head Start
and State or locally funded pre-K, to enable them to enter
school ready to succeed.
Research, including the federally funded Head Start Impact
Study and FACES survey, show that Head Start improves
children's school readiness at kindergarten entry. Although
impacts on test scores decline through the elementary grades,
longer-term studies which followed children into adulthood show
that Head Start alumni are more likely to graduate high school
and have better adult outcomes than similar children who did
not attend.
Further analysis of Impact Study data also finds that Head
Start produces significant and sustained learning gains
compared to no preschool at all--in other words, Head Start
works--but its results, on average, do not match those of the
highest-quality publicly funded pre-K programs, such as those
in New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Boston. Further, Head Start
results vary widely across centers and programs, as much as or
more than those of K-12 public schools.
The key question then is not whether Head Start works, but
how to enable all Head Start grantees to match the results of
the best Head Start and pre-K programs. The bipartisan 2007
reauthorization took crucial steps to improve quality in
outcomes in Head Start. As a result of these changes, 71
percent of Head Start preschool teachers now have at least a
bachelor's degree. Designation renewal, which requires
identified grantees to compete to retain their grants, has led
to the replacement of low-performing grantees and spurred
others to improve their quality. The quality of teaching in
Head Start classrooms is also improving.
Despite this progress, however, additional reforms are
needed. Six issues are particularly important.
First, supporting quality teaching. Preschools that produce
strong sustained learning gains employ teachers with bachelor's
degrees and training in early childhood, provide high-quality
professional development, and pay preschool teachers the same
as K-12 teachers. In contrast, one in four Head Start teachers
lacks a bachelor's degree, and Head Start teachers make $20,000
a year less than comparably trained kindergarten teachers.
Improving Head Start teacher preparation and compensation must
be a priority.
Second, improving curriculum. To prepare children to
succeed in school, great teachers need evidence-based,
developmentally appropriate, content-rich, and well-organized
curricula, but many early childhood curricula used in Head
Start today fail to provide sufficiently rich content or
support for teachers.
Third, continuous improvement. At both the grantee and
Federal level, Head Start needs to collect, analyze, and use
data to support ongoing program improvement. This requires
building grantee capacity and shifting the focus of monitoring
from compliance to continuous improvement. To accelerate these
efforts, researchers and Federal officials must collect and use
program performance data to identify, learn from, and
disseminate the practices of high-performing guarantees.
Fourth, reducing burdensome regulations. Head Start
programs are subject to some 1,400 separate requirements
prescribing not just what they do, but how they do it. Head
Start monitoring focuses largely on compliance with rules, not
program results. Federal policymakers must reduce overly
prescriptive and bureaucratic requirements on Head Start
programs and provide greater flexibility to innovate.
Fifth, improving coordination with State early childhood
and K-12 systems. As States build early learning systems, State
and Federal policies must work to integrate Head Start with
these systems. They should also support Head Start grantees to
access and combine State and local pre-K and childcare funds in
order to offer a longer day or improve program quality. As
State pre-K expands, Head Start programs also need greater
flexibility to shift resources between infants, toddlers, and
preschoolers in response to changing community needs.
Six, ensuring adequate funds. For too long, Federal
policies have added new requirements to Head Start programs
without providing sufficient funding to meet them. Improving
quality in outcomes will require additional Federal investments
to enable Head Start programs to cover the cost of improving
quality without reducing children's and families' access to
Head Start programs.
The Obama administration has proposed changes to streamline
the Head Start performance standards, reduce overly
prescriptive and bureaucratic requirements, and bring
expectations for Head Start in line with current research. But
addressing the challenges above also requires statutory change
in the next reauthorization of Head Start, as well as
additional funding.
As you begin your consideration of Head Start
reauthorization, these issues, and the needs of Head Start
children and families, must be at the center of the
conversation. Thank you.
[The testimony of Ms. Mead follows:]
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Chairman Kline. Thank you very much.
Ms. Sanchez Fuentes, you're recognized.
TESTIMONY OF MS. YVETTE SANCHEZ FUENTES, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL
ALLIANCE FOR HISPANIC FAMILIES, GAITHERSBURG, MARYLAND
Ms. Sanchez Fuentes. Good morning. Thank you, Chairman
Kline, Ranking Member Scott, and members of the committee, for
the opportunity to talk about strengthening Head Start.
As you heard, I'm Yvette Sanchez Fuentes. I'm currently the
president of the National Alliance for Hispanic Families. From
2009 to 2013, I served as the director of the Office of Head
Start at the Department of Health and Human Services. Today, I
am proud to be before you as an advocate for Latino families
and as someone who has experienced implementing the Head Start
program at the local and Federal level.
As we celebrate 50 years of Head Start, it's a historic
milestone that presents a perfect opportunity to reflect on how
the program has grown and evolved. Head Start continues to play
a critical and often controversial role in the ecosystem of
early childhood education.
But there are two things that make this program unique. The
first is that Head Start was conceptualized as a two-generation
program supporting the success of both children and their
families in the communities they reside. The second is a set of
values that have been passed on, including the belief that
parents are the child's first teacher, the priority to serve
the most vulnerable children, the importance of community
engagement, the significance of honoring culture and language,
and the consequence of assuring high-quality comprehensive
services.
It's been 50 years since President Johnson announced the
creation of Project Head Start. The program initially began as
an 8-week summer program to provide services to 3 and 4-year-
olds through preschool classes, medical and dental care, and
mental health services.
Today, the program has expanded to include approximately
1,800 nonprofit and for-profit organizations and States that
provide Early Head Start services, services for American Indian
and Alaska Natives, and the Migrant and Seasonal Head Start
program. Head Start has grown from 560,000 children in that
first summer to almost a million children enrolled in the last
school year.
During my time at the Office of Head Start, I had the
privilege of visiting many Head Start programs across America,
including the Havasupai Nation at the bottom of the Grand
Canyon and programs in every borough of New York City. The
uniqueness of Head Start is that while there are standards that
lend themselves to measuring quality and effectiveness, the
exact combination of the services designed by local grantees
must be responsive to each child and families' ethnic,
cultural, and linguistic heritage.
Programs build relationships with families that support
positive parent-child relationships, family wellbeing, and
connections to peers and community. President Johnson often
described Head Start not so much as a Federal program, but a
neighborhood effort. One example of that commitment is that
since 1988, Minnesota has appropriated State general funds for
local Head Start programs.
Both Head Start and Early Head Start programs offer a
variety of service models, depending on the needs of the
community. Programs may be in centers, schools, family child
care, or receive services through the home-based model.
During my time at the Office of Head Start, the birth-to-
five model was piloted. The pilot made grants available to
develop a comprehensive, seamless birth-to-five program. This
model offers promise for serving children from earlier ages and
for longer periods of time.
Much has changed since Head Start began 50 years ago. Head
Start is no longer the sole provider of early childhood
education. The State role in pre-kindergarten for 4-year-olds
has grown significantly and left many wondering where Head
Start fits into this new landscape.
For 50 years Head Start has been the Nation's laboratory,
providing services to homeless families, children with
disabilities, dual-language learners, professional development
for teachers, and training parents. There are millions of
stories about how the Head Start changed the life of a child. I
have seen it firsthand. One example: In New Jersey, a mom
shared with me that after she lost everything when Hurricane
Sandy hit, when she was able to check her messages, the only
phone messages were from the Head Start teacher.
As you work and consider changes to improve the Head Start
program, it would be critical to maintain the Federal-to-local
funding structure. So I'd like to end by sharing what Head
Start means to me. It means that no matter where you are born
in America, the color of your skin, the language you speak, the
state of your child and family, Head Start will be there to
offer an opportunity to make your dreams come true. Thank you.
[The testimony of Ms. Sanchez Fuentes follows:]
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Chairman Kline. Thank you very much. Thank all the
witnesses for excellent testimony. We have a panel of real
experts here. I'll yield myself 5 minutes, and then I'm going
to be fascinated to watch the clock wind down here.
It seems to me I've heard from all of you and so many
people who are involved in Head Start that there is resistance
to a one-size-fits-all model and that the local Head Start
programs have to have the flexibility, my friends from
Minnesota were telling me in the office the other day, to do
the right thing for their students, for their population.
So I'm going to start with you, Ms. Sanchez Fuentes,
because you have an incredibly interesting and unique
background working at the Federal level and with the kids on
the ground. So as we look at making a new statute, how can we
make sure that the Federal Government doesn't impose either too
many or too overly burdensome requirements on local programs?
What should be our guidepost there?
Ms. Sanchez Fuentes. Thank you for the question.
So I would start by saying that standards are important.
They do provide for a base level of quality, and it is a way to
be able to measure how programs are doing across the country.
I would also suggest, though, that monitoring, as it stands
today, does focus on compliance. While there have been many
changes to the monitoring system over the last 5 to 7 years, it
does have quite a ways to go, and it does have to focus on
providing flexibility to local programs. But as you can
imagine, from a Federal perspective, that can be difficult if
you have requirements that you are required to implement by the
law while at the same time trying to hear what grantees are
saying.
So I would hope that as you think about reauthorization and
what needs to change, keeping in mind the requirements that the
Feds have to implement while at the same time trying to be
innovative and listen to grantees.
Chairman Kline. Ought to be easy enough.
Dr. Nolan, kind of the same question because you were
getting at this as well. How can we make sure that people at
State and local level are able to be innovative and to adapt to
the needs that may exist in the bottom of the canyon or the top
of the mountain, inner city and rural? How can we do that?
Because the temptation, frankly, is just write a law and say
all of you go do this thing.
Mr. Nolan. Correct. Yeah. One of the things that I would
say to the committee, Head Start is very, very unusual in that
most of the performance standards that are in place were
advocated for from the field, and part of it was we wanted to
make sure that Head Start across the Nation was as good as Head
Start was in our community.
One of the things that we have in place right now is the
need to do an annual community needs assessment, a super in-
depth one every 3 years, to make sure that the program we're
delivering is the program that our community needs.
And one of the things that I would suggest to you, since
I'm a consultant to business as well, in business they are
discovering design thinking, which is put together a pilot, try
it, learn from it, make it better. That's been 50 years of Head
Start's history. I mean, in my agency, the next 12 months is
going to be a little different than the last 12 months based on
who it is that we're recruiting, what it is that the community
is needing.
A key piece. You can, as I said in any statement, you can
mandate compliance. You cannot mandate excellence. One piece of
the 2007 legislation was on centers of early childhood
excellence, which was a model that I worked very closely with
Senator Alexander and his office on, came from a piece that we
did in Wisconsin, and the notion there was to create models of
Head Start excellence that could, in fact, be places for people
to come experience and learn best practices. And we've got to
put more emphasis on the magnet toward excellence and less on
catch people doing something wrong.
Ms. Sanchez Fuentes. If I may, I would just like to add one
quick thing. So we already have a model in Head Start that
exists. It's called Migrant and Seasonal Head Start. I would
suggest that would be a great place to start. These programs
actually serve families birth-to-five, and they do have the
ability to be flexible year by year, depending on the families
who are coming into their community based on agricultural work.
Chairman Kline. Thank you. I see my time has expired.
Mr. Scott.
Mr. Scott. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Mead, or anybody that happens to know, the last
authorization of Head Start was in 2007, and we think we made
significant improvements. Can anybody comment on the changes
made in 2007 and whether they worked or not?
Ms. Mead. That's a pretty broad question. And the 2007
reauthorization did a lot of things. Some of the most notable
were the creation of the designation renewal system, which
changed all Head Start grantees to 5-year grants and then
required certain grantees to compete at the end of those 5-year
grants if they hit any of seven indicators defined by the
Department.
That . . . based on what we've seen, about 5 percent of
Head Start grantees have actually turned over, over the past 3
years, as a result of the designation renewal process. The
process is far from perfect, largely because the criteria
continue to be based in largely a compliance-oriented
monitoring approach that we've already talked a bit about today
and because a great deal of weight is placed on the Classroom
Assessment Scoring System, which is an observation of teaching
quality in Head Start classrooms, which is very, very powerful
as a tool for professional development and for improving
teaching practice, but is in and of itself not robust enough to
put a large weight of program accountability on it without
additional performance measures included.
So there is a need to improve the criteria used for
designation renewal, but designation renewal itself, in terms
of results, has produced a variety of positive results in terms
of spurring improvement and transitioning grants away from low-
performing grantees.
Another major change was obviously the creation of the
requirement that 50 percent of Head Start teachers have a
bachelor's degree and all teachers have an associate's degree.
There's been tremendous progress on that front. Over 70 percent
of Head Start preschool teachers now have bachelor's degrees.
And through the Classroom Assessment Scoring System, which
is the tool that I referenced earlier, used to monitor the
quality of teaching, we have seen increased attention to the
quality of instruction in Head Start classrooms, increased
efforts to boost teachers' skills and ability to engage
children in meaningful instruction and emotional support, and
we are seeing some progress at the program level on those
scores.
Although we are also learning that focusing on instruction
alone and adult-child interactions alone without coupling that
with rich curriculum is not producing the results that we want
for kids in some cases.
Mr. Nolan. I'd like to address a couple of those items. I
work very heavily with this committee and with the Senate side
on reauthorization. I did 39 self-funded trips to this fine
city. And you know you've been here too often when hotel staff
are recognizing you.
But because of the work that was done during
reauthorization, we have something that we badly needed, which
was a more organized approach to moving low-performing agencies
out of Head Start.
The what was correct. The who and the how is still broken,
where we've got Type I, Type II error, so we are missing
agencies that probably should be in designation renewal. We are
throwing agencies into designation renewal who should never
have been there.
My own agency, one of the top agencies in the country,
ended up in DRS because we were on the piece that Ms. Mead was
talking about, the evaluation of classroom activity. We were
0.0109 under an artificial cutoff based on the observations of
a single individual one time in our classrooms, and for that,
we went through 18 months of arduous reentry back into Head
Start.
We need to get it to be much better. We need to keep it in
place because it's really critical.
I think the other piece that we need to come back and look
at is, how do we deliver on what it is we know to be best
practices? Best practices. When I. Twenty years ago, site
visits were productive, positive events. The people coming in
would make suggestions for improvement. There would be almost a
kind of pollinating kind of a process of a team sharing things
that they were learning across Head Start.
At this point, it's not permissible for site visit folks to
make recommendations. We know how to do this much better than
we do it on any given day.
Mr. Scott. Dr. Nolan, I want to get in another question.
Can you say a word about the importance of parent committees?
Mr. Nolan. Yeah, the whole role of parents was
institutionalized in 1970 in a regulation called 70.2, second
regulation in 1970, and it institutionalized parents as
decisionmakers, not just suggesting, not just kind of a
parallel process to the decisionmakers. So what we want to do
is make sure that we don't lessen the role of parents in
shaping that local agency and what it is that the agency is
doing.
Again, one of the things that I've said in some of the
writings, we are one of the most customer-responsive
organizations on Earth. At one point, J.D. Power had identified
that Head Start had a higher satisfaction rating than Mercedes-
Benz.
Chairman Kline. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Walberg.
Mr. Walberg. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In my home State of Michigan, Michigan Head Start offers
services to more than 34,000 children and their families. In
reading through Michigan's Head Start's comments on the
Department's notice of proposal rulemaking, they shared many
worries and concerns that have already been raised today. They
also recommend alternatives for implementation of the rule and
ask for increased flexibility in order to mitigate the
estimated lost opportunities for children and families, all the
while still dedicated to finding ways at the local and State
level to strengthen the quality of their programs.
Mr. Chairman, I'd like to ask permission to have their
letter put into our document.
Chairman Kline. Without objection.
[The information follows:]
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Mr. Walberg. Thank you.
Dr. Nolan, on the basis of your extensive experience in the
field and with many, many children and families, could you
share further your recommendations for alternate
implementation, and maybe even more importantly, increased
flexibility in the proposed rule that would allow your program
to strengthen and improve?
Mr. Nolan. In many ways what we need is already in place,
but we are not able to get to it in a culture that has shifted
over the last decade toward catch people doing something wrong
as opposed to build on strengths. There's a wonderful book out
called, ``Soar with Your Strengths,'' and that particular book
speaks to the notion of investing in growing up the things that
you're really good at as opposed to trying to cover the things
that are weakness areas.
All of us have weaknesses. We all need to work on those.
What we need to be doing is investing in building on strengths
so that we can take parent involvement. And arguably, we are
one of the best organizations in existence on involving
parents, and we could be better. We need to have system
recognition of those who are surpassing performance standards.
Mr. Walberg. Getting back to the proposed rule
specifically, what is the proposed rule doing differently than
that?
Mr. Nolan. Well, at this point, the proposed rule would
lessen the role of parents, which is the direction we don't
want to take. We want to look at how to make that work better.
It overlooks possibilities that have really not even had formal
discussion. As we think about dual generation, how can we get
better at that?
And there is very little credit. For instance, I have an
individual who's on our board who came to us 32 years ago as a
single parent, depressed, and at some point fully on public
assistance. Basically, as he found Head Start and we kind of
induced him into involvement--and he will tell you, and I have
his story, that he was dragged kicking and screaming in--what
happened was we helped him get his life in order.
He ultimately started a business 22 years ago. Today he
employs seven people. It's not General Motors. But instead of
being on public assistance himself, he is providing employment.
We need more opportunity to do that and--
Mr. Walberg. Is success in changing parents relatively few
and far between, or do you see this regularly?
Mr. Nolan. We see it regularly. I mean, in his case,
starting a business and being an employer of 22 years, that's
unusual, but seeing the progress of parents is pretty much
universal. We. Remember that we go out and recruit the least
likely to succeed, so lots of chaos going on in people's lives,
lots of challenges, and because of the limited percentage of
people who can make it into Head Start, those who do are very,
very high in need.
Mr. Walberg. Ms. Sanchez Fuentes, let me just--and I
appreciate those comments, and I want to labor further on
that--do you find the same thing with parents in working with
your group, as it were, and the specific needs relative to the
Hispanic community and families?
Ms. Sanchez Fuentes. So I would say that at both the local
level and at the national level, we have definitely seen that
Hispanic children and families have the least access to quality
care. So when they get into Head Start they take advantage of
it, and we've seen that it does have positive effects and it
can absolutely change the road that their lives take.
Mr. Walberg. For the kids, the students, but also the
families.
Ms. Sanchez Fuentes. Absolutely.
Mr. Walberg. And I guess, Mr. Biel, it looks like you're
jumping in your chair. Give me your response.
Dr. Biel. You're very perceptive.
So I just wanted to point out that it's really not just
about generic support for parents. There is really the
opportunity to galvanize parents' own skills and capacities
through the activity that goes on within the four walls of a
Head Start facility, that so much about improving childhood
outcomes, some of the brain-based capacities that I mentioned
in my testimony, can be really, really accelerated in their
improvement through addressing those same capacities in
parents' executive functioning and emotional regulation.
Those are capacities that change throughout the lifespan.
The most promising time is to get in there in the first 5
years, but it's not too late when we've got a 25- or 35-year-
old parent walking through the Head Start doors, to intervene
with those parents and by improving their capacity.
Chairman Kline. I'm sorry, the gentleman's time has
expired.
Mr. Walberg. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's good to talk
good things about parents.
Chairman Kline. Indeed.
Mr. Hinojosa.
Mr. Hinojosa. Thank you, Chairman Kline and Ranking Member
Scott, for holding this important hearing today.
And thank you to the distinguished panelists for testimony
and appearance here today.
I strongly believe we must reauthorize Head Start without
delay. Strengthening and improving high-quality early learning
programs like Head Start is one of the best investments we can
possibly make.
I have four daughters, and one of them, the fourth one, was
recognized as teacher of the year in a region in south Texas
that serves 39 school districts, and she was teacher of the
year for early childhood development, teaches 3 and 4-year-
olds. And she says: ``Dad, Congress can do better.''
So let me say that in my congressional district, Head Start
and Migrant Head Start serves more than 12,000 children of
working families, and these programs have made a significant
impact on improving the opportunities for our children,
especially our Nation's Latino and African American youth.
I founded what I call the South Texas Literacy Coalition 6
years ago to promote early literacy and parental involvement in
our vulnerable children's education opportunities because I
have always believed that teaching our children fundamental
skills such as early reading and writing is a formula, a
winning formula, for success.
This early learning program of reading every day for 30
minutes before bedtime from cradle to age 4, before they go to
kindergarten, helps children love books, build a good
vocabulary, and helps them stay at grade level kindergarten
through the 12th grade. We must maintain the national program
quality and comprehensive services of Head Start that you, as
panelists, have recommended.
My first question is to Ms. Fuentes. It's an honor to have
you testify here today, and I commend you for your dedication
to underprivileged children and to our Hispanic community.
My district is situated on the border with Mexico and is a
very high need area with 92 percent Hispanic population. What
improvements can we make to the Head Start program so that all
minority children and their families in high-need areas like my
district can continue to benefit from this Head Start program?
Ms. Sanchez Fuentes. Thank you, Mr. Hinojosa. I appreciate
that.
So I would say very clearly that one thing that Congress
can do is actually blend Head Start and Early Head Start into
one seamless program, birth-to-five, so that it does create the
flexibility that programs need in making sure that they're
serving the most vulnerable children.
Migrant and Seasonal Head Start is a perfect example of
this. They've been doing it since the inception. And they
really do provide services to those that are most in need, but
they also have the flexibility, depending on what is happening
in their community, to determine who are those children on a
case-by-case basis. And that happens through flexibility,
accountability, and also through very robust community needs
assessment that takes into account who is in your community,
what are the other services that are available, and who are the
kids who are being left out.
So thank you for the question.
Mr. Hinojosa. Ms. Sanchez, in your testimony you stress the
importance of maintaining the community-based structure. Are
you concerned that the Head Start program is moving towards a
more centralized structure rather than a community based one,
as you described?
Ms. Sanchez Fuentes. Not at all, sir. I was really
referring to stating explicitly that the program should remain
a Federal to local program. These are Federal tax dollars, and
we do have to be held accountable for how those are used, but--
Mr. Hinojosa. Thank you.
Ms. Sanchez Fuentes. Thank you.
Mr. Hinojosa. Thank you.
I want to ask a question of Sara Mead. The bipartisan 20-0-
7 Head Start reauthorization called for significant
improvements to Head Start. Important changes to the program
have been made over the past 8 years. What impact have you seen
thus far?
Ms. Mead. So we talked about some of the changes in terms
of more teachers with bachelor's degrees, improvements in
classroom quality, turnover of some of the low-performing
grants. We don't actually have data right now to see what
impact it's made in changes on children's learning. It just
takes too long to do that kind of research for us to know what
the impact has been on children's learning.
But as we look at any of the research from the Impact
Study, for example, it's important to realize that Head Start
today is a very different program than Head Start in 2002 was
in a number of key quality domains when the children in the
Impact Study went to school.
Mr. Hinojosa. Before I yield back to you, Chairman Kline, I
just want to close by saying to my colleagues on both sides of
the aisle, we in Congress can do more. Thank you.
Chairman Kline. The gentleman yields back.
Dr. Heck.
Mr. Heck. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you all for being here and for your testimony today.
And certainly anyone who spent any time in a Head Start
classroom, like I have in my district, would understand and see
the clear benefits of the program.
But I would ask, you know, for those that are detractors or
naysayers, and there are some that are out there, about Head
Start programs, how do you explain the incongruencies between
what would seem intuitive and what all of you have discussed
this morning, that early intervention in education prepares
children for future success, especially those children that
suffer from, quoting Dr. Biel, early adversity, and the HHS
Head Start Impact Study that found by the end of the third
grade there were very few impacts in any of the four domains of
cognitive, social-emotional, health, and parenting practices,
and the few impacts that were found did not show a clear
pattern of favorable or unfavorable impacts for children?
There seems to be a disconnect between the HHS study and
what appears to be intuitive and what you have all talked about
today.
Mr. Nolan. Let me jump in, because it obviously is an
albatross that's been around our neck since 1970 in the Nixon
administration. One of the things that I think we've got to be
very careful of is to imagine that Head Start can be a magic
bullet that can erase the family challenges of the most needy
families in the country on a permanent basis.
I mean, what we're looking at is a 4- or 5-year-old who's
handed over to the public schools and now we're looking at them
4 years later to look at differences. And I have two pieces
that I want to put in. One is a quote from Governor John Kasich
of Ohio who has said publicly multiple times that when children
are in Head Start, they are on a superhighway, and then they
hit the gravel road of public education. And one of the issues
that we face is public education is not prepared to maintain
differences over time.
A personal experience. My oldest daughter was born to two
college students, so she watched us read a lot, which then
induced her to become an early reader. By 18 months, she was
decoding words. She was an accomplished reader by the time she
hit public school.
Their accommodation was to put the first grader into second
grade reading. Then we had a meeting. And the meeting with the
first grade teacher, second grade teacher, and the principal
was ended by me when the principal announced: ``I wouldn't
worry much about Tracy. By the time she's in third grade,
she'll be pretty much like everybody else.''
And as a parent, that was not our goal. And what we're up
against is we're running a public education system that still
is on a modified agrarian calendar using a manufacturing batch
model system trying to prepare kids for an electronic age.
We've got to work together on schools.
I mean, one of the things that encouraged Arne Duncan, the
Secretary of Education, on is we need to quit treating kids as
though they are a baton to be handed off to the public schools.
We would like to keep working with the parents to help them
figure out how to become a part of decision making in their
child's life once they hit public schools.
Mr. Nolan. And I'll end with a comment from one of the
principals in one of our partnerships who said: ``You really
need to keep in mind that quite a number of building principals
see themselves as the gatekeeper to keep parents out of school,
as opposed to encouraging them to come in.'' We need to change
that.
Ms. Mead. So first I think it's important to recognize that
the Impact Study did show that children in Head Start made
significant learning gains while they were in Head Start. But I
think in context, it just underscores Mr. Hinojosa's point that
we need to do better. Because most early childhood intervention
shows some form of decline in impact over time, the magnitude
of that impact at kindergarten entry is very important. And
Head Start's impact at kindergarten entry was not as large as
some other high quality pre-K programs. So we need to look at
what we can do in the program to increase that impact.
And we also need to look at the variation that we're now
seeing in the Impact Study data across Head Start programs
themselves, to try to understand what are the various factors
within different Head Start programs that lead to better and
worse results. And to try to get more Head Start programs to
look like the ones that are producing the best results for
kids. We have programs that are producing great, long-term,
sustained results for kids. We need to spread that across the
entire program.
Mr. Heck. Great. I thank you all very much. Dr. Nolan,
thank you for your insightful review. And I hadn't heard
Governor's Kasich's quote previously, but I'm sure I'll be
using that again.
Mr. Nolan. Yes, I have.
Mr. Heck. Yield back.
Chairman Kline. The gentleman yields back, setting an
excellent example for all of my colleagues. Just so everybody
in the room understands, we're working a deal up here where
people filibuster for 4 minutes and 50 seconds and then ask you
a question that you need 3 minutes to answer. My patience is
wearing thin. Ms. Fudge, you're recognized.
Ms. Fudge. Certainly, I'm sure, Mr. Chairman, you're not
referring to me since I always give my time back.
Chairman Kline. Yes, you do.
Ms. Fudge. Thank you so much. And thank you all for being
here today.
Let me start with Dr. Biel. You mentioned the myriad
negative effects of growing up poor and the mental and
emotional health of children. As we look at today that school
children living in poverty is almost 49 percent, can you expand
on the intervention strategies that you think are necessary for
Head Start to mitigate the nationwide future effects of these
49 percent of students growing up in poverty?
Dr. Biel. Absolutely. Thanks for the question, Ms. Fudge. I
think we can think about several tiers of intervention, things
that all kids living in poverty should have access to, and then
things that kids who are living in poverty and are showing
other risk factors or signs of real additional vulnerability
should have access to.
And I think that Head Start is a place where both tiers can
really have a chance to be implemented. There need to be
universal, sort of protections for kids who are living in
poverty. And Head Start provides the opportunity for kids to
get away from an environment that may be either associated with
deprivation or with additional sort of, real stress.
Kids need to get away from survival mode in order to
progress developmentally. And that includes the full spectrum
of social development, emotional development, academic
development. None of those things can progress appropriately
when kids are living moment to moment, survival to survival.
And so Head Start provides that oasis. And by including
parents, as we've all spoken about, that's clearly a common
theme here, by including parents' input and also assessing and
addressing parents' capacities. That's also a universal element
that can be introduced within Head Start settings. There are
going be a number of, not all of those 49 percent of kids
living in poverty are going to have additional vulnerability.
That's sort of a baseline vulnerability. There's additional
vulnerability based on some of the other factors I've talked
about like mental illness or exposure to trauma among kids who
are very young. Those kids need additional intervention.
And I'll mention one really terrific example, which is the
Trauma Smart model. The Head Start Trauma Smart model out of
St. Louis, which took a really holistic approach to supporting
families, training teachers, working individually with children
who'd had a trauma exposure, and were in Head Start programs.
And what they were able to do is really engineer a cultural
shift within the Head Start site and their programs to really
take trauma very seriously and to address it proactively in
kids and families. And that sort of multi-dimensional approach
is very, very promising and it really merits further support.
Ms. Fudge. Thank you very much.
Dr. Biel. Sure.
Ms. Fudge. Ms. Mead, in your testimony you stated that
Federal policies have added new requirements to Head Start
programs without providing sufficient funding to meet them. If
no congressional action is taken, what effect do you think
another sequester cut will have on Head Start programs and the
families that the program services?
Ms. Mead. Well, we saw in the last sequester that there
were a significant number of families that lost access to Head
Start services as a result. And that was both very problematic
for those families that lost the services and for the children,
both from a development and from families' ability to work by
having childcare perspective. But it was also very disruptive
for the programs and, therefore, caused disruptions for the
children who were still served in the programs as well.
So, the absolute magnitude will depend on the actual
numbers and the math that other people besides me need to do.
But it is a significant negative impact on those children,
their families, and really all the children served in the
programs as well.
Ms. Fudge. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Kline. Oh, you are absolutely my hero. Mr. Carter,
you're recognized.
Mr. Carter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank all of you
on the panel for being here.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm from the State of Georgia, and
we're very proud of our lottery-funded pre-K program that I
hope all of you are aware of. It's very similar, as you know,
to the Head Start program. However, there are some differences.
First of all, it was the first universal program in the Nation.
But specifically between Head Start and the lottery-funded pre-
K program, the pre-K program has shorter days. It also has, it
has more educational requirements for the teachers.
But, most significantly is the cost per child is several
thousand dollars less than the Head Start program. Any idea why
that would be, why that program would be so much more efficient
and so less costly than the Head Start program? Dr. Nolan?
Mr. Nolan. I don't know that program. I actually did spend
3 years as the strategic planning consultant to the Department
of Ed in Georgia. So I'm familiar with Georgia education a
while back. And--
Mr. Carter. It must have been quite a while back.
Mr. Nolan. Yes, it was. Warner Rogers was superintendent.
And he's in a history book someplace. I think part of what
happens with Head Start is, as we look at the additional
services, those services cost money. And most preschool
programs don't have more in-depth services. So the mental
health consultation, et cetera, that can become a factor.
Another factor that we're up against, for instance, as we
compare efficiency--for instance, payroll for teachers, we're,
as people have identified, as much as $20,000 behind. One of
the reasons is by both State licensing and best practice, the
classrooms require a multiple of teachers in a room. I mean, I
called our Federal program officer a while back and said we're
paying our teachers the same as public school teachers. She was
enthralled until I said but we have to spread that salary among
two and a half people.
Mr. Carter. That would kind of be my question. Is that, is
the program so rigid that it can't be, it can't be intertwined
into an existing State program?
Ms. Sanchez Fuentes. May I jump in?
Mr. Carter. Yes.
Ms. Sanchez Fuentes. Thank you. So I would agree with part
of what Mr. Nolan started with. So Head Start is by law
required to ensure these comprehensive services. And I think
that definitely goes into this higher cost per child.
One of the things that we have to start to think about is
how, at the State, and the Federal, and the local level, we
start to think about this collaboration that everyone here has
talked about. So how do you use those resources more
efficiently so that we raise quality for all the kids who are
in our programs. But we also support teachers. And we support
parents. And we make sure that kids are healthy, getting their
dental care, and--
Mr. Carter. Okay. And I appreciate that. But my concern is
the program is too rigid, that we're not able to incorporate it
into existing State programs that work quite well. And, I'm
sorry, but I've got a limited amount of time.
And I want to get into something, Dr. Biel, about the
longer days. I was in the State legislature for many years. And
during that time, we talked about extending the days in the
pre-K program, but we really didn't want to pay for nap
periods. Are the extended days for 3- and 4- and 5- year olds,
it seems they would lose focus after a while.
Dr. Biel. Thanks for the question. I think that it all
depends upon how that time is spent. And I think that most kids
in that age range are absolutely available for different kinds
of learning across the day. If we're talking about pre-literacy
drilling for kids that are 3- 4- and 5- years old throughout
the day, that's absolutely, I think, probably an inappropriate
allocation of time.
But for other kinds of programs, because kids in that age
range, whether they're in a Head Start program or at a
playground, are learning and exploring and developing all the
time. And so if properly supported and scaffolded in an early
childhood program, it can absolutely be time well spent. And
they'll have a better time to nap but it's absolutely a time
for learning as well.
Mr. Carter. But my point is, and the point has already been
made, that you're required to have certain teachers. I mean, if
that extra time is just being spent for naps and we're having
to pay these teachers during that time, that's not money well
spent. Dr. Nolan, I know you wanted to say something.
Mr. Nolan. Yes, I want to support you. That for 3- year
olds it's different than 4- year olds. In 3- year olds,
virtually all State licensing requires that they nap. So if we
were to move a 3.5-hour day to a 6-hour day for a 3 year old,
we would be paying for probably 2 hours of nap time. It's
different for 4- year olds.
Mr. Carter. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I yield
back.
Chairman Kline. I thank the gentleman. Ms. Bonamici, you're
recognized.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you very much, Chairman Kline and
Ranking Member Scott. This has been an interesting and
enlightening discussion.
A couple of points to start, we've talked a lot about the
role of parents and the importance of parents. In light of the
fact that the United States is the only industrialized country
in the world and, in fact, one of the only countries in the
world that has no paid parental leave, I just want to emphasize
the importance of the Early Head Start programs, whether
they're combined into one program or not, I just want to
emphasize that.
Dr. Nolan, I really appreciated your comment about the
whole child, and especially as it relates to not making public
schools, that transition--make public schools more like Head
Start, not Head Start more like public schools. And I want to
invite everyone to watch, I'm soon introducing, re-introducing
a bipartisan whole child resolution, talking about the
importance of educating the whole child.
And that leads me to my question which is about nutrition.
I'm working on legislation with Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of
the committee to make changes to the Child and Adult Care Food
Program. And Head Start providers are participants in that
program. So we know the importance of nutritious meals for
children and also the importance of educating families about
nutrition. So will you each make a comment about the role of
nutrition and also how the nutrition programs can be improved?
And I want to save time for another question.
Mr. Nolan. Sure. I'll go quickly. One of the things that we
pride ourselves on is we are, obviously, are a participant in
the USDA program, but it's only a foundation for what we do. In
an 8-week, 40-lunch period, we only repeat 3 lunches in 40
lunches.
We have a chef on staff who is highly talented. One of the
reasons is we have to manage for 300 kids eating, 81
specialized diets. So the whole nutrition area is absolutely
critical to make sure that--the typical Head Start child gets
the bulk of their daily nutrition while they're at a Head Start
center. They get a breakfast and a lunch and a snack.
Ms. Bonamici. Dr. Biel, the importance of the healthy
nutrition?
Dr. Biel. Sure. Another brief comment, thank you. I just
wanted to emphasize that social and emotional health in early
childhood is biological. And the experiences of early
diversity, which I keep coming back to, they get under the
skin. And when we think about the potential ramifications of
effective programming for early kids, early childhood, that
extends to risk factors for things like obesity and diabetes
that I mentioned in my testimony.
Kids who are exposed to early adversity that is
unmitigated, unchecked, unbuffered, have inflammatory changes
in their biology that extend across the lifespan and impact
things like risk for obesity decades later.
Ms. Bonamici. That's great. Thanks. Ms. Mead?
Ms. Mead. Obviously nutrition is important for young
children's development. And the Child and Adult Care Food
Program is a crucial source of support for that, and not just
for Head Start but for other early childhood programs. That
said, it also is a program that has a lot of bureaucratic and
paperwork requirements. And to the extent that in seeking to
strengthen and improve that program, that can be done in a way
that lessens that paperwork burden--
Ms. Bonamici. I appreciate that. I heard that when I
visited a center. Ms. Sanchez Fuentes?
Ms. Sanchez Fuentes. I would ditto what Ms. Mead said. It's
reducing the administrative burden because it's not just Head
Start, it's childcare, family childcare, lots of folks rely on
it.
Ms. Bonamici. Terrific. Now I want to ask you each again to
make a comment about the need for improved coordination in the
transition from Head Start to a K-12 program. What could we do
to make that transition better? Dr. Nolan?
Mr. Nolan. We're in, because I mentioned in my testimony
that we're already in a deep partnership with one of our major
districts where we have, where we're delivering 4- year old
kindergarten services in a contract with the District, as well
as Head Start services, that integration obviously becomes very
natural.
One of the challenges that we face is that the schools are
not that focused on transition. So we have to work very hard to
have meetings, to transfer information, to work with one
another.
Ms. Bonamici. Dr. Biel?
Dr. Biel. Thank you. I'll just say briefly, here in
Washington, we're working locally with D.C. Public Schools,
with early childhood education centers. And also with primary
care to figure out how we can more effectively share
information and share data in a way that's going to really
optimize kids' outcomes. And that's going to take a lot of
work.
Ms. Bonamici. Sure. Ms. Mead?
Ms. Mead. I don't have a lot to add to what they've said.
And time is limited, so I'll give it to Ms. Sanchez Fuentes to
answer.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you. Ms. Sanchez Fuentes?
Ms. Sanchez Fuentes. I would suggest that there be some
requirement on the public school system to have a very real
relationship with their Head Start and their Early Head Start
programs in order to share data, to share information, and to
transition families appropriately into the public school.
Ms. Bonamici. Terrific. Thank you. I yield back, Thank you,
Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Kline. I thank the gentlelady. Mr. Bishop, you're
recognized.
Mr. Bishop. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank the panel
for being here today and sharing your testimony today.
Dr. Biel, on the subject of outcomes, continued discussion
on outcomes, you indicated that to truly improve outcomes, it's
critical to engage families and effectively collaborate with
community resources to support diverse needs of families. I
would like you to expand on that if you could please.
And also as a father of three and I'm from a big family as
well, my three kids are in the public schools right now, I'm a
firm believer that the most consistent, that the family is the
most important influence in terms of outcomes.
And I'm wondering if, in your experience, you can tell us
if there's any engagement techniques, that a family can do
better than others, that would help outcomes, just for my own
and for all of our benefit, how we can best help our children?
Dr. Biel. Thank you for the question. I can speak about
some experiences that I've been really impressed by, again,
locally in my work in D.C. I think that there are things that
schools, and this extends from early childhood education
settings all the way into public elementary and higher grades
as well. That send a message from schools to families that
they're welcome, that their input is important, that they're
included in part of the educational process.
There's a terrific organization here in town called the
Flamboyan Foundation that sends all of its teachers in August
out to all of their kids' homes and does an hour sitting down
with the parents in the family's home, having conversation
about what do we need to know about your child, what do we need
to know about your family, here's what you need to know about
me as a teacher. And it gets the school year off to a
tremendous start where there's this feeling of really active
collaboration. I think gestures like that are, much more than
gestures actually, are very substantive. That's one example.
Dr. Nolan?
Mr. Nolan. Yes, I just wanted to confirm, that's
automatically part of Head Start. Home visits are multiple
times during the year so that we help to build those
compassionate partnerships. And a suggestion to you, one of the
things that I think we need to be looking at, there's a
wonderful book out called Creating Innovators by Tony Wagner
from Harvard, where he talks about what do families do that
result in children who can actually thrive in this information
age. And a lot of it is continuing creativity.
I mean, I did my doctoral work in creativity and thinking
skills. We're particularly good at killing creativity. There's
a fade-out effect among gifted children. Those who are most
creative as they hit kindergarten as little as 18 months later
have stopped asking questions. I mean, if you think about it,
our way of taking in information is asking questions and
reflecting on those answers. So things that we can do that
maintain creativity as opposed to squelch it.
Mr. Bishop. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, I yield
back.
Chairman Kline. I thank the gentleman. Ms. Clark.
Ms. Clark. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member
Scott. Thank you to all the panelists for being here today.
This is a tremendous conversation. And particularly I want to
pick up, Dr. Biel, on, you had mentioned a trauma program. I'm
very interested in the effect of trauma and toxic stress on
kids and families and on childcare providers.
And I have filed some legislation really trying to promote
the Head Start model. Because, as Dr. Nolan mentioned in his
testimony, we're seeing these sorts of startling rates of
expulsion, which are really hard to believe in 3- and 4- year
old children. But that's what's happening. And Head Start has
taken a different--has really shown leadership in this area
that's very different than some of the statistics we're seeing.
I wondered if you could elaborate a little bit on what
programs work. And then sort of a second part of this, being a
leader in this trauma informed care, do you think there are
training and technical assistance dollars that could be even
better optimized by the Head Start programs?
Dr. Biel. Thanks very much for the question. I think that
it's, it's critical that there be the opportunity within Head
Start programs to do a frame shift away from thinking about
kids' behaviors in this early childhood school setting as being
bad behaviors and toward understanding them. What does a 3-
year old's behavior tell us about the rest of that child's
life? Kids that are showing up in early childhood ed settings
with behaviors like inability to pay attention, with
aggression, with inability to sort of attend to a particular
task, an age-appropriate task, that usually is an indicator
that there's something going on in that child's environment
that merits attention.
And what ends up happening, unfortunately, when it's not
recognized as such, is that kids are punished, families are
punished. Kids show up in my office with the idea that there
are going to be medicines that are going to address these
problems. When, in fact, what's going on is that there's a
traumatic environment that kids are growing up in.
And the program that I mentioned at, that's in St. Louis,
the Trauma Smart program, I think is particularly laudatory
because it takes this multi-dimensional approach. It does this
training for teachers. It helps teachers to understand, how do
we really understand kids' behavior in the setting of
adversity--how can we reframe and rethink kids behavior and
respond to it more effectively. That is accompanied by specific
skills that teachers get in managing the classroom and
responding one-on-one to kids who are showing up with difficult
behaviors.
And then there's also this intervention for kids who are
clinically in need that takes place within the Head Start
setting, which is the most efficient and effective way to get
at kids.
And so, there's some evidence-based psychotherapy
techniques that if we use with young kids who have been
traumatized really, really have proven to be effective and can
be delivered in the Head Start setting. The Trauma Smart model
incorporates all of those.
Ms. Clark. You mentioned in your testimony that Head Start
providers tend to have more of that training and technical
assistance, but that across a spectrum we need to have early
educators and childcare providers receive that training. Do you
think that Trauma Smart is the type of program that could be
replicated across the system?
Dr. Biel. That's certainly my hope. I think that there's
clearly been, as Ms. Mead testified, a real uptick in the level
of expertise of educators at early childhood centers and Head
Start. There still tends to be underdevelopment of professional
skills specifically related to social and emotional needs of
kids. There can be more done there.
I think Trauma Smart is one example. I can mention others,
in written testimony of other examples of programs I think are
very promising from around the country. But there's no shortage
of promising programs. I think Trauma Smart is a particularly
impressive one. But I can mention others as well.
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Ms. Clark. Great. And do you think there is a way that Head
Start could even do better in using those technical assistance
dollars to address toxic stress and trauma?
Dr. Biel. I think there are a lot of ways that they could.
One example that comes to mind is mental health consultation
which ranges widely in the dose that a given Head Start Center
receives. Some centers receive just a couple of hours. Others
receive many more hours. And there probably is a minimum
effective dose of mental health consultation from experts that
allows centers to respond really impactfully to the problems
they're presenting in their population of kids.
An hour a week is probably not enough time. And if time
were allocated more generously, I think that there would be a
really, really positive impact with that.
Ms. Clark. Great. Dr. Nolan?
Mr. Nolan. I would love to jump in on that one. One of the
things that we're up against, I think, as we think about what
does it take to succeed in a Head Start classroom, is you have
to remember that the classroom is also the child's home.
There was a study at Harvard where they were looking at in
a third grade child's life, what percentage of time that they
spend in a classroom. And it ends up to be about 19 or 20
percent of their waking hours. Seventy-seven to 80 percent of
time is about parents. We are in a situation where we take a
basic teacher, 4-year degree, certified, licensed teacher, and
give her 2 years worth of additional training in work in terms
of how to work with children. There is no college or university
right now who is preparing somebody to be in that intervention
role in a classroom. We really have to work, more on that.
Ms. Clark. Thank you.
Chairman Kline. Sorry. The gentlelady's time has expired.
Mr. Grothman.
Mr. Grothman. Thank you. Thanks for all being here today. I
think it was on January 5, I took an oath to uphold the U.S.
Constitution. I'm glad we have four educators here. Under what
section of the Constitution would it be permissible for us to,
say, re-fund Head Start? Anybody have an answer to that
question? For any of the four of you? Okay.
Next, one of my pet peeves, I think it was Dr. Nolan, to a
lesser degree, Dr. Biel, mentioned poverty. And it always
bothers me a little because poverty is a material, a money-
based definition. And I always think it's far more family
structure based as the disadvantage. In other words, I can
think of children who have a very difficult background, who are
materially well off, and children who don't have a lot of
material goods who are not well off.
Certainly in other countries, there are people who come
here who do fantastically well in our university system, who,
by any standard, you know, square foot per person living space,
food intake, electronic gadgets around the house, would be
considered dirt poor by American standards doing very well.
Dr. Nolan, you in particular talked about the disadvantage
of poverty. Do you think poverty is a bigger problem for
children or is it family structure?
Mr. Nolan. I don't know how to weigh one against the other.
Early Head Start, early in Head Start's history, we went to
poverty because it was measurable in financial terms. I believe
that the issues that launched Head Start in 1964, are equal
opportunity afflictions these days. I mean, we operate a fully
socioeconomically blended childcare program where we're serving
upper middle class, middle class, and low income families all
in one setting. Many of the issues--
Mr. Grothman. Let me cut you off because you're not
answering my question. And I've only got 5 minutes. What is
more important in a child's life, that they have--and, again,
observing people who do very well in our universities, who come
here from, say, the Indian subcontinent, from Southeast Asia,
when I talk to them, they have very little in material goods,
far poorer than so-called American children in poverty.
What is a bigger problem in a child's life? The child's
family structure or how much material goods they have as a
child?
Mr. Nolan. I think it comes back to the environment that
they're growing up in. The family structure is a huge issue.
For instance, even in Head Start, those who are economically
eligible are not automatically brought into Head Start. We look
at the risk factors in a family, about 30 different risk
factors, the kinds of things I think you're alluding to.
So those are the factors that we're really dwelling on. As
you well know, there are families with very little finances who
are doing very well. They're figuring out how to make it.
Mr. Grothman. And you think it's true then, if we want to
improve the next, the lot of the next generation of children,
we should maybe spend more time focusing on family structure
and not as much time focusing on, say, things that money can
buy?
Mr. Nolan. And I think that's what Head Start does, is
works on the family structure.
Mr. Grothman. That's the more important. Now, one other
quick thing, I've always kind of loved Head Start because as
government explodes, it's so rare that we ever find a program
in which the studies show it has been unsuccessful.
And, of course, I'm sure you're familiar with the Brookings
Institution studies. The Oklahoma studies on pre-K. I think
just this week we came out with a study showing that
Tennessee's pre-K program was not effective. Nevertheless, we
have four people up here who all say it's a good thing. Could
some of you comment a little on all these studies showing that
pre-K programs, their benefits seem to fade a little, or to a
degree--
Mr. Nolan. I'll jump in. One of the things that I would
emphasize to the committee is that there never in 50 years has
been a study of Head Start that didn't identify that Head Start
graduates leave vastly improved from where they were when they
arrived. For us to take a look at what happens four years
later, is that really a statement about their preschool
experience or is it a statement about public education?
Mr. Grothman. Okay. So your thing is you're saying Head
Start is a success, it's the other 13 years in public education
that's the problem?
Mr. Nolan. I think we have challenges at every level as we
work with children in our society.
Chairman Kline. The gentleman's time has expired. Mr.
Grijalva.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Head Start is the
antithesis of social Darwinism, survival of the fittest. And I
guess that's what the four panelists are talking about today
and that we're dealing with the question of children.
One of the discussions at the last reauthorization was the
idea, and it's not so prevalent a part of the discussion now,
but the idea of block granting the Head Start funds to the
State and creating that discretion for the State. I think some
of you alluded to what your opinion of that process was when
you talked about individuality.
Let me start with Ms. Fuentes, if you don't mind?
Ms. Sanchez Fuentes. Thank you, Mr. Grijalva. So I would
just state again I think it's critical to maintain the Federal
to local structure that Head Start currently has. It is
important for Congress to think about other ways to improve the
Head Start program. And we've heard lots of ideas here about
flexibility, coordination, and of course, thinking about how to
use resources more efficiently.
Mr. Grijalva. If you don't mind, I have one more question
for all four after this. Please, I don't know, if someone has a
different opinion than Ms. Fuentes?
Ms. Mead. I was just going to add that I think I would
agree with Ms. Fuentes that block granting Head Start to the
States is a bad idea, but that there are a variety of things
short of that could help to improve coordination between the
programs that States already have and Head Start.
Mr. Grijalva. And legislation could encourage that?
Ms. Mead. And that to the extent we can take the idea of
block granting off the table, we can have a much better and
more robust conversation about how States and Head Start work
together.
Mr. Nolan. And this committee was astute in 2005, 2006, and
2007 to not hand it to the States. Had it been handed to the
States in the format that it had originally been proposed, it
would have gone without the pesky performance standards. And
something between 35 and 40 States essentially 2, 3 years later
had moved into near bankruptcy.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. I was gonna also. I believe, and
other indicators seem to point that out is that, poverty is
still the biggest obstacle to a child's success given all the
ramifications that poverty brings with it, family issues,
toxicity, questions that we're talking about.
And Head Start from the inception was a categorical
response to that poverty question, to begin to deal with kids
at an early age in preparation for kindergarten. That begs the
question about resources and need.
As we talk about reauthorization and the fine points that
many of you have made today, we still, you know, the elephant
in the room is the resources and the money that would go into
Head Start. Could you respond in terms of need? And is it
measurable now to say how much would be needed in the future,
to address the fact that somebody mentioned, you know, more
than half of the kids in our traditional public schools right
now and in public charters are low-income kids. So we're still
dealing and confronting that poverty question.
Mr. Nolan. On a local basis, I would tell you that our
spending power is down about 18 percent over the last 11 years,
at the same time that expectations are going up--
Mr. Grijalva. Yes. But we're talking about amounts that are
national level right now, sir. So 18 percent higher than what
we're doing now would be your point, right?
Mr. Nolan. Well, essentially we've lost spending power. I
mean, obviously we have two issues. One is how do we fund--
Mr. Grijalva. Well, let me get the other panelists to
respond as well, sir, if you don't mind. Any other panelist?
Ms. Sanchez Fuentes. I don't know exactly the dollar
amount, Mr. Grijalva. But I would suggest that the Federal
Government, probably the Office of Head Start, has actually at
some point run some numbers around what that looks like. I
think Sara in her testimony mentioned that only half of the
eligible kids receive services. And that's even less in Early
Head Start. So we have a ways to go.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. Anything else? I yield back, Mr.
Chairman. Thank you.
Chairman Kline. Thank the gentleman. Dr. Foxx.
Ms. Foxx. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to do a
little follow up on Mr. Grothman's question, toward the end of
his questioning time. Dr. Nolan, and then I'll invite all of
you, if you want, to say something about this. We're often told
that intentions are what is important in terms of programs, not
necessarily what the results are.
Dr. Nolan, we know every study that's been done shows that
Head Start has no long-term effect. You said that though Head
Start should be evaluated on what happens at the end of Head
Start and not later than that, is the way I understood it.
So should Head Start only be evaluated on its short-term
effect? If that's true, the administration, I think, has a
great ideal of hypocrisy involved with its wanting to say to
higher education, we want to know what your income is going to
be, if we're going to put money into it, we want to know what
your income is going to be four years later, eight years later,
in your lifetime if you get loan money.
So why should we have a double standard for Head Start and
other programs?
Mr. Nolan. And of course, we should not. There should be
probably four different points where we're evaluated. One is
when the kids arrive. One is when the kids leave. Those are
very important. We should be looking at what happens to them in
early elementary school. What we also need to do, though, is to
keep the support dosage up so that those gains don't evaporate.
And then we have a fourth one which is what happens with
them over their lifetime. And the results there have not
wavered. The research that's been done with that, James
Heckman, out of the University of Chicago, is very clear that
the things that have socioeconomic impact are sustained through
their public education experience and show up in reduced
incarceration, reduced teen pregnancy, et cetera.
So I think the third piece, that we need to come back and
get better at, is, you know, how do we examine what it is that
is possible in our current public education system for a child
who has been in that system for four years. How do we get
better at that?
Ms. Foxx. If others of you want to respond very quickly
because I have a follow-up.
Dr. Biel. Just quickly picking up on Jim Heckman's research
is that the return on investment for early childhood
programming that is high quality is between $4 and $9 for each
dollar invested.
Ms. Foxx. Does that take into consideration the amount of
money that's gone into the research? You know, I don't think
the government, I don't think you can call it a return on
investment. I think you have to talk about spending. But I do
think our way of measuring the results on government spending
is a little bit different from what happens in business in
terms of return on investment.
But how much do these studies do? And how reliable are the
studies that are done long term? What's your pool that you're
dealing with? I haven't seen those studies. But what kind of
pool are you dealing with?
Dr. Biel. Others can join in too. We can share some of
those studies with the committee. And the studies are small.
They're not tens of thousands of kids. But they are very high-
quality studies. Without disputing semantics, I absolutely
would characterize it as investment in the future of our
Nation's kids.
Ms. Foxx. And we don't know--do we know from the studies
whether we're just getting a Hawthorne effect or if there's a
true impact from this? Has anybody compared the two? Is it a
Hawthorne effect or is it simply actual changes that get made
from the programs?
Mr. Nolan. I think, for instance, Dr. Heckman, who I
actually get to introduce at a conference next week, is a
pretty tough individual, not particularly prone to soft
measures. He's very much into looking at rates of incarceration
and the cost of that, rates of teen pregnancy and the cost of
that. So when we give you those references, I think you'll see
that, in fact, it is quite traceable.
The reason the sample size is small is it's a 40 year-long
ongoing longitudinal study. So they're looking at impacts over
time.
Chairman Kline. The gentlelady's time has expired. Ms.
Adams.
Ms. Adams. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member. And
thank you to our witnesses as well.
As a mother, a grandmother, and a former educator, I do
recognize that early education provides students with what they
need in their most critical learning years. More than 27
percent of the people in my district live below the poverty
line.
Students in low-income families already have obvious
disadvantages that are exacerbated. When they arrive to
kindergarten, they're less prepared than middle- and high-
income peers. Ms. Mead, in my district, we have a significant
achievement gap. What role does early childhood education play
in closing that achievement gap for low-income and minority
students?
Ms. Mead. Obviously, early childhood plays a crucial role
in closing that achievement gap. We know from research that
between half and a third of the black-white achievement gap
exists by the time children start 1st grade and that there's a
similarly large achievement gap for low-income kids compared to
more affluent children.
Early childhood programs, we also know, can help to narrow
that gap by providing high-quality early learning experiences
that mitigate from some of the challenges that children have
had early in their lives and help to accelerate learning. Early
childhood education programs cannot do that on their own.
Though, they can put children on a solid foundation to start
kindergarten. But obviously the public school system has to
carry the ball the next 13 years.
And so, ideally, what we want to see is high-quality early
childhood coupled with a high quality K-12 experience. That
said, we are increasingly seeing folks who started working to
improve education outcomes in the K-12 system reaching down to
try to get involved in early childhood because they're seeing
that they can make an even bigger difference for children if
they started earlier.
Ms. Adams. Thank you. In my home State of North Carolina,
the General Assembly has put early childhood education on the
back burner. I was a part of that General Assembly for more
than 20 years.
Our North Carolina pre-K program and childcare subsidies
are funded at inadequate levels. And we have long waiting
lists. For places like North Carolina, can you speak to the
important role that Head Start funding plays in ensuring that
low-income students have access to early childhood education in
the face of reduced State spending?
Ms. Mead. I mean, Head Start plays a crucial role in early
childhood education, particularly in the many States that,
while you have good reasons to be disappointed with your
General Assembly, there are many States that do far less for
young children than North Carolina does.
And so in States that don't have any form of publicly
funded pre-K, Head Start is crucial as the primary and
sometimes sole program serving our poorest children who are at
most risk of school failure later in life. And that is an
absolutely crucial role.
Mr. Nolan. And a quick comment on that. One of the pluses
of Federal Head Start is it has been relevant stable over time.
And State funding tends to be quite more volatile. So you had
Ohio that went up to $100 million invested in Head Start aged
kids. And it went down to zero. So I think one of the things is
that stability.
Ms. Adams. Okay. Thank you for that. As a follow-up, would
you say that the reduced spending has had a negative effect on
Head Start programs? Ms. Mead? Mr. Nolan? Any of the witnesses?
Mr. Nolan. Well, we're struggling because obviously we've
had years where we can't even give a cost of living increase to
staff. When we had one, it was .72 percent, which is almost an
embarrassment. So, trying to retain staff is a difficult thing.
And as we keep having higher and higher standards, my teachers
are 4-year degree teachers who can go elsewhere for $20,000 to
$30,000.
In all of my management staff of six people, we have seven
master's and a PhD across there. We're here because we're part
of the investment. And we talk about the cost of Head Start,
some of that is paid on the backs of our vast number of
underpaid staff.
So I think we've got to look for the long term how do we
make progress with that. But right now, people stay kind of
because of their passion and values. If you're into big bucks,
you don't come to Head Start to work.
Ms. Adams. Thank you. Would anybody else like to respond?
Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I yield back.
Chairman Kline. I thank the gentlelady. Mr. Allen.
Mr. Allen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you all for
what you do for our young people and our children.
You know, we all agree that it's critical, development
occurs in the early childhood. And we can't underestimate the
value of loving, safe, and nurturing homes which is so
critical. I have visited many of the childhood Head Start
programs in our district. And I'm fascinated by the care and
love and attention that the children are getting. In fact, to
the extent that, in some cases, you almost don't want to let
these children go home because it's not exactly that way at
home.
You know, my concern is what has, I mean obviously, the
numbers are growing in Head Start, at least in our State and in
my district. I mean, the need is there. And it's ever
increasing. And, of course, we all, I think, would agree that
Head Start is needed because the child is not getting its needs
met at home.
Have you thought about how to change that cycle? I mean,
obviously, Head Start could take over and be the family needed.
But that creates cost. And it creates other problems. How do we
change this cycle?
Mr. Nolan. I mean, one of the things that I would encourage
you to think about, we've not talked a whole lot about Early
Head Start other than to identify that program for pregnant
moms, infants, and toddlers up to age 3 has only got 5 percent
coverage at this point in terms of who we can serve.
One of the things that we work very hard in my program,
come back to my on-the-ground experience, we have a home-based
Early Head Start where we go into the home and work with
parents. Basically, we enroll the parent who happens to have
either a pregnancy, infant, or toddler in their lives and work
with them to build their capacity. We do not want to become the
substitute. What we want to do is build capacity in that parent
to be the best, most deliberate nurturer of that young child's
life.
And I think the more we do that--so more investment in
Early Head Start, continued investment because part of what
we're looking at in this proposed rulemaking, if we pulled back
on parent services at the same time that we want to propose
deepening them, that's not the right direction.
Another issue that the chairman raised in his introduction
was we're running a risk right now under noticed proposed
rulemaking of losing between 125,000 and 145,000 slots at a
point where that becomes one of the most incredibly expensive
ways to fund quality improvement. And we must have quality
improvement. We can't do it by serving vast numbers of fewer
children.
Mr. Allen. It seems to be a problem with motivation as
well. In other words, you know, when I grew up, poverty was a
motivation to work hard, to find a skill, to get a good
education. And the motivation is somehow missing today. Poverty
is, sometimes is a choice. And it runs cycle to cycle and
generation to generation. And, you know, like I said, these
programs are great.
But at some point in time, how do we figure out how to
motivate, and you're looking at the thorn of ages here. How do
we psychologically motivate these folks to say you know what, I
can do better than this. We have got a lot of examples in this
Nation of people who have come out of extreme, very difficult
circumstances.
Mr. Nolan. Yes. And that's an area where we need to be very
deliberately working harder. One of the things that Dr. Biel
will, I'm sure, confirm is, many of the families that we're
dealing with--we're dealing with high percentages of
depression. The gap for some of these parents from where they
are to independence is huge. We need to put more energy into
that.
I can't motivate anybody. But I can create conditions that
enable them to be motivated. And we see that when they start to
get, we have a program that we call Soaring, which is a self-
esteem building program that never says the word self-esteem
for 8 weeks. But people going through that emerge with a
project. And they start to get a project mentality and a sense
of possibility. And the parents don't have the models they
need. We need to help the parents become the models that their
children need.
Mr. Allen. Thank you very much. I yield back.
Chairman Kline. The gentleman's time has expired. Mr.
Jeffries.
Mr. Jeffries. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I want to thank the
witnesses for your presence here today and, of course, the work
that you do.
Dr. Nolan, you mentioned that there are four sort of
evaluation points along the continuum with respect to Head
Start participants, I gather the moment you arrive in Head
Start, the moment you depart, your elementary school
experience, and then lifetime results. Is that correct?
Mr. Nolan. Yes.
Mr. Jeffries. And of those four points along the continuum,
would you agree that whether there's been an impact over the
course of your life in terms of outcome, that's the most
important factor as to whether the investment in Head Start has
yielded a return?
Mr. Nolan. Yes.
Mr. Jeffries. And you referenced the Heckman study. And I
believe Dr. Biel also referenced it. And there was some
question as to whether, you know, the study was, I guess,
legitimate in terms of how it was conducted and whether there
was some reliability as it relates to the results.
And so I just wanted to ask a few questions about that now.
Now, it was a longitudinal study, in other words, it covered a
period of multiple decades in terms of--
Mr. Nolan. Actually continuing too.
Mr. Jeffries. And it's continuing. And was that, is it a
quantitative study or was it a qualitative study?
Mr. Nolan. Yes. I mean, at some level or another, the
measures tend to be countable things like incarceration, et
cetera.
One of the things that we're faced with, and it's true for
everything that this committee addresses, we tend to measure
that which is easiest to measure, as opposed to that which is
most important. So it's harder for us to look at, for instance,
Mr. Allen's comment around motivation. It's hard to measure
motivation. So you try to convert that to the accomplishment of
landing and retaining a job. So you go to those kinds of
measures.
Mr. Jeffries. Would you say in the academic context the
results are widely accepted as statistically significant?
Ms. Mead. Can I address this in a slightly different way?
On that, the body of evidence for the effectiveness of high-
quality early childhood education, is probably the most robust
body of evidence for anything we do in education. We know more
about it than we do about high school, elementary school, and
so forth.
And that evidence comes from a variety of sources. It comes
from what we know about child development, the type of work
that Dr. Biel was talking about and does. It comes from studies
that were started in the 1960s with small scale model programs
with a very high quality randomized design and continue to
follow those people into adulthood today.
It also comes from big population studies where they
compared people after the fact who'd attended Head Start to
other folks and found improvements in life outcomes you know,
in 40s and 50s and later.
And it comes most recently from the body of studies that we
have on high-quality State-funded pre-K programs where we're
now seeing those programs produce results for kids at scale
that lead to meaningful changes in their outcomes through the
elementary school grades. We have to look at the evidence on
Head Start next to and against that entire body of evidence
about early childhood education. And the conclusion that we can
draw from that is that Head Start makes a difference in both
skills at kindergarten entry and adult life outcomes, but that
it's not producing the magnitude of gains that kindergarten
entry of the very highest quality pre-K programs.
And, as a result, we are not seeing the level of changes
once kids progress through elementary school that we would like
see. But because we're seeing other programs do it and because
we're seeing the best Head Start programs do it, we know it's
possible. We just need to figure out how to get there.
Mr. Jeffries. Okay. And, Dr. Biel, in terms of sort of
those life outcomes that the literature seems to suggest
clearly lead to positive results for Head Start participants,
if we could just kind of quantify that based on, I guess, the
Heckman study or any other study that has been done.
So is it fair to say that participation in Head Start
generally yields a reduction in the likelihood of
incarceration?
Dr. Biel. Yes. And just a note about Dr. Heckman's
methodology. He won a Nobel Prize in economics. He's a very,
very rigorous researcher. And his methods are fairly
unassailable. The sample size is small because, as Dr. Nolan
pointed out, these are 40-year studies. It's hard to follow a
large group of kids for that long, as they become, as they go
into middle age. But the methods are quite strong. And
incarceration is one of the outcomes, yes.
Mr. Jeffries. So reduction in the likelihood of
incarceration. Would reduction in the likelihood of teen
pregnancy also be a result of participation in Head Start?
Dr. Biel. Yes. Potentially. Dr. Heckman's studies do, I'm
sorry to interrupt. Followed several model early childhood
programs that share an enormous amount in common with the best
Head Start programs.
Mr. Jeffries. Okay. And, lastly, would reduction in
dependency on government benefits through adulthood also be a
result of participation in a high quality Head Start program?
Dr. Biel. I think absolutely, yes.
Mr. Jeffries. Thank you. I yield back.
Chairman Kline. The gentleman's time has expired. Dr. Roe.
Mr. Roe. Thank you. I'm sorry I was late, I was over fixing
the VA this morning, probably unsuccessfully.
I want to thank you all for your investment in the most
important resource we have which is the future of this country
which are our children. No question about it.
And I know, Dr. Biel, you stated in your paper, and I did
read all of your testimony, while Head Start providers are
important, contributors to a child's health and development,
the family is the first and most consistent influence. And
schools are part time, families are all the time.
And I have a next door neighbor, that I'm going to share
with you for just a second, who is a principal of an elementary
school, 70, 80 percent free and reduced lunch. I saw her show
up one day with four kids, four Hispanic children, from about 4
to 9 or 10 next door. I said Sharon, what are you up to?
Well, the mother had six children. They were all behind.
They were about to go into State custody. And my next door
neighbor took these four children in and began to nurture them.
I've watched that over the last 1 year. Those children with
proper parenting have made up two grades in school. It is
absolutely amazing to see what that type of influence can make.
And I think one of the things, Dr. Nolan, you brought up
earlier, we've all had the question did the outcomes, if you go
to Head Start, why do the benefits seem to evaporate? And the
findings of the recent Vanderbilt study in the Tennessee pre-K
program were similar to the Head Start impact studies. They
show evidence of important initial gains in several critical
aspects of child development, but that such gains may not be
sustained through the third grade.
Well, I dug a little deeper. And if you look at a low-
income child versus a high-income child, by the time they've
hit pre-K, they've heard, the high-income child has heard 30
million more words probably. And so they're at a language
disadvantage. If you take that child, as Dr. Nolan said, who's
in a high performing Head Start program, is doing very well
when they leave. They all go to school. And they all have a
summer break. And if you look at the reading skills of a
child--when a low-income child, when they exit summer, they
lose a month of reading.
And so no matter what you do in pre-K, by the time they're
in the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th grade, they're a year behind. And
many of them drop out of school. So I think that upstream
there's no question that there's some benefit there. I think
you can improve. The question is how do you sustain any
benefits that you have? I think that's what I heard you all
say.
And I guess the recent NPRM seeks to make Head Start, I
want to answer this question, more like a pre-K program. Given
this recent study, why would we seek to make Head Start more
like a pre-K program? Isn't the inherent design of Head Start
that it's tailored to meet individual and comprehensive needs
of each child? Anybody could take that on.
Mr. Nolan. I would love to jump in on that. Wisconsin is
the national poster child on 4-year-old kindergarten. It's been
in our constitution since 1848. The 4K program that my
grandsons went to is 102 years old. And 4-year-old kindergarten
varies dramatically. But in most cases, it's still mostly like
5-year-old kindergarten. In Head Start, we have a max group
size of 20 kids, two to three adults working in that room with
those kids. Down the street, in our large urban district in
Milwaukee, we have classrooms with between 28 and 32 kids, 4-
year-old, for 5 hours with one teacher.
And at some point or another, whoever has decided that
that's a more desirable model for Head Start eligible kids
really doesn't understand how kids learn. And I think part of
what we've got to be very careful of is how do we take best
practices and extend those forward in terms of a child's
learning, not just for Head Start but for all children.
Ms. Mead. I also think it's important not to view the
results that were released recently from Tennessee as
representative of everything we know about State pre-K
programs. We have seen positive results from programs in New
Jersey, Oklahoma, Georgia, North Carolina that are in many
cases sustained over time. So it's not the case--
Mr. Roe. Not to interrupt, this was a, I've spoken to the
author of this. This is a Vanderbilt study.
Ms. Mead. And I'm a Vanderbilt alum.
Mr. Roe. They might take umbrage with that. They felt like
they did a rigorous study.
Ms. Mead. I am not questioning that they did a rigorous
study. But it's one piece of evidence. And so it doesn't
reflect all State pre-K programs. There's variation across
State pre-K programs. And we need to learn from that. We cannot
conclude, based on this one study, that State pre-K programs
never work. In fact, we have a lot of evidence that they do in
the right context.
Mr. Roe. Okay. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Kline. The gentleman yields back. We don't often
get a prestigious institution like Vanderbilt brought on the
carpet like this; this has been very interesting. Mr. Rokita,
you're recognized.
Mr. Rokita. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you for hosting this
hearing.
As we look ahead to reauthorizing Head Start and writing
language, et cetera, to that end and as chairman of the
Kindergarten through 12th Grade Education Subcommittee on this
committee, I'm going to get a little bit wonky. Ms. Sanchez
Fuentes, if you don't mind, for a minute. During your time at
the Department, you oversaw the creation of the DRS, the
Designation Renewal System, developed because of a requirement
that the reauthorization of 2007 put in.
And I wasn't here to hear your testimony, so I apologize if
you covered this. But I would like to hear from you whether you
believe this recompetition has been effective. Has it enhanced
the program integrity, increased competition, and improved
quality of providers?
Ms. Sanchez Fuentes. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for the
question. I actually haven't talked about it.
So I would say that, yes, it absolutely did increase
quality over time. We do have programs who I think probably
wouldn't have taken a second look. Say I'm going to take a
second look, at what I'm doing and think about how I can do
things better and more efficiently.
In terms of, and I think Dr. Nolan talked about this a
little, there are some things to reconsider with regards to the
Designation Renewal System. And I would encourage Congress to
think about what the next steps are for the next iteration.
But I would emphasize that competition is important. It has
forced Head Start programs across the country to think about
what they're doing and also to be able to talk about what
they're doing. So what are the things that they're doing that
are making a difference for the kids and the families in their
community.
Mr. Rokita. What specifically what would you like to see in
your dream DRS?
Ms. Sanchez Fuentes. In my dream? So I don't have the
answer to that. I actually, sir, have been thinking about that
probably for two years. But I would definitely say that we need
to rethink what those triggers are. I will, say very honestly,
that we did the best that we could at the time with the
information. We have learned some things over the last three
iterations of competition. I think they're on their fourth now.
And it's time to take a look at the data. So who did well,
why, who are the new players who have come into Head Start and
why, and open it up, think about what the triggers are, think
about who should go into competition.
Mr. Rokita. Okay. Thank you. Any other of the members of
the panel wish to comment on my question? No. Okay.
Dr. Nolan, I was told about an exchange between you and Ms.
Foxx here on the committee about how we should be judged, on
short term versus long term. And I heard that was quite good.
I'm not sure if other members of the panel got to comment on
that though. Does anyone else want to comment on how we should
be judging this program? Should it be in the short term or the
long term?
Dr. Biel. Thank you. I'll just say briefly that I think it
actually should be both and that we should think about, I guess
this picks up on some of the earlier questions as well, we
should think about really high-quality early childhood
education as an onramp.
It's not an inoculation against all the future difficulties
that kids may run up against either in the educational system
or in other aspects of their lives.
Dr. Biel. But it's a really, really critical onramp, and so
the short-term measurements are really important. And what
could be important than the long-term measurements that we were
discussing a minute ago?
Mr. Rokita. All right. Thank you.
Mr. Nolan. And at a program level, we're measuring
constantly. We're using data. One of the early pieces of
testimony was around the necessary use of data. I mean, we're
using data to inform our practice on a constant basis. And I
absolutely agree with Dr. Biel, it should be all of the above.
And we need to get better at measuring how our expenditures
become investments.
Mr. Rokita. I thank the panel.
I thank the chair.
Chairman Kline. The gentleman yields back. It looks like
everyone has had a chance to ask questions.
Let me recognize Mr. Scott for his closing comments.
Mr. Scott. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think we've heard a lot of very good testimony, and I
want to thank our witnesses. This has been extremely helpful.
We have, I think, a consensus that Head Start works, that the
long-term benefits are there, and that the return on investment
by reduced incarceration, reduced teen pregnancy, reduced
remedial education, those reduced costs are a lot more than the
cost of the Head Start program.
There has been a little discussion about the fading
results, but I think the long-term results are clearly there,
and some of the fade could be the summer slide that Head Start
can't cure or poor follow-up in elementary school or other
students just catching up. When you see the other students
doing well, they have an incentive to catch up.
But I think by any stretch of the imagination, all of our
witnesses, invited by Democrats and Republicans, have
unanimously endorsed the long-term benefits of the Head Start
program. And so there appears to be good bipartisan support for
the program.
And, Mr. Chairman, I look forward to working with you as we
reauthorize this very successful program.
Chairman Kline. I thank the gentleman.
I want to thank the witnesses. I agree with my friend and
colleague, Mr. Scott, very excellent panel. You are indeed
experts. You've helped us a lot.
I think there is agreement, probably, I don't know if it's
100 percent, but very bipartisan agreement that Head Start is a
very, very important program for underprivileged, for poor
kids. We want to see it succeed.
There are differences, and we heard about those here today,
where there are some pre-K programs that are doing very, very
well and some not so well, in and out of Head Start, because
some Head Start programs are doing really well and some maybe
not so well. We've heard about the success of competition, and
we may want to look at how to make that more successful.
So we've got a lot of work to do here, but the panel has
been very, very helpful. I want to thank you for your testimony
and for your active and lively engagement. And I'm sorry about
Vanderbilt.
There being no other business, the committee is adjourned.
[Additional submissions by Mr. Nolan follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
[Whereupon, at 12:05 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
[all]