[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 18847-18848]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               HEAD START

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Harris). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. OSBORNE. Madam Speaker, I would like to point out that 
appropriate committees in the House and the other body are 
investigating those issues of concern to the previous speaker. If those 
committees do not appropriately handle the issue, then I am certain 
that an independent investigative commission would be in order.
  Madam Speaker, I rise tonight to speak about Head Start. This week it 
is scheduled to be reauthorized on the House floor. Currently, there is 
much confusion about Head Start and its reauthorization. The facts are 
these: number one, Head Start serves approximately 1 million children. 
Secondly, state-run early learning programs service another 1 million 
eligible preschool children. That is 2 million out of 3 million, so 
that means 1 million essentially are falling through the cracks. Of 
course, this is of great concern because where you start out in the 
learning curve usually signifies where you are going to end up. So we 
are serving only two-thirds of those children who are eligible.
  Head Start is effective in social development, language proficiency, 
and some early learning skills and is very worthwhile. I think most 
people that know anything about Head Start certainly advocate the 
program and feel it is something that we really need to continue to 
reauthorize. But I think it is important also to realize that Head 
Start children enter the program at the 21st percentile of school 
readiness. They leave the program at the 24th percentile of school 
readiness. So after 2 years, $6,500-per-year education, they are 
improving roughly 3 percent. Certainly that can be improved. That is 
essentially one thing that will be addressed in this reauthorization.
  Reauthorization does this: it certainly strengthens the present Head 
Start programs and increases funding by $202 million to $6.9 billion. 
So there is a funding increase. It improves teacher qualification 
requirements. It does not weaken the teacher qualification in any way. 
It keeps Head Start under Health and Human Services. There has been a 
misperception that it is being moved to another Department. That is not 
true. It preserves the current health and nutrition programs. It does 
not change them at all. And provides extra funding for underachieving

[[Page 18848]]

programs. These are all things that have been similar in the past.
  There are three significant changes that I think are worthy of note: 
number one, the reauthorization strengthens the academic components of 
curriculum and improves school readiness, so such things as vocabulary, 
early reading, learning letters, learning numbers will be ramped up; 
and we hope that instead of ending up at the 24th percentile of school 
readiness, they might end up at the 35th or the 40th or the 45th 
percentile. This definitely needs to be improved and it will be.
  Secondly, this reauthorization provides an optional eight-State pilot 
program, so 42 States will remain the same and only eight States who 
choose to do so will enter into this pilot program. What this does, it 
provides a seamless program that coordinates State standards for early 
childhood education with Head Start so we do not have two programs on 
the same track existing side by side which is very expensive and 
furthermore causes a lot of children to fall through the cracks. We 
will serve more kids.
  Then lastly, it encourages parental involvement to transition from 
Head Start to elementary school. One of the great things about Head 
Start right now is that parents are involved with children in Head 
Start. Traditionally and typically when kids go on to elementary 
school, the parents drop out of the picture. And so in the 
reauthorization, we are trying to make sure that parents stay involved 
with their children from Head Start on into elementary school, and this 
certainly is one of the things that can tremendously benefit children 
in this program.
  We encourage our colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this reauthorization. 
This is an important program. I believe that the reauthorization 
strengthens the Head Start program. We urge a ``yes'' vote.

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