Fight Crime: Invest in Kids

HEAD START AND EARLY HEAD START

What it is: Head Start is the nation's premier school readiness program for children in poverty. Since 1965, it has provided voluntary, comprehensive education, social and emotional development and physical and mental health services for three- and four-year-olds, as well as parent involvement efforts. Early Head Start was created in 1994 to provide comprehensive child development and family strengthening services for babies and toddlers (birth to age three). Both programs are authorized under the Head Start Act, which Congress is in the process of reauthorizing.

How it works: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awards grants, through competition, to community organizations such as local public schools, nonprofit organizations, faith-based entities and for-profit groups to operate Head Start centers at the local level.

Whom it serves: In 2006, Head Start served 909,201 kids at an average cost of $7,209 per child. The 1,604 Head Start grantees run 18,875 centers with 50,030 classrooms. Since its inception, Head Start has served more than 24 million children. Early Head Start serves almost 62,000 infants and toddlers through more than 650 grantees.

Why it's important: Quality early childhood education programs are proven to prepare children to succeed in school and reduce later crime and violence.

The Journal of the American Medical Association published a study of Chicago's government-funded Child Parent Centers, which have served more than 100,000 three- and four-year-olds. The study showed that children who did not participate in the program were 70% more likely to be arrested for a violent crime by age 18. Those left out were 67% more likely to have been retained a grade in school and 71% more likely to have been placed in special education. The children who participated were 29% more likely to graduate from high school than similar kids left out of the program.
An earlier 22-year study of Michigan's High/Scope Perry Preschool program showed that three- and four-year-olds from low-income families who were left out of the program were five times more likely to become chronic offenders by age 27 than those who were in the program. Children who were not enrolled were twice as likely to be placed in special education classes and were a third less likely to graduate from high school on time. In contrast, children in the program were four times more likely to have yearly earnings of $24,000 or more.
Studies show that Head Start participants have better self-esteem, motivation, behavior, academic achievement and are "held back a grade" less often than similar children not in the program. Early Head Start participants score higher on standardized assessments of cognitive development, have larger vocabularies and use more complex sentences than similarly disadvantaged peers. Long-term benefits of Head Start include not only higher graduation rates, college enrollment and income levels, but also significant reductions in crime. A large national survey found that children who participated in Head Start were 8.5 percent less likely to be later arrested or charged with a crime than their siblings who attended other preschool programs.

Fiscally responsible: The High/Scope Perry Preschool program saved $17 for every $1 invested by reducing crime, welfare, and other costs. An analysis by Arthur Rolnick of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis shows that the program's annual return on investment is 16% after adjusting for inflation. Seventy-five percent of that return goes to taxpayers in the form of decreased special education expenditures, crime costs and welfare payments. In comparison, the long-term average return on U.S. stocks is 7% after adjusting for inflation. Thus, an initial investment of $1,000 in a program like Perry Preschool is likely to return more than $19,000 in 20 years, while the same initial investment in the stock market is likely to return less than $4,000.

Unmet need: Head Start is so under-funded that it can only serve about half of the poor three- and four-year-olds eligible for the program, while Early Head Start serves less than five percent of the eligible babies and toddlers. In addition, four in ten Head Start families need full-day, full-year Head Start services, but less than one in ten attends year-round programs and only one in eight centers runs full-day programs.

Funding level: The House Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Subcommittee is proposing a funding level of $6.964 billion for Fiscal Year 2008, a $75 million increase over FY07. Unfortunately, when taking into account inflation for FY08, there is a net loss of $56 million. The Senate Appropriations Committee is proposing a funding level of $7.089 billion for FY08, a $200 million increase over FY07 (after inflation, it is a net increase of $69 million over FY07).

Expanding and Improving Head Start: Fight Crime: Invest in Kids recommends that Congress' FY08 budget and appropriations bills make a substantial down payment on a commitment to within five years:

Fully fund Head Start for pre-k-aged kids so all eligible children can attend;
Significantly increase the number of spaces available for infants and toddlers in Early Head Start; and
Fully fund the costs of teacher compensation and scholarships to reach the proposed requirement for 50% BA degree lead teachers within five years.

As a first step, Fight Crime: Invest in Kids recommends that for FY08 Congress approve a $750 million increase over current funding levels for Head Start (coupled with a $720 million increase for the Child Care and Development Block Grant) - the funding needed to restore services to children to the FY02 levels.

Reauthorization: On May 2, the full House approved their reauthorization bill, the "Improving Head Start Act of 2007" (H.R. 1429). On June 19, the full Senate unanimously approved the "Head Start for School Readiness Act" (S. 556). We are pleased that both the House and Senate reauthorization bills expand and strengthen Head Start and Early Head Start by:

Expanding access to Head Start and Early Head Start, so that more eligible at-risk children can be served (including increasing the Early Head Start set-aside from 10% to 20%);
Including a quality improvement provision for 50% of classroom lead teachers to have bachelor's degrees with specialized training in early childhood education within a specified number of years;
Maintaining performance standards and rejecting state block grants or waivers that would reduce applicability of the standards to any districts or states, and, thus, endanger Head Start quality;
Enhancing coordination of Head Start with child care, state preschool programs, programs for young children with disabilities, Title 1 preschool programs, and other early education and care programs without altering the federal-to-local funding structure;
Enhancing accountability; and
Otherwise improving the quality of the program through research-proven approaches to enhance educational, and social, emotional and behavioral development, as well as the parent coaching components of the program.

For more information, please contact Miriam Rollin at (202) 776-0027 ext. 143 or miriam@fightcrime.org