As I stated last week my organization is The National Head Start Association.
Head Start is the nation’s leading investment in early childhood care and education. Head Start provides a wide array of comprehensive education, health, nutrition, parent involvement, and family support services. Head Start has two types of programs (HS) Head Start which serves preschool children and their families and (EHS) Early Head Start that serves primarily at- risk prenatal to age three pregnant women and their families. This program has serves at risk children and their families since 1965. One of the issues facing Head Start is The Race to the top competition which is about raising the standards of low performing programs. Head Start funds would not be giving to programs that are not performing to meet high quality standards.The Obama’s administration will not funnel money back into low performing head start programs. This means that programs that are performing with little or no effectiveness will need to complete for funding against those that can offer better outcomes. Tough benchmarks on management, health, and safety financial accountability, will be imposed. Another standard that will need to rise to the top will be interaction of teachers in the classrooms. Teachers will be assessed on a new research base assessment tools that will be monitor when a review takes place. All of these changes are base from the 2005 Government accountability office documented how poorly performing grantees continued to receive federal funding even after the fail to improve. The objective of this is that with these new rules that children from poor background will have a better chance to succeed. NHSA Government Affairs updates which is a bi -weekly electronic publication providing comprehensive, timely and insightful information on legislative issues facing Head Start. The lastest news talks about raising the federal debt ceiling and how Head Start is vulnerble and that we will be facing a significant uphill battle to avoid cuts. http://www.nhsa.org/
Resources
The First Five Years Fund's Backgrounder for NHSA includes the First Five Years Fund core principles and recommendations regarding the Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge Fund Competition
1 comment:
Wanda, I know with budget cuts its been difficult, at my employer our early HS funding was cut from the budget along with funding for childcare. Not only were positions let go, but subsidized funding was cut for families.
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