One of the worst jobs in the world must be auditing the nation’s Head Start programs.
Like most auditors, you are despised because you ask nosey questions. The saving grace may be that the CEO or the Board of Directors or investors or, in rare circumstances, taxpayers, may even be grateful for your honesty and clarity.
What make the Head Start audit chores particularly burdensome is that no one wants to hear from you; no one is interested in any bad news; 562 trillion “special interests” are poised to rebut any criticism you might have — and Congress is going to keep funding the program forever, no matter what you say about it.
In an audit that was hardly devastating or particularly alarming, the New Haven Head Start program was beat up a few years ago for various modest indignities. The Hartford version had suffered a similar fate, as have many, many such programs across the country.
To collective yawns by all involved, the New Haven Head Start folks just issued a new “annual report,” declaring that all the deficiencies have been resolved and the New Haven Head Start colossus is now a pre-school Garden of Eden. Of course it is.
Few federal programs have survived, even prospered, in the face of as much negative audit and research data as has the Head Start pre-school program. The notion that many children, especially children of the poor, come to school “unprepared to learn” has inspired decades of giddy enthusiasm for Head Start and many other pre-school programs not under the federal umbrella.
One of the more hilarious initiatives of the George Bush administration was an effort to move Head Start from the warm, loving embrace of the Department of Health and Human Services, to the Department of Education.  Surprised it isn’t already under the “education” umbrella? That’s how it was originally marketed, but clever folks decided that Head Start would better survive as a cuddly social service program with murky objectives, than as a program to improve the educational performance of minority kids. Of course, the Bush idea went nowhere. If you want to see why, take a look at that New Haven annual report, full of praise for all the dental exams and “continuous health care” provided by Head Start.
There is reasonably convincing evidence that children of two-parent households with education, financial resources and white wine in the refrigerator, begin school with an advantage over the poor kids. What is less clear is whether Head Start is the best way to address the challenge.
For decades, research ranging from mediocre to top-notch, has suggested that whatever modest benefits Head Start provides to the pre-school kids, the advantage diminishes and, in many cases, disappears, as schooling continues.
Whether or not Head Start is “to blame” for the diminishing results, or whether they should be attributed to lousy public schools and poor parenting, the core question remains: Why is so much money lavished on the Head Start monopoly?
The non-partisan federal Government Accountability Office, for instance, has spent endless amounts of time and money pointing out Head Start flaws and questionable claims. Even (or, perhaps, especially) the Head Start system for evaluating its own performance has been subject to audit smirking.
The program survives, unscathed, in large part because the very notion of a “head start” for poor kids is appealing; because pre-school in general is now pushed for almost every kid; and because Head Start is an attractive employment agency for many residents of poor neighborhoods who wouldn’t survive formal teacher-training certification.
Head Start? Apparently, we can’t live without it.
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Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
