Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 30, 1994 TAG: 9403310283
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITORIAL EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It is needed, says the program's advisory committee, set up by the Department of Health and Human Services last year to do a nationwide review. Members found that Head Start kids do, indeed, have an advantage over counterparts who hadn't participated in the preschool program for poor youngsters aged 3 to 5.
But many kids seem to lose that edge in a couple of years. Experts have questioned whether the evidence demonstrates a long-term gain in ability to learn and perform well in school. Hence the push to give kids a boost at an even younger age, from birth to 3, the most critical years of mental development.
What's promising about the expanded program, which itself remains in its infancy and at a developmental stage, is not only that it would capture at-risk children at an earlier, more impressionable age. It also would emphasize efforts to improve parenting.
The fact is that families can have impacts that governments never can. The better Head Start programs, such as in the Roanoke Valley, try to serve children as part of families. But the connection with the home environment can be easier to influence when kids are younger.
There is, for instance, greater use of drugs and alcohol by parents these days. Many children are arriving at Head Start at age 3 from homes that are not safe, clean and nurturing.
It makes sense that, in looking to improve performance as children get older, Head Start would aim to change their earliest experiences, and to teach their parents skills that will help throughout their growing-up years.
"Zero-to-three" programs, as they are called, are focusing on family counseling, parental education and promoting good parent-child relationships. For all the talk about family values, here's a pro-family action targeted at families in the greatest distress, often dysfunctional families in danger of producing dysfunctional offspring.
Both Congress and the administration are taking a slow, phased-in approach to the initiative, which isn't expected to get under way for at least a year. If and when the plan is implemented, it will start on a small scale, with grants to a few existing Head Start centers. It ought to be expanded more quickly and on a much larger scale.
A Virginia initiative can help show the way. School-funding legislation - crafted this year primarily by House Majority Leader Richard Cranwell of Vinton and Senate Majority Leader Hunter Andrews of Hampton - will expand preschool programs in Virginia for at-risk 4-year-olds.
If public schools were to take over developmental education for disadvantaged 4-year-olds, that would allow Head Start to provide services to more 3-year-olds. (In the Roanoke Valley, as in most of the nation, only about one-fourth of kids eligibile for the program are served, which is a scandal.)
On top of that, public schools' help could free up resources for extending Head Start to younger children and infants and their families.
Is there a danger, as with Head Start for 3- to 5-year-olds, that demonstrable success will be mainly short term? Yes.
But in trying to reach children and their parents at the earliest possible time, during the most critical years of a child's brain development, the hope is to set them on a successful course for life and to prevent lasting harm instead of just responding to it. (The other logical application of this common sense is to focus much more effort on prenatal care, which is another story.)
If an earlier Head Start works for even a portion of the participants, it will be well worth the investment - and a big money-saver in the long run.
by CNB