Congress has become infamous in recent years for its inability to get anything productive done. It should come as no surprise that education is just another policy arena suffering from a lack of adequate political action.
Head Start has received a lot of flack over the years, but it's not because comprehensive education early in childhood doesn't work. Head Start shows a tremendous improvement in the performance of younger kids until they hit about third grade- when the extra programs stop. The answer isn't to cut off extra education programs like Head Start- it's to continue to fund Head Start and programs like it.
Kids who are lucky enough to participate in the Head Start program (there are still hundreds of kids on wait lists across the country) face tremendous benefits: they're less likely to serve jail time, more likely to graduate high school, and more likely to have successful careers in the future. The benefits of programs like Head Start are crucially important for populations living in poverty or on one particularly meager income: children who grow up in poverty are far more likely to go through the legal system and encounter educational and career barriers later on in life. Programs like Head Start have the ability to propel kids living in poverty ahead by giving them (free) advantages that can put them on an even playing field with the kids in their classes with more resources. It's incredibly elitist (but sadly true) that our education system rewards wealthier children. Kids from families with money have a whole host of advantages over kids who live in poverty: they're well fed and rested, which makes it easier to concentrate in classes, and they also have access to things like tutoring, extra books, and school supplies that all make classwork easier.
More than 16 million children across the country are growing up in poverty. That means they don't always know where their next meal will come from (if it comes) and they may not have the resources to purchase school supplies or new clothes- much less the resources that are oftentimes required for students to excel. Kids who live in poverty and don't get to go through a Head Start-like program are working 18 months behind their peers. That gap only increases with time, and kids who grow up in poverty probably won't be able to make up that gap.
This means that it's absolutely imperative that we allocate more- not less- funding for programs like Head Start and other early education programs. Educating our children is one of the most important things that we can prioritize: it is the foundation of everything that our country will be able to accomplish in coming years. Without comprehensive education, it's impossible to believe in a future in which citizens of the United States can be pioneers in math, science, politics, writing, and business. It's time to step up our game- and invest in something that will provide tangible and enormous returns on our investment. In the status quo, Congress is working to enforce spending cuts that will slash Head Start funding. Rather than spending billions of dollars on inefficient bureaucracy or oil subsidies, we could be making a much wiser financial choice: spending that money on education. It's about time we start pushing for Congress to do just that.
