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Running head: HEAD START 2

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HEAD START

Social Policy- Past: Analysis Paper

Head Start: The Answer to Alleviating Poverty and Women Empowerment

Kirsten Beasley

University of Maryland, Baltimore School of Social Work

Social Welfare and Social Policy

Professor Steven Rivelis

3/9/2021

Head Start: The Answer to Alleviating Poverty and Women Empowerment

Understanding Head Start

Various research on early childhood development has found a positive relationship between engagement in high-quality classrooms and intellectual outcomes (Irwin et al., 2016). The social issue addressed by Head Start is poverty being a barrier towards attaining an education. A secondary issue for the policy is the lack of employment in low-income families due to child care. Head Start addresses these interrelated issues by giving all children in the United States an equal chance to thrive in their education regardless of their economic background. Also, this allows parents to focus on securing employment to support their children.

An Overview of Head Start

The Head Start policy started as a series of educational programs for children between the ages of 3 and 4 from low-income families. However, the policy was changed to include children from birth to the age of 5 from low-income families and provided them with services such as preschool education and health care. Various programs have since been developed in numerous settings to facilitate the program’s goals. The policy purposefully structures the programs in a manner that benefits the children, parents, and other key family members in three aspects, namely, early learning and development, health as well as family well-being. These programs provide not only the children with services for a head start in education, but they also allow the provision of tax credits for their families (Lane et al., 2020). Individualized programs provide learning experiences that support children emotionally while introducing them to language, mathematics, and science. In this way, children have a smooth transition into kindergarten and elementary school. Morris et al. (2018) comment that the program considers the unique culture and language of each child. Also, children receive health screenings like mental screenings as well as nourishing meals to aid their development. Head Start keeps itself afloat through federal grants, which are granted openly and grants from private non-profit and for-profit organizations (Irwin et al., 2016).

The History and Goals of Head Start

President Kennedy initially brought up the issue of poverty, and President Johnson lessened it with Head Start. The government realized that they needed to break the poverty cycle in low-income families. Also, the feminist movements of the time were putting pressure on the government to recognize the strain that working women were under in taking care of their families (Lane et al., 2020). Walinsky (1969) documents that Walter Heller soon after brought Kennedy’s program to Johnson who, then prepared for congress to pass the program as the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. Daniel P. Moynihan opposed the program, saying that the government was not considering practicalities (Walinsky, 1969). But Head Start strived to offer early educational experiences to children from pre-kindergarten to kindergarten years who faced the possibility of not attaining an education because of poverty. The program allowed all children to start school with the same fundamentals which middle-and-upper-class families supply to their children. The policy assumes that poverty causes barriers to education and parents to worry about caring for their children, which exacerbates unemployment. Irwin et al. (2016) understands the policy as aiming to provide early childhood education to counteract the effects of poverty.

Strategic Advancement

Several ideas and actions propelled Head Start, most notably The War on Poverty and the tax code provision. Former President Lyndon Johnson understood that children from impoverished backgrounds are at risk of being excluded from educational institutions. To prevent this, Head Start rolled out, and funding for early education channelled through the policy. Women dependent on benefits received subsidized child care in the 1960s to lessen their financial stress. This allowed more children to access day-care programs (Lane et al., 2020). Although this gave the policy some reinforcement, more financial action was needed. It was only after the altering of policies in the financing of early education that change began. The tax code provision laid a stable foundation for Head Start to ensure that children accessed education by giving low-income families tax credit if they had children under 13. This strategy not only lessened the financial burden on struggling families but also uplifted the economy as families had another reason to seek employment to qualify for the tax credit. From a feminist perspective, this was a tremendous win for women to be financially independent.

The Impact of Head Start

Through Head Start, many pre-kindergarten students accessed affordable care and education. It made it possible for them to receive high-quality care in centers as opposed to home care. The time that children spent in these centers helped develop their cognitive and social skills (Morris et al., 2018). Learners in elementary schools saw an improvement in their academic lives as they had support from their parents. Interestingly Morris et al. (2018) notes that parents who benefitted from Head Start, as children, develop a more hands-on approach to their children's education. From an economic standpoint, parents have been able to seek and retain employment as the stress of caring for their children has lessened through Head Start. Yet, the prolonged impact for Head Start lies in the accessibility for pre-kindergarteners to move with ease through the education system. The skills acquired from centers place them on the same level as learners from middle-and-upper-income families. Therefore, these learners can learn at the same pace as other learners. But Head Start does more than address the issue of poverty. It also strengthens family bonds by empowering parents to provide their children with a better future.

Assessment of Head Start

Head Start shows signs of horizontal inequality in providing low-income families with a tax credit, unlike middle-and-upper-income families. It does, however, have vertical equity as the tax credit bridges the gap between the rich and the poor. The policy also scores high on social equity as it addresses the financial imbalances that pose barriers to education. But it does not pay attention to the uniqueness of the societies it operates in as the policy is implemented in a one size fits all approach. In its quest for inclusiveness, it focuses heavily on giving low-income families educational opportunities. Meanwhile, middle-and-upper-income families are experiencing rising costs in child care. Therefore, these groups also need assistance for the policy to achieve social inclusion. Historically, White American children have had the privilege of having sufficient resources to aid their education. Head Start addresses these social and racial injustices by setting up centers in low-income areas populated by minority groups. Morris et al. (2018) discovered that minority groups not only have access to education through the policy, but Spanish-speaking children learn English and subsequently become bilingual. Thus, they can adjust in kindergarten and elementary school at the same pace as English-speaking learners.

Policy Alternatives Considered.

The Military Child Care Act is a similar policy but differs by accommodating the children of military personnel (Lane et al., 2020). Like Head Start helping parents to keep their jobs, the Military Child Care Act retains military workers after having families. By knowing that their children receive care, military personnel can focus more on their jobs. But more specifically, in the Head Start policy, Lane et al. (2020) recorded that federal governments are paying attention to middle-and-upper-income families to redistribute the Dependent Tax Credit. These changes present a new perspective to the social problem by proving that parent absenteeism negatively affects the quality of education and care that a child receives. Furthermore, poverty is no longer an issue solely faced by low-income families but an issue confronting all families in various degrees. Head Start's demographic of low-income minority groups certainly changes to include a larger demographic. With new developments in society, a new demographic of low-middle-and-upper-income families has emerged.

Feminism and Head Start

A feminist perspective best understands this policy as it touches on the injustices of women. For many years, women stood in the shadow of men, given roles only in domestic affairs. From the 1960s, as noted by Lane et al. (2020), dramatic changes happened which saw women having a presence outside of the home and in the workplace. But women experienced strain in managing careers with an uneven distribution of family responsibility. The Head Start policy addressed these issues in several ways. Firstly, it motivated women to seek employment to qualify for tax credits and gave them economic freedom instead of dependency on state benefits. It also drastically changed their role by empowering them to meet the educational needs of their children. However, from this feminist perspective, there are drawbacks to the advancement of women. In most of the Head Start centers employing women, they are severely underpaid. In these pink-collar occupations, women have their financial liberty taken away in the low salaries they receive.

Recommendations

Head Start has a place in society to continue providing access to child care and education to families. With the issue of poverty impacting families regardless of their income, this shows that the policy has a lot of work it needs to tackle. Nonetheless, it is unwise to implement this policy across the country in a standardized way without considering the locations it functions in. Children growing up in urbanized areas have more resources at their disposal than those in rural areas. Therefore, policymakers should bear this in mind and possibly allocate funding to areas lacking resources. There is also validity in the feminist argument that jobs performed by women offer little financial freedom. To close the gender wage gap, the government should reconsider the salaries provided to women. In doing so, they will realize the vision of The War on Poverty in providing access to education and financial liberation to all.

References

Irwin, C. W., Madura, J. P., Bamat, D., & McDermott, P. A. (2016). Patterns of classroom quality in Head Start and center-based early childhood education programs (REL 2017–199). U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education and Regional Assistance. http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED569186.pdf

Lane, S. R., Palley, E., & Shdaimah, C. (2020). Social welfare policy in a changing world. SAGE Publications.

Morris, P. A., Connors, M., Friedman-Krauss, A., McCoy, D. C., Weiland, C., Feller, A., Page, L., Bloom, H., & Yoshikawa, H. (2018). New findings on impact variation from the Head Start impact study: Informing the scale-up of early childhood programs. AERA Open, 4(2), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858418769287

Walinsky, A. (1969, February 2). Maximum feasible misunderstanding. The New York Times. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/04/specials/moynihan-community.html