Groups reject provision in Senate Head Start bill

A diverse group of antipoverty, religious and liberal groups this week condemned a provision in the Senate version of legislation to reauthorize the 38-year-old Head Start program and urged senators to amend the bill when it comes up for a vote.

In a statement issued on Oct. 30, Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children's Defense Fund, a liberal advocacy group in Washington, said that a provision in the Senate bill requiring the academic testing of Head Start's preschool-age pupils was developmentally inappropriate. Forty organizations signed onto Edelman's statement, including the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, the Episcopal Church USA, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Head Start, a program run by the Administration for Children and Families at the Health and Human Services Department, provides a range of academic, medical and developmental services to about 900,000 low-income children under the age of five.

"The Senate should reject proposals that establish a set of outcomes for children that are not informed by research or science," Edelman said. "They should continue to oppose any inappropriate testing of young children and make sure that such test results are not used to determine program funding."

Still, despite some concerns expressed by Democratic senators about the testing, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee passed the bill last Wednesday on a 21-0 vote. Now, the bill awaits consideration by the full Senate.

A team of early childhood experts convened by President Bush in 2001 has designed a biannual testing regimen-set for use this fall-that will gauge how well Head Start programs are teaching children to read. Under the Senate bill, the nation's 3,000 Head Start centers will be evaluated for future funding based on how well they do on the tests.

Still, early childhood experts are divided on the validity of such tests, and under the Senate bill, the National Academy of Sciences will review the regimen in a year.

Even with the debate surrounding the testing, the Senate bill is more palatable to Democrats than that passed by the House. The House bill passed on a mostly party-line, 217-216 vote, in July. It included a controversial provision that would allow a limited number of state governments to manage federal Head Start funds. Advocates say that this would allow the states to combine their own preschool funding with Head Start money to create a more efficient program. Detractors argue that cash-strapped states would be tempted to dilute program quality.

In addition, the Senate bill would increase program funding to $8 billion over the next five years. Currently, Head Start is funded at $6.7 billion a year, and the House reauthorization bill is less generous than the Senate's version.