Morality Play

en Kaz likes marriage as much as the next guy. He thinks "two-parent households are a great idea" and laments today's 50 percent divorce rates. He'll even acknowledge that broken families more often live in poverty than their nuclear counterparts.

But don't ask Kaz, welfare reform manager at the Wyoming Department of Family Services, to encourage poor Wyomingans to seek marriage counseling. "One thing that we are really objecting to is the movement to have a marriage provision in TANF," Kaz says. He's talking about the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, a system of block grants to states that replaced the federally administered Aid for Families With Dependent Children welfare program in 1996. "Marriage is a personal choice. We don't feel we have any business dealing with that," Kaz adds.

Unfortunately for Kaz, the Bush administration not only disagrees but is planning to make the promotion of marriage a major goal of the 2002 TANF reauthorization. It was a key plank of Bush's 2000 campaign, and the President is determined to make good on his promise. Bush is so serious that he appointed Wade F. Horn, a prominent and sometimes controversial figure in the marriage and fatherhood movement, to direct the Administration for Children and Families, the agency overseeing welfare reform. Horn is an ACF veteran, having served as commissioner of children, youth and families in the first Bush administration. But he spent the last seven years as the president of the National Fatherhood Initiative, where his proposals to promote male parental involvement and marriage sometimes riled feminists. "I don't care about fathers per se," says Horn. "What I care about is that children do better if fathers are involved in healthy ways. This agency can send a message that fathers matter." Horn now eschews some of the more controversial proposals he made in the past-such as those he outlined in a 1997 Hudson Institute paper, which urged the government to "give preference to two-parent married households" when it distributes benefits in limited supply.

But Horn still believes that the administration can do more to offer marriage-counseling services to TANF recipients who want them, and he's prepared to make the case whether state administrators agree or not.

Reading Wrangle

Boosting marriage is not the only fight Horn has on his hands. He seems poised for battle on another Bush campaign plank that has agitated state administrators of the Head Start program. Launched in 1965, Head Start is perhaps the crown jewel of social welfare programs. It offers preschool education to poor children, ages 3 to 5, and also provides health and nutrition services. The program has long enjoyed strong bipartisan support, and saw its funding rise by nearly $1 billion in fiscal 2001, the largest increase ever. Nonetheless, Bush believes that Head Start is not doing enough to help poor children learn basic literacy skills. As a result, Horn and his team are preparing recommendations for Head Start's 2003 reauthorization that will require the nation's 16,000 Head Start centers to focus on academic skills. Also significant, Bush said he would propose that Head Start be taken from ACF and the Health and Human Services Department, which oversees it, and moved to the Education Department.

That idea isn't sitting well with state administrators. "We know the administration says we should put our focus on literacy," says Jesse Rodriguez, director of the Northern Arizona Council of Governments Head Start program. "My concern is that what has made Head Start successful is a comprehensive approach and we are convinced that is going to suffer." He says the Education Department has no experience working with such a large program or with administering the basic health and nutrition services that Head Start now provides. Horn has yet to lay out the specifics of the Bush team's proposal. But warning shots are coming from state administrators who are worried that the proposals will be sweeping. Their message: Don't meddle or you'll face a fight in Congress.

Debate on Welfare Reform

Horn is well aware of the states' concerns on welfare reauthorization. He recently completed seven listening sessions, meeting with state administrators in each of ACF's regional hub cities, as well as with interest group stakeholders. Horn recently met with Judy Denton, director of federal relations at the Texas Department of Human Services. "It was one of the few times when we've had people from Washington come out and meet with the states," she says.

Still, the message from the states to Horn was clear: Welfare reform has worked because states were given block grants with few strings attached, so don't saddle us with added requirements to promote marriage. That flexibility allowed states to develop programs that met their local needs and the welfare rolls dropped to their lowest levels in history. And promoting marriage "doesn't feel like the type of thing that government is particularly good at," says Chuck Johnson, director of the Families with Children Division of the Minnesota Department of Human Services. "We have a concern that the father of the children is not necessarily the best person to get married." Indeed, adds Joel Podz, TANF policy administrator at the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, "In many circumstances, the best thing we can do for the woman is get her away from the guy."

But Horn persists. "I think we can do a better job of thinking creatively about different ways programs in ACF can help people choose marriage for themselves and sustain healthy marriages. It's not about making anyone get married. We're not going to run a dating service. But if a couple is interested in marriage, we can help them get marriage education." Government, he believes, can help direct interested couples to counseling services.

Conservative activists are pushing the administration to go even further. Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, says he wants 5 percent to 10 percent of federal welfare funds set aside by ACF and invested directly in programs that attempt to promote marriage and reduce divorce. "For five years, the states have ignored the marriage goal of welfare reform," Rector says. "The federal government should now insist that the states spend a certain portion of their federal dollars on addressing it." Without seeing Congress's proposals, it's impossible to tell whether the states will actually face new mandates, and some suspect that the reauthorization debate may not live up to its advance billing. "I think we are going to be surprised at how timid the proposals are," says Wendell Primus, director of income security at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington. Indeed, even the Bush Administration's budget proposal released last month didn't go as far as many state administrators expected, and actually did much to assuage their concerns. The proposal maintains level funding for TANF block grants, and does not mandate that states use their block grants to promote marriage.

Ron Haskins, a former Republican staff director of the House Ways and Means Committee's Human Resources Subcommittee, helped draft the original welfare reform legislation and now is co-director of the Brookings Institution's Welfare Reform and Beyond Initiative. Haskins believes the Bush team has taken the right approach by keeping the states' block grant flexibility while adding a $100 million fund to help states that try to promote marriage.

Elephant in the Room

Meanwhile, the elephant in the room is the recession and the crisis it has wrought on state budgets. According to the National Association of State Budget Officers, the states racked up a $25 billion deficit in 2001, and the group has warned that 2002 may be worse. With money running short, states don't want any of their block grants tied down or reduced, and they're pleased that the Bush budget maintains funding and flexibility. Still, with the number of people receiving cash assistance down by more than 60 percent nationwide, states anticipate that Congress might seek to reduce TANF block grants despite the President's budget blueprint. "I'd do back flips down the hall if the level of funding stayed the same," says Ohio's Podz.

Podz and his colleagues say they've shifted their block grant funding from cash assistance to other work support programs, such as child care, transportation, and health care. For example, Douglas Howard, director of the Michigan Family Independence Agency, said his state spent $1.2 billion on cash grants in 1994, and $90 million on child-care services. In 2000, Michigan spent just $300 million on cash grants and a whopping $500 million on child care. We are supporting working families that are paying taxes, so that they don't return to the [welfare] rolls."

State administrators say the reduction in the rolls will enable them to weather the recession. And they aren't particularly concerned about the five-year lifetime limits that the 1996 welfare reform act placed on cash assistance. They say no one will be left without help because of the recession. The law allows states to use federal funds to keep up to 20 percent of their caseloads on the rolls beyond the five-year limit. It also allows them to finesse the bookkeeping so that any other recipients who've hit the time limit can be paid with state funds. Still, states are worried that any reduction in block grants, or in state spending flexibility could hamper their efforts.

Fighting Words

If the welfare reform debate is tense, the one about Head Start is caustic. It's clear that state administrators resent Bush's assertion that they are not doing enough to teach children basic literacy skills. They contend they've been doing it for years. Further, they rebel against increased testing and evaluation requirements that have emerged from Washington since the passage of the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act.

They wonder whether it's productive to test 3-year-olds, and they object heatedly when asked about tracking the academic performance of Head Start students after they've left the program, a persistent proposal of conservatives.

Kim Young-Kent, executive director of the Tri-County Child and Family Development Council Inc. in Iowa, says there's clearly a "misunderstanding by the current leadership about what we have been doing." She says the 1998 Head Start reauthorization focused in large part on preparing the children for school and teaching basic reading skills. "For years," agrees Thomas in Georgia, "the Head Start literacy program has been excellent."

Horn, it would seem, couldn't disagree more. He cites data from the ongoing Family and Child Experiences Survey of Head Start-launched in 1997 in an effort to evaluate the progress of Head Start participants-as proof that "there is no movement at all, from entry into Head Start to exit, in the national percentile in letter recognition. I don't think it's unreasonable that kids who go through Head Start be exposed to the alphabet."

"During my first tour of duty at HHS, I oversaw Head Start," Horn explains. "When I came in, I learned that if a monitoring team went into a Head Start classroom and saw an alphabet, they would say to take it down" because the children were thought to be too young and unprepared for literacy training. Horn says the Bush team doesn't want Head Start teachers "standing up with flash cards or taking away from the comprehensive services that Head Start offers. We just want to see letters and numbers introduced into the classroom."

During the 2000 campaign, Bush said he wanted all 16,000 Head Start programs nationwide to adopt curricula similar to that used at the Margaret H. Cone Head Start Center in Dallas. There, teachers use lesson plans drafted by researchers at Southern Methodist University. The plans provide Head Start teachers with exercises to help children recognize letters by sight and sound, to understand that words are made of letters and syllables, and, further, that words can be put together to form stories. Before the curriculum was adopted in 1994, Cone students who'd gone on to elementary school placed in the lowest quartile in a national test of reading skills. Since adoption of the Southern Methodist curriculum, Cone graduates have placed in the top 10 percent.

Countering Conservatives

Bush says the new curriculum would be best implemented by the Education Department. That infuriates state administrators and sparked a lobbying campaign by the National Head Start Association. Liberal activists fanned the flames. "The move to the Department of Education threatens the comprehensive nature of the program," says Helen Blank, child-care director at the Children's Defense Fund in Washington. "HHS has the links to child care and health care."

Blank doesn't believe Bush is committed to the program, pointing out that the President proposed only a $125 million increase for Head Start in 2002, but the House raised that figure to $276 million, and the Senate took it even further, to $400 million. A House-Senate conference ultimately settled on a $338 million increase. "A $125 million increase would have resulted in a kid-versus-quality debate," Blank asserts. "They would have had to cut children or risk quality." Adds Sara Greene, CEO of the Head Start association: I don't see a history of success at Education. I don't see where they have been sensitive and responsive to poor families."

Greene and her members say they feel stung by conservative critiques of the program that have shown American schoolchildren lack basic reading skills. For example, the most recent National Assessment of Education Progress basic skills test, which was administered in 1998, says nearly 70 percent of fourth graders in the most disadvantaged schools lack basic literacy skills. The finding casts doubt on Head Start's success, according to people like Patrick Fagan, a William H.G. FitzGerald Research Fellow in Family and Cultural Issues at the Heritage Foundation. "Head Start needs clear, objective, measurable outcomes," he says. "The studies show that Head Start kids do no better in school than those who didn't go."

Greene strongly disagrees. "I don't know how many times we have to prove that our children are entering kindergarten prepared to learn," she says. "Head Start can't be blamed because 70 percent of [low-income] fourth graders can't read. There are so many other factors impacting those kids." Iowa's Young-Kent goes even further. She objects to studies of Head Start children. "The whole assessment concept with small children isn't developmentally appropriate in the first place," she says. "What are you going to do with the data? We're labeling children younger and younger, and labeling them failures younger and younger. Head Start is not going to inoculate children against all social ills."

Rodriguez in Arizona says he can't even be certain that the tools he uses to evaluate his children are trustworthy. He says he is besieged by child education companies offering their services but has little time to consider their proposals. The federal government hasn't been much help. "It's extremely difficult when you can't find early childhood experts to help with teacher training, when you can't find people who can give you technical assistance on measures and outcomes. They are letting every vendor hit us between the eyes." Rodriguez adds that most of his teachers are former Head Start parents. "The time that I've spent on measures and outcomes, I would've liked to spend building relationships in the community to get health services and better nutrition," he says. "It's really draining everyone right now."

Rodriguez says the new focus on specific academic skills is a significant shift from the philosophy of early childhood education most Head Start administrators are familiar with. He says most Head Start administrators were trained in the Montessori system philosophy. It allows children to move freely from one activity to the next and set their own pace with little straight academic training. Now, he believes Head Start teachers are going to have to "teach to the test." Head Start "was successful for 35 years in looking at the whole child, and now it's all literacy," Rodriguez says. "It's a drastic change." That belief-despite Horn's assurances-is widespread among state administrators. Some are despondent. But others aren't too worried. They've seen previous administrations come in with grand plans only to back off. "I've been here 33 years," says one administrator who requested anonymity. "We go through phases like this, but after a while it just goes away."