Report: Head Start programs underenrolled

Many Head Start programs across the country are not enrolling as many children as they could, according to a new General Accounting Office report.

Since 1965, the federal government has funded and managed Head Start, providing educational, medical, and nutritional services to poor children. In its report (GAO-04-17), GAO found that it was impossible to determine exactly how many of the more than 1,500 Head Start programs around the country are not serving as many children as they are funded to serve.

The Administration for Children and Families, the division of the Health and Human Services Department that runs the Head Start program, does not collect accurate national data on underenrollment. And ACF's regional offices, which do collect data, use different standards for determining underenrollment. For example, GAO found that some regional offices only consider a program underenrolled if it is serving less than 74 percent of the children it is funded to service. Others used more stringent standards.

The regional offices reported that 7 percent of programs nationwide were underenrolled. But a GAO analysis found that 57 percent of programs enroll less than 100 percent of the total number of children that they are funded to enroll, and 33 percent enroll less than 95 percent.

For years, Democrats have argued that Head Start funds should be increased more rapidly to enroll more of the eligible children. Head Start programs are currently funded to provide for about 60 percent of the children who meet the income criteria for eligibility. That added up to 912,000 children in 2002. Republicans have, for the most part, not resisted the budget increases. Between 1990 and 2002, Head Start funds have quadrupled from $1.6 billion to more than $6.5 billion.

But among the most cited reasons for underenrollment by ACF regional offices was the reduction in eligible children. Between 1996 and 2002, the national child poverty rate fell by almost 20 percent, from 20.5 percent to 16.7 percent. The other top three reasons cited were a lack of adequate facilities; the failure of Head Start programs to offer enough full-day slots, thereby forcing parents to seek day care elsewhere, as well as the competition of other day care programs run by state or local governments or charities.

One of the most controversial provisions of legislation passed by the House earlier this year to reauthorize Head Start would set up a pilot project under which a limited number of state governments would control their state's Head Start funding in order to combine it with state spending on early childhood programs. Republican House leaders argue that this would allow states to more efficiently serve poor children, offer more full-day programs and thereby increase enrollment.

But the proposal was hotly contested by Head Start directors and by congressional Democrats, who argued that it would unnecessarily tinker with a successful federal program. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee passed legislation in October that left out the state pilot program.