The Head Start program, is a nationally funded early childhood education program for low-income children who are not yet old enough to attend school. Generally the ages of head start students are five years old and younger. President Lyndon Johnson initiated the program during his war on poverty. “The Head Start program carries an implicit goal of improving equity among children by targeting vulnerable groups, mostly low-income children, a disproportionate share of whom are racial or ethnic minorities” (Joshi). President Johnson believed providing minorities educational preparedness would ensure a better education overall and stem the tide of poverty. Vicki Maloney, director of the Shirley Mays Head Start center in Wichita Kansas, stated that the children in their program came from many racial and ethnical backgrounds, but they all have one thing in common, …show more content…
Ms. Maloney said that the majority of their students would not receive any type of pre-school education if not for the Head Start center. When asked if she believed that the programs offered through the Head Start profited the targeted groups, Ms. Maloney emphatically stated “yes, children who receive early educational intervention go on to perform better in school.” The U.S Department of Health and Human Services website offers testimony to support this belief. Oscar Dominguez writes this; “Head Start has offset many of the challenges I faced early in my life, including a father in prison and a mother on welfare raising two boys in public housing. With a hand up from programs like Head Start, I was able to graduate near the top of my Texas public high school class, from Stanford University, and from the Master in Business Administration program at San Francisco State. Today, I work in a field where I can pay forward this type of empowerment, by administering programs that help people start and develop assets through entrepreneurship and
Working with my parents and participating in the FBLA competitive events have shaped me as a person. My parents own a struggling motel and do not have much money to hire employees. This encouraged me to step up and take over managerial operations and front desk responsibilities while they worked at another job. Because the motel is not vastly technology advanced, the room renting process and bookkeeping was all on paper. I have seen firsthand how tedious these processes could be on traditional pen and paper.
Therefore, my passion and vision is to work with local leaders in order to tackle illiteracy, child labor, and extreme poverty among out-of-school minority children in developing nations. I think that the minority children desperately require attention and educational from governments, political leaders, and international
Lower income and uneducated parents have a higher risk to have a child who performs poorly on test. However, the federal government had attempted to aid these underfunded and undereducated families. Head Start, a federal preschool program, has the purpose to raise test scores in the long term; however, “it has repeatedly been proven ineffectual.” By observing the in efficacy present in a Head Start class, it is apparent why the program is failing.
Children who grow up in poverty are faced with a series of issues which impact their education and social atmosphere. In both the school and home setting these children lack the proper resources which they need to succeed academically. Across the country, people have begun creating programs which aim to help children in poverty succeed, despite their socioeconomic status. These programs range from after-school reading, tutoring services, charter schools, and free summer programs. All of these programs provide children with extra academic help which they may not be receiving in school or at home.
This tremendous amount of money went towards concepts such as the Community Action Programs, the food stamp program, and Head Start. The Community Action Program was designed in order to “…encourage the urban poor to organize themselves…,” and this had the power to “redistribute power away from local officials”2. This was highly effective in encouraging individuals to work. Head Start also generated a powerful effect.
The Head Start program is an agency designed to help eliminate poverty in families with dependent children. While attacking risk factors, some of which include: poverty, lack of child care assistance, single parenthood, poor nutrition and diet this agency helps individuals and families to improve their circumstances. By providing benefits such as healthy meals, resources for families below the Federal Poverty level, and affordable child care assistance, the Head Start program can help families attain resiliency. Through interviewing the Head Start Program supervisor at the Judith P. Hoyer Learning Center, informative information about the history, population served, challenges, obstacles, and policies can help create a better understanding
The existence of the education achievement gap between white, Hispanic, and African-American, students has been a lingering problem across the United States. To close this gap it requires action that focuses on early childhood education programs that help in the preparation of students that will enter the system on grade level and ready to learn. One program developed for preparing children living in poverty for school is Head Start. Head start is a federal corresponding endowment program that offers the underprivileged children with admission to pre-kindergarten education. Head start program started as of fight on poverty and currently serving approximately 900,000 children yearly at the cost of $6.9 million yearly, and the number has increased
Another contribution LULAC made was helping in the creation of the national Head Start program, which derived from the “Little School of the 400” program. Now a days LULAC goes out to Hispanic communities to help sponsor tutorial programs, health fairs, voter registration assistance, and raise funds for the scholarships it provides through the LULAC National Scholarship Fund. It has helped about 10 percent of Hispanic students that have attend
The Head Start program is a free preschool for low income families who are disadvantaged. The Head Start program is in question in regards to its success in preparing children for future school success. In the article titled “How should we Interpret the Evidence about Head Start?” by Janet Currie claims “It is one of the most successful known interventions for poor children”. She claims Head Start is associated with being low quality, however, there are positive results that are surprising to the skeptics. She continues to argue that Head Start is operating at a local level and are held at high standards.
Fuller and Strath (2001) conducted a quantitative research study that examined local populations of early education organizations based on the 1990 household census data to report features of the early childhood workforce nationwide. Multiple economic and regulatory forces shaped the population of early education organizations that operated within states and local communities. The median center-based teacher was 34 years of age, reported having completed some college, and was married. The median family childcare home provider had a high school diploma. Fifteen percent of all preschool teachers in urban areas were African American and 8% were Latina.
I come from a family where business and entrepreneurship are something not seen. I’ve always wanted to go down a different path than what the rest of my family has. Throughout high school, I always was enthralled by the thought of having the opportunity to be my own boss and be a business owner someday in the future. As I thought, I realized that there aren’t any black owned businesses in the area, or really any people who even look at me for that matter. As a black woman being a first generation college student with an end goal of becoming an entrepreneur, I am passionate about seeing people from my culture and community becoming successful.
In this article, Kristof’s main focus centers around the effects that it has on the children. Despite the first article keeping its argument away from how this could have effects on the children that will be affected, Kristof turns his argument away from the differences surrounding whether students enrolled in Head Start have different results than those enrolled in pre-k, he begins his argument by talking about the long term benefits that Head Start is proven to have. In his article, he explains that students that are enrolled in both, Head Start and Pre-k are statistically proven to have a higher chance of graduating as well as a higher chance of avoiding being placed in a prison system. By stating this argument, he clearly states that he believes that by allowing for universal cause, the long term benefits of the children will be more valuable than how much money people will be taxed for a short period of
Head Start is a federal funded program for children between ages three to five who are underprivileged and come from low income families. A child’s mind when they first go to school is rapidly developing and at school teachers are responsible for guiding their students and helping them develop throughout the school year. If a child gets a bad teacher they can’t develop like they are suppose to. For many low income families public schools are their only option and before Head Start public schools didn’t really have a good preschool option. If a child attended preschool it regularly costed money and poor, low income families couldn’t afford to send their children to a private preschool.
Now a teacher must have a CDA and an Associate Degree in early childhood education. Over 50% of teachers need a Bachelor Degree in early childhood education. Head Start is a nonprofit organization that is federal funded program for low income families. Head Start provides equal learning opportunities for children with disabilities. A child with disabilities were not allowed to attend Head Start because the teachers and the classroom were not set up to meet their needs.
There continues to be a misinterpretation about the short-term and long-term gains. “There was strong evidence that the Head Start group demonstrated better skills on the following six child outcomes related to children’s language and literacy development: vocabulary, letter-word identification, spelling, pre-academic skills, color identification and letter naming” (Puma et.al 11). With long-term gains “finds long-term impacts of Head Start on outcomes such as educational attainment, crime, and mortality”. (Deming 114)