Fri, 03/3/2017
by Yasmina Vinci, Contributor
Executive Director, National Head Start Association
Originally Posted on "The Huffington Post" 02/22/2017 10:29 am ET | Updated Feb 22, 2017
While the Head Start community welcomes efforts to highlight the critical need for high-quality, early learning programs, including the need for more resources, longer duration, and increased access to quality early learning opportunities, too often these assertions are fraught with misleading information that confuses the debate and waters down the argument.
Take, for example, Katharine R. Stevens’ chapter in Robert Doar’s recently-released book, A Safety Net that Works: Improving Federal Programs for Low-Income Americans.” While we agree with Dr. Stevens’ argument on the importance of high-quality early education existing needs in the field, Dr. Stevens fails to effectively highlight current challenges or adequately address them. In fact, the pilot program suggested in the chapter would likely hinder, rather than support, continuing improvement in the early childhood field, and would leave our nation’s most vulnerable children and their families behind.
The Head Start community’s concerns with this chapter range from the questionably-presented historical context to omission of relevant policy actions and research to a proposed solution that does not...
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Categories: General Tags: National Head Start
