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by Linda Sunkle-Pierucki

Created on: June 22, 2008

The mission of Head Start, as designed under the Johnson administration, was never to enable parents to obtain jobs. The intent of the program from its inception was to facilitate the growth and healthy development of children in families below the poverty line to better enable their future success. Helping parents find a job was never part of the assignment but instead, a beneficial adjunct to a child development program.

The original purpose of Head Start was not to promote a "pre-kindergarten" early learning environment, but to provide an environment where low income children might develop social and problem-solving skills to engender future success. Head Start provided a nutritionally-balanc ed meal and snack for each half-day attendee to assure proper nutrition for optimal development, community-awareness field-trips, an introduction to books and art , language skills and play experiences within a richer environment than found in the average low-income home. A major part of Head Start's goal was to provide physical and dental screenings to low income children and to enable low income parents to participate and learn to better guide their children's futures.

The Head Start model provided a unique parent-involvement template wherein a large portion of program decision-making was designed and approved by parents elected by their peers to a Policy Council. From the beginning, it was clear that bureaucrats have a very hard time allowing the low-income to have a say in what happens to them.

Although jobs for parents per se were not part of the plan, Head Start was mandated to hire members of the low income community wherever possible to fill positions within its programs. This it did admirably, and was soon touted as hiring more disadvantaged employees than any other government entitlement program. By the early 1970's, while still administered by community action groups, low-income employees were participating fully in most aspects of the program and many went on to obtain degrees and begin either professional or para-professional careers. It is true that not every parent progressed; not every parent is capable of major advancement in a casual do-it-yourself environment and not every parent is sufficiently mature and motivated to become an agent for change within his or her family.

For those parents who chose to pursue employment within the Head Start program, a variety of locally-developed programs were designed to meet specific community needs and increase child development knowledge among parents. I have personally seen former Head Start parents attain public office, gain professional degrees and attain paid management positions. This is not because head Start set out to achieve this kind of success with each parent, but because it allowed motivated parents opportunities and helped them find resources to chart a better course in their families' lives.

As years passed, and administrations changed, each brought with it their own unique agenda for the goals of the Head Start program. More rigid, establishment-secure agencies developed a hunger for the administrative monies Head Start grants could provide their school districts, city councils and human services agencies. Many Head Start programs lost their grass-roots grantees within community programs to the more powerful governmental organizations-in fairness, many of these former grantees were incapable of the complex accounting methods required by government funding. Along with national agenda-changes, these programs now had to attempt to meet mandates thrust upon them by local officials who suddenly fancied themselves qualified to dictate to the welfare recipients that constituted the enrollment. School districts and teachers unions saw Head Start as an educational system and felt the need to pad both their budgets and their rolls with Head Start/school district employees. Few of these groups felt the need to adhere to the original Head Start guidelines and general social and physical development began to fall by the wayside as a pre-kindergarten model was thrust upon them. Gone too were most opportunities for parents to obtain paid employment in their child's classroom or kitchen or clinic.

Congress, threatened with growing social spending budgets, began to impose nearly unattainable goals on Head Start in a series of unfunded mandates. The original goals of promoting self-sufficiency and healthy family units was smothered under calls for formalized education, computer learning for three-year-olds, more research grants to half-baked PhDs to develop "learning materials" and kits at substantial cost to the tax-payer and more outrageous demands that head Start children be forced to perform higher levels of cognitive skills than most were developmentally capable of. Head Start, then Home Start and Early Head Start became early indoctrination into a childhood of socially-engineered "education" similar to the "No Child Left Behind" rhetoric now being fostered upon the unprepared children in our schools. Whereas Head Start began with a desire to introduce children to simple story books they may not have experienced, later programs wanted them to write the books they could not yet read.

Head Start, I am ashamed to say, became the model for social control through education, "school-to-work" and a failed education system. Parents who once would have been nurtured and encouraged to develop their skills even if only to improve their parenting, were ignored, denigrated by a bevy of newly-graduated MSW's, dis-invited into their children's classrooms and told their common sense wasn't sensible any more. "Leave it to me-I'm the Professional" became the battle cry and parents weren't fully welcomed as a part of their child's development. New regulations and educational requirements have shut Head Start parents out of many employment opportunities and they are relegated to a sort of patronized PTA group that is still required by federal law to sign off the grant proposal for yearly funding. Even that token voice is threatened in Congress. Head Start has evolved into a caricature of the promising program that began its development in 1965. In the process, these children are having their childhoods lost to their families and their communities in favor of the State. The saddest thing about all of this is that most staff and parents sincerely want to do what is best for these children, and are convinced early forced, developmentally-inap propriate educational regimentation is what these children need to succeed. We can see the results in our high school drop-out rate and comparisons of grade-specific capabilities on a world scale.

Head Start used to better enable parents to find employment. I know of the opportunities well. As a young low income parent, I was hired to work in the kitchen of my child's center. Eighteen year later, I was still there-self-supportin g and responsible for much of the administration of one of the largest Head Start programs in the Mid-west. Now, unfortunately, the only way in which Head Start can better enable a parent to find employment is by providing free baby-sitting services while the parent works. At nearly $7 billion tax dollars, that's one expensive babysitter!

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