Letters: A good (Head) Start

AS A FORMER TEACHER, Dom Giordano should recognize that Head Start plays a powerful role in reducing the achievement gap between poor and middle-income children. As a journalist, he should recognize his role is to help readers sort fact from fiction, instead of recycling an old canard about the effectiveness of Head Start in his op-ed column of July 26.

Forty-five years of evidence amply demonstrates that Head Start is one of the most cost-effective strategies to improve poor children's chances of succeeding in school and later in life.

By investing in Head Start now, taxpayers avoid the more substantial costs of special education, remediation, juvenile justice and welfare in the future. But Head Start is no substitute for consistent funding that ensures children receive a good education from kindergarten through 12th grade. Without such support, the gains children make in preschool fade by the middle grades.

Why is Giordano repeating an old canard about Head Start now?

One suspects it helps justify deep cuts to proven education, health and human service programs that will result if Congress imposes caps on discretionary spending as part of negotiations over raising the debt ceiling.

Congress should follow the money on this one - the money saved by Head Start and other quality early childhood education programs - and sustain these investments in the 2012 budget.

Christie Balka

Director

Child Care and Budget Policy

Public Citizens for Children and Youth

Philadelphia