Obama visits Yeadon Head Start to announce stricter preschool standards

President Obama visited a Head Start center in Yeadon on Tuesday to announce stricter performance standards for the federal preschool program for children from low-income families, using the occasion to attack congressional Republicans for blocking his education and jobs agendas.

It was the latest step in Obama's "We Can't Wait" barnstorming tour of the country to rev up his reelection campaign by contrasting his willingness to implement policy through executive action with the partisan gridlock of Congress.

Some national polls have shown a slight uptick in Obama's approval rating in the month since he began bashing lawmakers, who have bottled up his proposed $447 billion plan to stimulate the economy.

"If Congress continues to stand only for dysfunction and delay, then I'm going to move ahead without them," Obama said to cheers from an audience of educators and parents packed into the auditorium of the Yeadon Regional Head Start Center.

For the first time, Obama said, the federal government will require local Head Start programs to meet stricter academic and management goals and compete with other programs for continued federal funding.

"If kids aren't learning what they need to learn, then other organizations will be able compete for that grant," Obama said. "We're not just going to put money into programs that don't work."

White House officials estimate as many as one third of low-performing Head Start programs nationwide might lose their funding to new providers under the policy, but they said the Yeadon center is a high-performing program.

Renee Bell, the Head Start director for Delaware County, said she welcomed the president's emphasis on accountability.

"When you have programs of excellence, you have to be open to scrutiny," she said.

But Joseph Bruni, the superintendent of Delaware County's William Penn School District, which includes Yeadon, took issue with the Obama administration's emphasis on competitions for funding. "I feel like I'm in the education Olympics," Bruni quipped.

It was Obama's 14th visit to Pennsylvania, a swing state crucial to his reelection chances, since taking office.

"All the visits in the world won't reverse the damaging policies that he's put in place, not just for Pennsylvania, but for this country," Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, told reporters on a conference call.

Before he spoke, Obama toured a classroom where 16 boys and girls worked with blocks, Legos, toy cars and trucks, and a jigsaw puzzle. At one table, the president pulled up a miniature purple chair and admired one boy's toy fire engine. When another boy, excited, said, "Blah, blah blah," Obama told him, "You sound like a politician."

Kerriann Prinz, a teacher whose classroom Obama visited, said the president didn't leave any child out.

"He made it to every table," she said. "The kids were very excited and impressed, and they kept saying how tall he was."

Contact politics writer Thomas Fitzgerald at 215-854-2718 or tfitzgerald@phillynews.com or @tomfitzgerald on Twitter. Read his blog, "The Big Tent," at www.philly.com/bigtent.