Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions S. 1474

STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS

S. 1474. A bill to amend the Head Start Act to designate up to 200 Head Start centers as Centers of Excellence in Early Childhood, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I introduce today a bill to be considered as part of the legislation reauthorizing Head Start. My bill would create a way for states to help strengthen and coordinate Head Start, but would continue to send federal funds directly to grantees for the 19,000 Head Start centers that serve one million disadvantaged children.

My proposal authorizes the Secretary of Health and Human Services to create a nationwide network of 200 Centers of
Excellence in Early Childhood built around exemplary Head Start programs. These Centers of Excellence would be nominated by Governors. Each Center of Excellence would receive a Federal bonus grant of at least $100,000 in each of 5 years, in addition to its base funding. And each State would receive a grant to establish and fund a State Council in Early Childhood, which would work with the State Head Start collaboration office to showcase the work of exemplary Head Start centers within a state, capture and disseminate best practices, and identify barriers to and opportunities for coordinated service delivery.

The bill would authorize $100 million for those grants for each of the 5 years.

The Centers of Excellence bonus grants will be used for centers:

(1) to work in their community to model the best of what Head Start can do for at-risk children and families, including getting those children ready for school and ready for academic success;
(2) to coordinate all early childhood services in their community;
(3) to offer training and support to all professionals working with at-risk children;
(4) to track these families and ensure seamless continuity of services from prenatal to age 8;
(5) to become models of excellence by all performance measures and be willing to be held accountable for good outcomes for our most disadvantaged children; and
(6) to have the flexibility to serve additional Head Start or early Head Start children or provide more full-day services to better meet the needs of working parents.

Head Start has been one of our country's most successful and popular social programs. That is because it is based upon the principle of equal opportunity, which is at the core of the American character. Americans uniquely believe that each of us has the right to begin at the same starting line and that, if we do, anything is possible for any one of us.

We also understand that some of us need help getting to that starting line. Most Federal funding for social programs is based upon this understanding of equal opportunity.

Head Start began in 1965 to make it more likely that disadvantaged children would successfully arrive at one of the most important of our starting lines, the beginning of school.

Head Start over the years has served hundreds of thousands of our most at risk children. The program has grown and changed. It has been subjected to debates and studies touting its successes and decrying its deficiencies. But Head Start has stood the test of time because it is so very important.

We have made great progress in what we know about the early growth and development of young children since Head Start began in 1965. At that time very few professionals had studied early childhood education. Even fewer had designed programs specifically for children in poverty.

The origins of Head Start had its roots in an understanding that success for these children was not only about education. The program was designed to be certain these children were healthy, got their immunizations, were fed hot meals, and, of crucial importance that their parents were deeply involved in the program.

From the beginning comprehensive services and parent and community involvement were essential parts of good Head Start programs. And that is still true today. In the early days, teacher training and curriculum were seen as less important. But we now know a great deal more about brain development and how children learn from birth.

Today young children are expected to learn more and be able to do more in order to succeed in school. Public schools offer kindergarten and 40 states now offer early childhood programs.

In addition to the $7 billion spent each year on federal Head Start programs, there are 69 other federal and state programs costing $18 billion a year. The greatest increases have come in private spending as parents seek early childhood development services for their own children.

As Congress approached the 5-year reauthorization of Head Start, President Bush challenged Congress to make a "good Head Start program excellent." The President suggested four objectives for strengthening Head Start:

(1) Improve school readiness by focusing more attention on specific cognitive development;
(2) Increase accountability;
(3) Improve coordination with other programs that serve young children, including public and private schools.
(4) Increase state involvement in strengthening Head Start by transferring federal funding for Head Start to states, with certain criteria and restrictions.

The House of Representatives completed work last week on the reauthorization bill. It is called the School Readiness Act.
It made significant progress toward the President's first three objectives: school readiness, accountability, and coordination.

(1) On school readiness, the bill would ensure a greater number of Head Start teachers are adequately trained.
(2) On accountability, the triennial reviews are strengthened by adding unscheduled visits, and chronic underachievers would be subject to a more aggressive review.
(3) On coordination, the bill expands the requirements for the State Head Start Collaboration Offices to coordination.

As for the idea of letting states administer Head Start, the House created a pilot program that would allow eight states to take over Head Start as long as they maintain or improve the level of services.

As the Senate begins its consideration of Head Start, I believe there is consensus about the need to improve school readiness, accountability, and coordination of programs—but no consensus on how to involve the states more actively.

I believe that states should be more involved with Head Start. States have primary responsibility for setting standards for and funding public education. A child who arrives at school too far behind the starting line may never catch up. In addition, the state is in the best position to help coordinate the variety of public and private programs that have grown up since
Head Start began.

But the need to involve states does not necessarily mean sending federal dollars first to states and then to Head Start centers. As important as the state is, education and caring for children is primarily local—a community and family responsibility. I believe that in education and in child care local solutions work best.

While Head Start centers are uneven in performance, they have generally excelled in two areas critical to success in caring for and educating children—developing community support and encouraging parental involvement. I do not believe that it would be wise—at least at this stage of the Head Start program—to risk interrupting the strong community support and parental involvement in the 19,000 Head Start centers by transferring funding to the states. There are other and better ways to meet this objective.

That is why I believe creating a nationwide network of 200 Head Start Centers of Excellence in Early Childhood is the right step for the next 5 years. Governors would nominate 149 of these centers. Governors would create or designate a State Council for Early Childhood. Governors could then use these Centers of Excellence and the State Council to encourage other centers to adopt best practices and to improve coordination of programs.

At the federal level additional funds will be made available—$100 million is authorized—for research on the effectiveness of these Centers of Excellence as a strategy for coordination of all early childhood federal and state programs and ensure school success for at-risk children.

In addition, I would hope the President would convene an annual conference of these Centers of Excellence and State Councils to highlight their successes. After four years, we would learn from these activities how state involvement in Head Start might be increased in the next 5-year authorization.

Alex Haley, the author of Roots lived by these six words, "Find the good and praise it." For me that was an invaluable lesson. My mother taught me another invaluable lesson—the importance of preschool education. When I was growing up, she ran a kindergarten in a converted garage in our backyard in Maryville, Tennessee. She helped our community appreciate the value of a good preschool program. I have remembered both lessons in trying to fashion this proposal to bring out the best in Head Start.

The work that the House of Representatives has done on readiness, accountability and coordination—plus the adoption of this proposal for 200 Centers of Excellence in Early Childhood should provide a strong basis for our Head Start reauthorization bill.

The president would have challenged the Congress to improve Head Start in four major respects—readiness accountability, coordination, and state involvement—and he will be able to sign legislation that will do just that.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the RECORD a one-page summary of my bill and a copy of the bill itself.