Will We Blame Politics for Killing Head Start?

Hearing the National Public Radio (NPR) segment "How Politics Killed Universal Child Care in the 1970s," and following the avid dissemination of this tragic story by my colleagues in the civil society sector, made me wonder who might, decades from now, be blamed for killing Head Start? Kill Head Start, the life advantage that some of the most disadvantaged children and families get, and over 30 million have gotten already? Who would do that?

In addition to elements and groups who have historically opposed the idea of providing opportunity to the families with most economic, racial, and developmental barriers to success, we are surprised to find that some of our colleagues in the Washington policy/advocacy civil society world are imagining that the nation's most vulnerable children and families could be better served by individual states' efforts at universal early learning. Have they forgotten the history of why institutions in local communities (churches, schools, community action agencies, reservations, and migrant programs) were given direct grants to provide the window of opportunity to children who would have been excluded from it on the basis of their race or ethnic identity in some states? Do they not know that Mayors and County Commissioners (of both parties) rely on their Head Start programs to provide the Head Start advantage through their comprehensive whole-child, whole-family two-generation approaches?

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