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Sunday, June 12, 2005

Head Start's Success With N.M. Children May Offer Pointers for New State Program

By Leann Holt
Journal Staff Writer
    Head Start, which has been teaching preschoolers in New Mexico for 39 years, may have some lessons for state officials who plan to make similar services available to all 4-year-olds.
    Lesson 1: Children who get preschool and other services from Head Start— 7,500 impoverished 3- and 4-year-olds in New Mexico— do better in school than their low-income peers who don't attend.
    Lesson 2: Head Start children— in large part because of poverty— still lag significantly behind higher-income children in kindergarten and higher grades, although the gap narrows in later grades.
    Lesson 3: The better the program, the more the gap narrows.
    Lesson 4: Head Start's services that go beyond preschool lessons— things like family education, health care, diagnostic services and meals— are a large part of its success.
    The bottom line is that even with its limitations, Head Start is the best model available for educating poor preschoolers, experts say.
    "It's the gold standard in the field," said Miriam Calderon, education policy analyst for the National Council of La Raza.
    Head Start programs in New Mexico cost $62 million a year, with 80 percent of the bill paid by the federal government.
    A new state preschool program will educate about 1,500 needy 4-year-olds during the next school year at a cost of $5 million.
    Calderon said the state should especially pay attention to the emphasis Head Start places on parental involvement and family education.
    State programs will operate three hours a day with no funding available for family services. Some child care providers in the state say lack of family involvement could cause new pre-k programs to falter.
    Gilbert Gallegos, a spokesman for Gov. Bill Richardson, said state standards will require providers to offer access to auxiliary services.
    "We agree that access to comprehensive services is ideal for a successful pre-k program, and we think those types of services will be available," Gallegos said. "At the same time, we don't want to duplicate services that are already available in communities."
   
Closing the gap
    After producing minimal results in the '80s and '90s, Albuquerque Head Start programs began making a dent in closing the achievement gap when federal mandates increased program quality and raised teacher standards, said Richard Boyle, a University of New Mexico researcher. For the past five years, Boyle has tracked Head Start students in Albuquerque.
    In 2000, Head Start children scored 8 percent below Albuquerque Public Schools average kindergarten scores in reading readiness. In 2004, less than 3 percent fell below, Boyle research shows.
    Research from the Civitan International Research Center and the University of California in 2003 shows that Head Start students do better in kindergarten than peers who did not attend. Head Start students entering kindergarten scored about 8 percent higher on literacy and pre-math tests than low-income non-attendees.
    Moreover, those gains appear to continue and increase through the upper grades.
    Local data indicating how children from Boyle's 2000 study have fared in later grades will be available this fall.
    "We know from a large amount of research that kids in poverty under-perform," Boyle said. "Head Start is only a step in the huge task of making up background differences. It looks like that's happening in Albuquerque."
    Children who attend Head Start are among the poorest in the nation. A family of four must have an annual income of less than $18,000 to qualify for the free program. About 25 percent of Head Start children nationally don't speak English as their first language when they start preschool.
    Head Start provides half- and full-day preschool, diagnostic services, access to health care and meals for 1 million children ages 3 and 4. The program's comprehensive approach involves students' families through parenting and education classes and home visits. Head Start also assists parents with employment and housing problems.
    "You have to start with all aspects of the family to deal with the whole child," said Cynthia Allen, who has run Head Start programs in Lordsburg for 20 years.
    "If the state really wants us to provide quality services, we need to see more money."
   
Financial needs
    Head Start programs, more than half of which are full-day, cost an average of $8,340 per child.
    For the new pre-k initiative, the state will spend $2,279 per child for a three-hour program.
    Head Start programs will continue to operate after state preschool programs are implemented.
    Debra Baca of Youth Development Inc., the organization that runs Albuquerque's Head Start programs, said YDI will supplement state preschool monies in order to provide auxiliary services if it is awarded a state preschool contract.
    "Unless we look comprehensively at families in poverty, many of the things we do in the classroom won't come to fruition," Baca said.
    "A child can't learn if they're in pain or hungry or have vision problems. Sometimes, they haven't slept because something is going on in their neighborhood. If we want children to be successful, we need families to be successful."
    Many of the children enrolled in the state preschool program will not be as impoverished as Head Start children. In its first year, the state program will target families with incomes of $35,000 or less.
    Boyle's research shows that children in that income bracket who don't attend preschool still struggle. They are retained in kindergarten and first and second grades at higher rates than Head Start students, he said.
    Richardson has said preschool will eventually be available to all 4-year-olds, but studies show that lower-income children benefit more than higher-income children.
    "Most high-income children would probably be fine in kindergarten without preschool because they've already had advantages," Boyle said. "And if you can pay, high-quality programs are already there."
   
Learning through play
    For children, the business of learning looks easy. It often simply means play.
    That's what four 5-year-olds were busy doing on the last day of school at an Albuquerque Head Start recently.
    Dressed up as a firefighter and a well-dressed woman, two of the children were pretending to prepare dinner for their playmates.
    They argued over the plastic food in the toy refrigerator.
    They talked about the dishes they were preparing, moving comfortably between English and Spanish.
    One child proudly displayed his knowledge of numbers by dialing his telephone number on a pretend telephone.
    And they talked about kindergarten next year, with a little anxiousness creeping in among conversations about SpongeBob SquarePants backpacks.
    It may just be child's play, but experts say that's what produces some of Head Start's longest-lasting benefits: social and emotional learning.
    "The main contribution of Head Start goes beyond test scores," Boyle said. "It helps kids learn to function in school, reducing the need for special education."
    Researcher Bob Kirkwood agrees.
    "When you look at general kindergarten readiness, there's a lot more lasting value on the social-emotional side."
   
New Mexico's Head Start
    WHAT IT DOES: Provides preschool and other programs to impoverished 3- and 4-year-olds
    HOW LONG: 39 years
    NUMBER ENROLLED: 7,500
    ANNUAL COST: $62 million, 80 percent federal, 20 percent from community donations, grants and parent volunteers
    DOES IT WORK?: There is still a gap between Head Start students and overall students because of their lower income. But the gap is closing. A study showed that in 2000, Head Start kindergartners were 8 percent behind all APS kindergartners in reading readiness. That gap closed to 3 percent in 2004.