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A DREAM

For 6 months now I've been working on a project with the Region IV Head Start Association's Executive Director, Myra Ingram.  Talk about inspiring!  I've visited Head Start classrooms, talked with parents and teachers and children and today we have a chance to make a bigger dream real.

Edward Zigler is a developmental scientist and a pioneer and leader in the field of applied developmental psychology.  He served on the committee that planned Head Start and was the federal official responsible for the program during the Nixon administration.  Sally J. Styfco is a writer and social policy analyst specializing in issues pertaining to children and families.  Together they wrote, The Hidden History Of Head Start, which looks at this remarkable social program that has served 25 million children and their families since it was established 44 years ago.  We get an insider’s view of the program’s decades of services and an idea of what the future may hold.  In the excerpt below we learn about one of the pitfalls of such a far-reaching social program.

Why had Head Start fallen into such a sorry state between its birth in 1965 and 1970? Two insiders very close to Head Start in the early days, Carolyn Harmon and Ed Hanley (1997), argue that the culprit was an inadequate management system. Head Start employed a “recipient-participant model,” whereas most federal programs employed the “classical accountability model” of management. The classical model emphasizes uniform program design and delivery systems, a structure that lends itself to standard techniques of evaluating success. In the recipient-participant model, the only accountability to the federal government is the satisfaction of grantees and the recipients of the services. As long as local Head Start administrators and participants were satisfied, the program had demonstrated accountability. Harmon and Hanley explain that this model was a barrier to efforts to standardize practices across Head Start centers. They also point out the inevitability of introducing a concrete form of program accountability to justify continued federal support from the Office of Management and Budget and even the friendliest Congress…

Having performance standards and some mechanisms to be sure they were being followed were only the first steps in implementing a new model of accountability. With roots in Community Action, Head Start could not easily give up its federal-to-local management design. Unquestionably there is much stronger financial oversight in the accountability model, where funds go from the federal governments to the states. Each state then gives the money to local sites and is responsible for monitoring them. The states are monitored by the feds. Head Start funds instead go directly from the federal government to local grantees. Oversight of the grantees is the responsibility of the 10 regional offices. However, as originally conceptualized these regional offices were not viewed as watchdogs but as partners with the local sites, helping them to solve problems and function smoothly.

They were not the only federal officials who appeared too lenient with their flock. A short time into my stewardship of Head Start, a financial problem was brought to my attention from the regional office level that made me furious. A local Head Start director (who happened to be a black minister) had been given funds to purchase limber to renovate his Head Start center. Instead he appropriated the lumber and built a house for himself. I had to decide what the Head Start Bureau’s reaction to this malfeasance would be. In the normal world, when thievery takes place the police are called, and the criminal justice system runs its course. I was very angry and wanted to purse the most severe course of