NAEYC Update & Alert June 7, 2005

HOUSE AND SENATE COMMITTEES MOVE HEAD START BILLS

The House Committee on Education & the Workforce (H.R. 2123) and the Senate HELP Committee (S. 1107) have marked up their respective versions of the reauthorization of the Head Start Act. Both bills have positive provisions, such as: enhancing state and local coordination with other early childhood programs and services; increasing the Early Head Start set-aside, which would be dependent on increasing overall funding; expanding opportunities for cross-sector training and technical assistance; and requiring a panel of independent experts under the National Academy of Sciences to review and give guidance on appropriate outcomes and assessments and their uses with young children, including the Head Start National Reporting System test. Both Committee-reported bills maintain the current federal-local structure of Head Start. The Senate bill would increase eligibility for Head Start from 100% of the federal poverty line to 130%, although serving more families that meet this higher eligibility would require a significant increase in funds.

NEXT STEPS: Now the House and Senate bills will move to the floor for debate and a vote. Both the House and Senate have expressed their desire to debate the bills on the floor before the August Congressional recess. There is no scheduled date for the House or the Senate to take up the bill at this time. NAEYC and other organizations working together on the reauthorization will continue to be working with House and Senate members to improve and strengthen the provisions in the respective bills before they go to the floor.

Below are some of the major changes to the current law in the House and Senate bills:

Teacher Qualifications:
House bill requires 50% of Head Start teachers nationally to have a Bachelor's degree in early childhood or a related field by 2010. In contrast, the Senate bill requires 50% of teachers in each Head Start center to have a Bachelor's degree by 2011; however, if the state's prekindergarten program requires teachers to have a Bachelor's and teacher certification or other credentials higher than a Bachelor's degree, then all of the teachers in each Head Start center must meet those standards by 2011. Although the Senate bill increases the quality set aside, that provision also depends on the overall Head Start funding increase. While there is widespread support for increasing the teacher qualifications, there is great concern that there are no additional funds targeted in either bill for scholarships, release time, substitute teachers, or higher compensation to meet this mandate.

Alignment of Services & Curriculum
Both the House and Senate bills attempt to align services and curricula to standards, but the current language is problematic. The House and Senate bills, however, require curricula and services to be aligned to state K-12 academic content standards or only state early learning standards. Currently, curricula in Head Start programs must be aligned to the Head Start Child Outcomes Framework and services must be aligned with the Head Start Program Performance Standards. The language in the House bill confuses horizontal alignment (curricula and services aligned to the age-appropriate standards) with vertical alignment (forming a continuum of expectations and outcomes from birth through high school grades). In the Senate bill, "services" must be aligned to state early learning standards. If the language is not modified, it could have the unintended negative consequence of pushing down to preschoolers the curricula aligned to standards for older children, or potentially narrowing services and instructional areas. Early learning standards are relatively new in many states, and in several states, they do not cover all of the areas of child development and education that are included in the Head Start Child Outcomes Framework. Thus, it is critical that the legislation state that the services, curricula, and assessments in Head Start programs be aligned to the Head Start Child Outcomes Framework and the Head Start Program Performance Standards, and to compatible state early learning standards as appropriate. Both bills include state early learning councils with a wide range of stakeholders, and that body would be the appropriate one to address the vertical alignment of standards for children from birth through elementary and secondary grades.

Child Outcomes and Assessments
The Senate bill, like last year's version, provides multiple pages of Congressionally-determined child outcomes for Head Start, which essentially rewrites the Head Start Child Outcomes Framework. Both bills would require an independent panel of experts under the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to review and provide guidance on appropriate child outcomes and assessments, including the Head Start National Reporting System (NRS). The Senate bill would delay the implementation of its new, Congressionally-defined outcomes pending the review by the NAS panel. The House bill, but not the Senate bill, would limit the uses of the Head Start National Reporting System test (NRS); neither bill would suspend the implementation of the NRS during the NAS panel's review. A recent report by the Government Accountability Office found that the Head Start NRS has serious flaws in terms of its validity and reliability, particularly with the Spanish version, and that there is insufficient clarity regarding its purpose and usefulness. The report is available at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05343.pdf

Flexibility
Both bills address the situation when programs have chronic underenrollment. As state prekindergarten programs grow, enrollment in Head Start programs of four-year olds could see reductions. Also, as more families work, their income may be slightly above the federal poverty line yet they remain very low income and their children would benefit from the comprehensive services of Head Start. The bills take different approaches to deal with these situations. The House bill would allow Head Start programs in good standing that have conducted community outreach to preschoolers to use the recaptured funds to serve babies and toddlers, so long as they meet the Early Head Start requirements. The Senate bill takes another tack. The Senate bill also contains a provision that could result in shifting the recaptured funds from one state to another state, under the Secretary's discretion, if there are no other slots for eligible children available elsewhere in the state.

Training and technical assistance
Unfortunately, both bills would put a ceiling of 2% on training and technical assistance funding. Current law allows "at least 2%" of funds for these purposes. As more and more is demanded of Head Start programs and positive outcomes for children, it is detrimental to limit the funding for training and technical assistance.Recompetition
Both bills allow more flexibility for determining whether a program shall be recompeted. The Senate has a stronger definition for what constitutes a deficient program. The House bill looks at 19 characteristics.

RESOURCES

For more guidance and information on standards, curricula, and assessments, please read NAEYC's Position Statements, jointly developed with and approved by the National Association of Early Childhood Specialists in State Departments of Education, on Early Learning Standards at http://www.naeyc.org/about/positions/pdf/position_statement.pdf and Early Childhood Curriculum, Assessment & Program Evaluation at http://www.naeyc.org/about/positions/pdf/CAPEexpand.pdf

For more information on each state's early learning standards, see the table by the Council of Chief State School Officers at http://www.ccsso.org/content/PDFs/ECstandards.pdf

A report by Sharon Lynn Kagan and Catherine Scott-Little at http://www.serve.org/_downloads/publications/insidecontentfr.pdf (Executive Summary at http://www.serve.org/_downloads/publications/insidecontentes.pdf) gives and overview and recommendations for state early learning standards