Head Start Doesn't Work

COMMENTARY | Head Start, a Johnson era program, was like all liberal social welfare programs started with great intentions. Head Start is meant to provide social, health, and educational services for children on poverty in order to enhance their academic achievement.

There is only one problem. According to the American Interest, a report from President Obama's Department of Health and Human Services, which funds the $8 billion a year program, has concluded that it is an utter failure.

Joe Klein, no conservative, writes about the report, the Head Start Impact study, in Time Magazine. It seems that any effect Head Start has on children within the program vanish after the first grade. From then on they perform about the same as children of similar backgrounds and family incomes who were not in the program.

The bureaucrats at the Department of HHS sat on the report for several years, apparently attempting to rerun the data to get different results. They couldn't.

The reasonable response to proof that an expensive social welfare program is a total waste of money would be to shut it down entirely. In an era of trillion dollar deficits, spending $8 billion a year to no positive effect would seem to be the height of folly. The cost of Head Start may be a drop in the bucket, but it is a start.

Liberal defenders of Head Start, such as Cornelia Grumman of the First Five Years Fund, simply deny the conclusions of the Head Start Impact study and urge that the program be continued, perhaps with some unspecified reforms.

The problem is how good intentions often trump results when it comes to social welfare programs. Who can be against hiring battalions of dedicated teachers and spending billions of dollars a year to help poor children learn? Of course the fact that the program does not help poor children learn anything does not enter into it. It is the intentions that matter, not the results.

But in the current fiscal environment, paying billions of dollars a year to fund good intentions is a pretty expensive proposition. Piling up debt upon debt is not doing any of these kids a favor. They will suffer the consequences when they grow up, long after the well intentioned bureaucrats are gone.

Sources: Office of Head Start, United States Department of Health and Human Services

Head Start A 50 Year Flop? Say It Ain't So, Joe, Walter Russel Mead, American Interest, Jan 12. 2012

Time to Ax Public Programs That Don't Yield Results, Joe Klein, Time Magazine, July 7, 2011

In Defense of Head Start, Cornelia Grumman, First Five Year Fund, Sept 21, 2011