The Head Start program is a beneficial one that helps youth overcome educational setbacks. In order for one to understand the benefits of the program one must know what its goals are, how its goals continue to be accomplished, what specific setbacks are remedied from it and how others feel about it.
Head Start is a comprehensive child development program that has an overall goal to prepare children from low-income families for school (The Administration For Children And Families, 2002). To prepare a child for school the program has the goal of meeting educational, health, social service, and parental needs. “Head Start also wants to help bring about a greater degree of social competence in these children (Mallory and Goldsmith,
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The social services aspect of needs is met after the needs are identified. The family would be eligible for community outreach programs, referrals, recruitment and enrollment of other children, and emergency assistance and or crisis intervention (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2002).
Although the Head Start program focuses on preparing the children for school it does offer outreach and training activities to assist parents with understanding their child’s development and their overall parenting skills (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2001). Parental needs are met when parents receive classes or workshops that educate them on their child’s development allowing parents to create activities for their child at home as well as when they are in Head Start (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2002).
“The program also encourages parents to: volunteer in the classroom, participate in home visits by the teacher at least twice a year, enroll in job training programs, literacy programs, or other adult education programs, serve on policy making bodies, apply to work in the program, and serve in state, regional, or national Head Start Associations (Mallory and Goldsmith, 2002).”
Head Start has already accomplished the goal of affecting services available for low-income families and children. This is being accomplished due to better resource and referral services (Blank, 2002). 20,302,000 children have been enrolled in the
The Head Start Program contributes to the successful learning of children in a major way. Head Start promotes healthy prenatal out comes, enhances the development of infants and toddlers, and promotes healthy family functioning. The children are giving a better chance to succeed in school and life. Therefore, the rate of human learning and development is in the early years.
Head Start is a federally funded, education development program that was created in 1965. The program provides education and services for eligible children from low-income families. Head Start 's philosophy focuses on the development of social-emotional, physical and mental health, nutrition, and working with families and the community and stated “low-income people should help plan and run their own programs” (p. 41-42). Head Start has truly expanded their resources over the years by providing a full school year for ages 3-6 years old and offering services such as health screenings, referrals, and social services (p. 42). Most importantly, each and every Head Start program must follow the federal Head Start Program Performace Standards that address all areas of development (p. 42). The program is truly committed to support low-income families and creating an education system that supports all aspects of the child.
What are the goals of Early Head Start? The goals or priorities of this is to provide safe and developmentally enriching caregiving. To support parent, mother and father, in the role as primary caregivers. The teaching of the children, and family in meeting personal goals. Being able to successfully achieve self sufficiency across a wide variety of domains. Communities being mobilized to provide proper resources and environment that is necessary. But also, to ensure the provision of high quality responsive services for the family. The idea of this topic, is to show the types of things that should be looked for when choosing a child care center. When choosing a child care center for whom it may involve it should be important to look for things like the quality of care, and the type of care and learning techniques that will be involved, while the child is there.
Research for Head Start has found many lasting benefits for learning and educational achievement for its attendees. Including school progress and educational attainment, social behavior, and reduction of delinquency and crime that is usually found within disadvantaged families. Head Start addresses all the guidelines within the Family Impact checklist on providing all adequate services to low income families. As mentioned above, under Family Support and Responsibilities, Head Start is a federally funded program, which also receives donations and grants. Therefore, the federal government must increase funding to the Head Start program so children from low-income families, get early education services to help them succeed in school. Since Head Start programs have minimal funding there are not enough spots available to include every child in need of the services provided by this program, especially within certain regions.
This is to ensure that capable providers who are able to assist them are serving children and families. The administration supports a newly designed technical assistance program that brings both current and best practice evidence –informed practices for local programs. They also support the local programs working with their local school systems to be educated on the skills that children will need and the gains they will need to achieve by kindergarten in order to achieve a smooth transition into formal schooling. According to the Whitehouse, “We must support families, communities, and schools working in partnership to deliver services and supports that address the full range of needs of Hispanic students” (2011). Through early childhood education programs such as Head Starts, services are not just offered at the school programs but in the home as well. The administration believes that some of the funding that is allocated to these programs should be used in recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers this includes Latino teachers who can overcome the language barrier and help achieve the language gap. To continue these ongoing resolutions, congress recently enacted programs that support various neighborhoods. The implementation of Promise Neighborhoods projects is in the testing stage right now, where
The research finds that participants with the lowest initial skills are the most beneficial from public Head Start programs. But this study also states that Head Start program has lots of limitation. At the beginning of this research paper, the author introduces the history and definition of Head Start program and its main purpose. He states, “The federal Head Start program is the largest early childhood education initiative in the United States, giving matching grants to preschool centers that provide parent training, early education, and health services to poor children and their families” (Healy, 2015, para. 1). As the author emphasis, the Head Start program is not suitable for all children but only offers to children from the low-income families. There are still many families left who need the public
For the first twenty years of its existence, Head Start was an intensive summer program (Hevesi, 2010). During an eight week period, throughout June and July, four and five year olds, from low income families, were taught fundamental math and reading skills that would prepare them for kindergarten in the fall (Hevesi, 2010). Due to the overwhelming success of the summer program, in 1982 Head Start was expanded to become a
Head Start and Early Head Start are comprehensive child development programs which serve children from birth to age five, pregnant woman and their extended families. They are child-focused programs that have the overall goal of increasing the school readiness of young children in low-income families. . These programs try to prepare young children intellectually, socially, emotionally and physically for their future educational and social endeavors. ( U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2002).. The programs prepare the parent(s) to be supportive in the endeavor. Head Start has the philosophy that parents are a child's first and most influential teacher. The Head Start program is beneficial to early learning.
In 1964, the Economic Opportunity Act transpired which included quite a lot of organizations like Job Corp, Vista, and Project Head Start. The top organization listed above is Project Head Start created in the year 1965. The plan is to help children ages three to five years old of low income families. The goal and attention remains to introduce these young kids to an early start to education, to help with thinking skills, as well as academic skills, good nutrition, health services, and parent involvement to make them successful in the future. The program not only helps children but aids in helping the family as a whole. For example, a number of parents are taught the English language; others learn to read. Head Start also assists family members
Head Start programs came about in 1964; when President Johnson declared a “war on poverty.” His idea was you must break the cycle of poverty to win the war. The program’s idea was to help break the cycle of poverty by, providing the children of low-income families the ability to meet the emotional, social, health, nutrition, and mental needs. The Parents also are offered resources in higher education, paying utilities, and other needs that are essential to succeed. According to The Basic Head Start Facts Sheet 2011, Head Start is the nation’s first national early education and early childcare program. Since then over thirty-two million children have had assistance with the program; therefore, has caused an increase of twenty-eight percent in High School Graduations (Smith 8). Head Starts main goal is to lower the achievement gap between lower-class and middle-class children.
The Head Start program offers children a fruitful education, in which they are given the opportunity to thrive. The children receive “free medical and
She declares which the chance of failure for these children is at high risk. Currie argues “those actually enrolled in Head Start are likely to face the most severe problems and are least likely to do well in the future” (683). In defending the needs of these children, it is crucial to provide a preschool program such as Head Start. This is not only an academic resource, but it focuses on the whole child; which means it provides these underprivileged children with opportunities such as: nutrition, health, education, and builds social skills that they otherwise do not have access to.
Head Start is a program of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). The program offers early childhood education with parent involvement services in low-socioeconomic cities. Head start promotes children’s socio-economic development through guiding children as they begin to acquire trust, freedom, willpower, and respect. Kyunghee Lee researched Head Start’s impact on children who have experienced violence or neighborhood crime.
The lack of attention given to an individual child’s needs can be observed in the structuring of the classroom at Head Start. The program places
According to the Administration for Children and Families (2010), “Head Start is a national program that promotes school readiness by enhancing the social and cognitive development of children through the provision of educational, health, nutritional, social and other services to enrolled children and families” (para. 3). Based on this mission subject, it is possible to subject Head Start to a program evaluation based on the following questions: (a) Is Head Start provisioning educational, health, nutritional, social and other services to enrolled children and families? (b) Is the provisioning of educational, health, nutritional, social and other services leading to an enhancement of the social and cognitive development of children? (c) Is the social and cognitive development of children a social good for which taxpayers should pay $7 billion a year? These questions will be addressed, both directly and indirectly, later in this overview.