TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF THE HON. JOHN L. MICA, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA *

STATEMENT OF THE HON. LORETTA SANCHEZ, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA *

STATEMENT OF DR. CARLOTTA JOYNER, DIRECTOR, EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT ISSUES, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE *

STATEMENT OF DR. EDWARD ZIGLER, DIRECTOR, YALE BUSH CENTER IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL POLICY, YALE UNIVERSITY *

STATEMENT OF DR. CATHERINE SNOW, CHAIR, HUMAN DEVELOPMENT AND PSYCHOLOGY, HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION *

STATEMENT OF BONNIE FREEMAN, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, NATIONAL CENTER FOR FAMILY LITERACY, LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY *

STATEMENT OF DR. WADE HORN, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL FATHERHOOD INITIATIVE, GAITHERSBURG, MARYLAND *

STATEMENT OF JACKIE DOLLAR, DIRECTOR, NAPA-SOLANO HEAD START, NAPA, CALIFORNIA *

STATEMENT OF YOLIE FLORES AGUILAR, PRESIDENT, LOS ANGELES COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION, DOWNEY, CALIFORNIA, ACCOMPANIED BY ANDREW KENNEDY, DIRECTOR, LACOE'S HEAD START-STATE PRESCHOOL DIVISION *

APPENDIX A -- WRITTEN STATEMENT OF THE HON. JOHN L. MICA, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA *

APPENDIX B -- WRITTEN STATEMENT OF THE HON. LORETTA SANCHEZ, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA *

APPENDIX C -- WRITTEN STATEMENT OF THE HON. MATTHEW G. MARTINEZ, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA *

APPENDIX D -- INFORMATION REGARDING HEAD START PROVIDED BY CONGRESSMAN MICA *

APPENDIX E -- WRITTEN STATEMENT OF DR. CARLOTTA JOYNER, DIRECTOR, EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT ISSUES, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE

*

June 9, 1998

Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Youth and Families

Committee on Education and the Workforce

Washington, DC

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:07 A.M., in Room 2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Frank Riggs [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.

Present: Representatives Riggs, Martinez, Roemer, Scott, and Kucinich.

Staff Present: Denzel McGuire, Professional Staff Member; Richard Stombres, Legislative Assistant; June Harris, Minority Education Coordinator; Alex Nock, Minority Professional Staff Member; and Marci Philips, Minority Professional Staff Member.

Chairman Riggs. Good morning. I call to order this hearing on the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Youth and Families to address a very important subject, and that is the reauthorization of the Federal Head Start program.

As our two colleagues who are seated at the witness table know, it is very customary to begin hearings with opening statements by the Chairman and ranking member of the Subcommittee. But I just conferred with my good friend and the ranking member of the Subcommittee, Congressman Martinez, and we decided that we would hold our opening statements until the next panel of witnesses so that we could go right to our colleagues, because we know our colleagues have very busy schedules as well.

For our first panel, it is our privilege to welcome Representative John Mica from the Seventh District of Florida and Representative Loretta Sanchez from the 46th district of and it says here the "Great State of California," and you will certainly get no argument from the Chairman and ranking member.

John and Loretta, thank you for being here. We have looked forward with a great deal of interest to your ideas, thoughts, and suggestions regarding the reauthorization of Head Start; and with that, I will turn to Congressman John Mica for his testimony. Please proceed, John.

Mr. Mica. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I am back from the smoky State of Florida, the smoky Seventh District. And you get that in California, too, from time to time.

Ms. Sanchez. No way.

Chairman Riggs. It is called smog in California.

Mr. Mica. We will be drowning in water soon, so I guess we all have to contend with Mother Nature. But I am pleased to be here this morning to testify on an issue of great importance to me personally and, I know, to this Committee.

Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, I am pleased today to have an opportunity to testify on how we can work together to improve Head Start. Let me say at the outset that I have been a strong supporter of the Head Start concept and unequivocally believe that we can make no greater investment than to intervene early in the lives of our disadvantaged children. If we do not extend that effort and make resources available, we will pay a much larger price in social programs, public assistance and in our criminal justice system. We can produce poets, professionals, and productive public citizens or public charges and prisoners. I think the choice is ours.

The reason I am here today is because I believe Head Start has strayed from its original mission. I believe it was, in fact, established to give disadvantaged children a head start, a leg up, an exposure to experiences they had been deprived of, and to enrich their lives and abilities so that they could better compete in our schools and function in their lives. I am afraid that, while well intended, what we have done instead, in certain instances, is to build an inflexible, costly, and sometimes unresponsive bureaucracy that has lost both the sight and the purpose of its original mission.

Let me provide as an example one of the Head Start programs in central Florida that serves two of my counties. The program services approximately 478 students. Just the local cost per student is $6,165 per year. By contrast, our best private preschool program costs on average $2,265 less. My largest parochial preschool program has 1,118 pre-K students, with one superintendent and one aide, and costs less than half as much annually for a much more extensive and comprehensive program.

The Head Start program does not have a single State certified teacher in the classroom. We have 25 teaching positions and 25 teacher assistants. These so-called teachers and teaching assistants earn salaries in this range, from $8,000 to $17,000, and I have all of the latest figures here for the Committee.

We also have, as mandated under the morass of Federal Head Start regulations, a small army of Federal employees. Call them what you will, they are in charge of administrating or in some way being part of the bureaucracy to oversee this program. We fund around 22 positions, with salaries ranging on average from $40,000 to $80,000. And what is sad is that not only does this Head Start program cost twice as much, it does not give what I believe is a real head start to our disadvantaged children.

What are some of the problems with our Head Start program? Head Start is often turned into a minority grouping and minority employment program. Children fail to get positive exposure to language, cultural and educational experiences. That was the intent of Head Start in the beginning; Head Start was intended to lift children from a cultural and educational disadvantaged position, not to extend, in fact, the disadvantaged status. Our least advantaged children should be afforded the best teaching skills. Instead, what we have created is a subclass of glorified babysitters to influence children at this most critical educational and developmental stage.

Another problem relates to smaller service area programs, such as the one I have just described in our community. Inflexible Federal Head Start regulations and the mass of administrative, so-called "educational bureaucracy" causes some programs like ours to spend a fortune on miscellaneous, well-sounding and well-intentioned positions that have little impact on the children we set out to give a head start.

Some of this mass of overhead can be absorbed in maybe some of the larger systems, like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, but our community and many others should be allowed more flexibility or waivers to provide cost- and program-effective Head Start assistance.

I did not come here today to criticize Head Start with you, rather to see if we could get it back on its original mission, to enhance programs and expand the opportunity to many more children. Today, I plead with this Committee to explore several alternatives to the current Head Start program requirements:

First, consider a limited voucher program, where parents could place their children in preapproved preschool programs. Local school boards would certify area programs eligible to participate.

A second alternative would be charter Head Start programs. General qualifying guidelines could be established, as they are with charter schools, but these Head Start programs would operate without the morass of federally required bureaucracy and regulations.

A third proposal would be to block grant an amount to school boards or other qualifying institutions of higher learning in order to establish local programs, sans that is minus all of the current federally required mandates. Universities and colleges, particularly those with education and postgraduate teaching programs, should be brought into this process. Disadvantaged children in Head Start programs should have access to the highest level of teaching skills and educational talent rather than a forced grouping with mediocre attendant monitoring.

I believe you have one of the most important tasks for reshaping the lives of thousands of our most needy and disadvantaged children. While every program could use more money as a "Band-Aid" solution to its problems, here is a true opportunity to enhance and expand a program simply by providing a little bit more flexibility and imagination.

Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, I thank you for this time and look forward to working with you as we work together to improve Head Start. Thank you.

Chairman Riggs. Thank you Representative Mica, particularly for introducing some creativity and imagination at the outset of our consideration of Head Start reauthorization. Are you free to stay?

Mr. Mica. Yes.

Chairman Riggs. Okay, then, we will turn now to Representative Sanchez for her statement. Please proceed.

Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, especially my ranking member, Mr. Martinez, for allowing me to testify this morning on behalf of a program I believe has made a profound difference in my life.

As you may know, I am the only Member of this Congress who is a graduate of the Head Start program, and I am actually out of the very first class that graduated from Head Start in 1965. As many of my Head Start colleagues, if you walk into my home, you will see my Head Start certificate from 1965 hanging on my wall. There is a reason for that: Because it makes a difference in people's lives.

Back in 1965, I was not exactly one of those 4-1/2-year-olds that had it all together. In fact, I was wearing orthopedic shoes and had not spoken a word yet. My mother, my grandmother, actually, was taking me to the doctor and continuing to think that I was deaf and dumb, and could not find anything wrong with me.

My mother was reading the paper one day and, as many of you know, I come from an immigrant family, but reading the paper one day she came across this whole idea of the Head Start program, because it was beginning. And she said to herself, this is something that Loretta needs. And Head Start changed my life.

Those 6 weeks, because then it was a 6-week program during the summer, transformed me from a shy, quiet girl into an inquisitive and eager child, fully prepared to begin kindergarten at the same level as the rest of my classmates.

I have to admit that the first day I showed up at Head Start I was not really thrilled. As most children, I screamed and yelled and cried and wanted to go home. But the minute I saw celery and peanut butter, I was a devoted fan of the Head Start program.

Now, I bring that up because one of the things that is so important about Head Start is that it does take people who are not used to the education system in the United States and introduces them and does prepare them for their ability to get through K through 12, not just by getting by, but by being an active participant. And it belongs not only to children, but the program belongs to the families of these children.

Every time I hear people talk about how immigrant kids or kids are not trying to learn English or are not trying to fit in, the reality of Head Start is that it does mainstream somebody like me. I had never seen celery and peanut butter as a snack, because of course, I come from a Hispanic family and we eat traditionally Hispanic foods.

The interesting thing is that I do not believe this program has strayed very much from its original intent, nor do I think it has changed that fundamentally. Because when I walk into the Head Start classes in my district, guess what the kids are eating? Celery and peanut butter. And it is still just as important today to introduce them to the American culture and to get them mainstreamed as it was over 20 years ago for me. Gosh, 30 years ago.

Seriously, though, I am positive that Head Start makes a critical contribution not only to people like me, but to all the children who go. And, in fact, I know that many of my constituents, and by that I mean even some of the parochial schools, care about the Head Start program and believe that it is an integral part for our community.

I am thinking of this past year with the classroom crunch that we have had in Orange County, as we have in most of California. The fact of the matter was that our Head Start program was taken out of a school that was needed, that had been in mothballs, but was needed now by one of my school districts; and Head Start had no place to go in Orange County. I was able to broker a deal with the Methodist church in my area so that Head Start could come and have a place in their home. These people believed enough in the Head Start program and saw the results that happened.

Head Start gives families the initiative for them and their children to succeed despite personal or economic hardship, and we all get a lot of bang for our buck through Head Start. It is one of those programs that you can pay for now or wish that you had paid for later on.

But Head Start is not just a childcare program. It is more than that. It incorporates families in the community into the early development of the child. Head Start is a comprehensive program of social services, early childhood development and health care all rolled into one.

Head Start is in a class by itself. Therefore, why make Head Start compete with other for-profit childcare centers? Head Start addresses child and, more importantly, family needs. It offers health, nutrition, social services. It puts a premium on parent involvement, encouraging and offering services to foster parenting, literacy and employment skills.

This is a very important point also, because while out of seven children I was the first and the only one to go to Head Start, the fact of the matter was that what my mother learned through the Head Start program allowed her to be an active participant in the schooling of all of her children, being a den mother, and a room mom, and ways and means chairman in the PTA. She learned this not because someone came up and told her you should do this, but because she was involved in the Head Start program with me. It transforms children and it transforms parents in being able to do management of their children and decision-making.

Attempts to incorporate vouchers or English fluency and paternity testing into this program is contrary to the purpose and the practice of Head Start. Vouchers would destroy Head Start as we know it, not only financially but also its foundation and organization. Head Start is already the most successful publicly funded children's program in the Nation. Never before have vouchers been suggested as a means to improve Head Start, because they will not. If anything, vouchers would sacrifice accountability and quality.

Parents are deeply involved, committed and satisfied with the services of Head Start. Why meddle with something that works? Reauthorization should serve to improve and expand Head Start, not to undermine its primary components.

Let us work to maintain Head Start as the success that it is. Let us make it a birth to compulsory school age program. I urge the leadership of this Subcommittee to consider the successful history of Head Start and to move on with the reauthorization in a bipartisan manner.

Head Start is a program that has enjoyed incredible success and bipartisan support for over 30 years. Let us continue that tradition. We all know that it is less expensive to build a child than it is to fix a broken adult.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Martinez.

Chairman Riggs. Thank you, Representative Sanchez.

You asked a rhetorical question in your statement, and let me give Congressman Mica a chance to respond to it. In fact, I want to make sure that I quote correctly here.

You asked rhetorically in your statement, I say rhetorically only because you, I think, were making a point, but you did not go on to really explain yourself or to basically answer your own question. You say, "Therefore, why make Head Start compete with other for-profit child care centers?"

I do not think Congressman Mica is proposing that competition extend only to for-profits, but I want to give Congressman Mica an opportunity to respond to that question.

Mr. Mica. Well, again, my idea isn't competing with for-profit centers. My idea is just looking at how much money we are spending in small programs. I come from an area with 470 students, and I do not have one certified teacher. I have this list of teachers here, and I am spending between $40,000 and $80,000 for 22 administrators, $6,165 per year per student, and that is only the local cost.

I have some of the regional costs and the national costs. It would astound you, the amount of bureaucracy that we have created in Head Start.

I am just saying, let us take the funds that are given to us. We have two premier, the very finest, schools with preschool, private schools I think they are not-for-profit in my district or locale. I could send them and give a check back to the government, $1,000, and I could give $1,000 to the students. And then, if I took some of this overhead from Atlanta and Washington and Tallahassee, I could provide them with psychiatric care and everything else.

I am just saying that you have to look at how much you are spending and what the results are. And then, if you want a minority grouping program, I have been in these classrooms, and I cannot understand these so-called teachers or what kind of cultural experience that is being given to the kids that are my potential social problems, the kids that will be my dropouts, the kids that will not be able to speak English, the kids that will be the social outcasts.

Now, I support the program. And when Ms. Sanchez was in the program, I was working in my university and I remember starting a project called "Begin Here," which tied the university into a local preschool program, and our educational assets and resources of the university were used to give the very best exposure to these young people.

I do not know what the program was like when she started out; it obviously did a tremendous job. But I am saying we have strayed. Look at what we are spending and what we are getting, and then go into some of these classrooms and see the exposure these kids are getting. It is not what it should be. It should be the finest, the best, and most cost effective.

Chairman Riggs. Congressman Mica, to make sure we understand your point, you are saying that that parochial preschool program down the street, then, is more demographically diverse; it is more heterogeneous, so to speak, than the Head Start program that you visited?

Mr. Mica. I went to all of them, to the parochial, the Catholic school, and I gave the numbers here for the Catholic school and what they are doing in Prestart. We went to the private ones, and I went to the very best private ones; and we went to the church ones. I could not find any one that spends this much money.

Now, the question could be, well, we are taking children with certain disabilities and other things. So I even asked those questions, what percentage do you have, and they were not much different. They were dealing with children with handicaps, from broken families, too. But in bringing them into this setting, it gives them a better exposure at much less cost.

If the program in Los Angeles or Chicago is working, fine, do it. Do your thing. But let us take some of this and let us look at it at least.

And there have also been some mixed results about the effectiveness of some of these programs. Maybe if we had the very best teaching skills. If I am paying $40,000 to $80,000, I want to spend it on the very best people to work with the kids that are the least advantaged, not $40,000 to $80,000 on administrative positions and $8,000 to $17,000 for unskilled, glorified babysitter monitors, as I call them.

Chairman Riggs. I just want to clarify for the record that for-profits participate in the child care development program, in the nutrition program, and introducing for-profits, at least in the context of the Head Start reauthorization, should not, in my view, be controversial in that they are already providing services with taxpayer dollars.

But before turning to Congressman Martinez, let me give Congresswoman Sanchez now an opportunity to respond to Representative Mica.

If the goal is universal early childhood education for all eligible children, what is wrong with competition, if competition will allow us to spread the dollars and serve more kids?

Ms. Sanchez. First of all, what I was talking about with respect to the vouchers, or families going elsewhere, you cannot assure quality and performance standards are being met and comprehensive services are being delivered. For example, of the 18 States providing a State-funded continuum of support for children zero through five and their families, only three incorporate Head Start performance standards.

There are no performance standards, and that is part of another whole other bureaucracy you would have to create, putting in these voucher systems and trying to see if in fact these other preschool or for-profit agencies are really following and really coming up to the performance of the Head Start program. And, in fact, there is only one State, and that would be Florida, that requires the minimum of a child development associate for childcare providers.

The other thing you look at, and I come from the business world and I understand what some people talk about when they say the client is satisfied. We do not have parents saying that this is a bad program; they are saying, this is a great program. We do not have community leaders saying, this is a bad program; it is a great program.

And in addition to that, it 1993, the final report of the Advisory Committee on Head Start Quality and Expansion, Creating a 21st Century Head Start, which was an exhaustive look at ways to improve and strengthen Head Start, vouchers were never mentioned as a means to improve services for Head Start-eligible children and families.

Parents are deeply involved. They are very committed to their children. They are learning how to work with the system. Children are coming out with a good understanding of what it is to be at the very basic line of what it takes to compete in kindergarten.

They need that Head Start. And they are satisfied with it and the parents are satisfied with it. My community leaders are satisfied with it.

I do not know what is happening in Florida, but I can tell you what happens in Orange County. The only shame of the Head Start program in Orange County is that we have 17,000 kids eligible for it and we are only able to put 35- or 3800 through the program. We would love to see more of what is going on, not start to change it and put it in private hands and not have ways to oversee it and have to build other bureaucracies either at the State level or God knows how.

But it is a good program and it is working, and I do not think that farming it out to other people is a satisfactory thing to do, other than if you are just in the business of funding private firms.

Chairman Riggs. Mr. Martinez.

Mr. Martinez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to focus a little bit on your concern Mr. Mica, because I understand where you might legitimately have concern. But, of course, when you express that concern, you have to go back and look at the way you investigate it and the frame of mind in which you investigate it and what you really expected from the program.

You keep talking about no certified teachers in the program. As the law is now, they are not required to be certified teachers. They are only required to have a Head Start emphasis development certification, and they do get special training for that. But the fact is that the low budget that the Head Start program runs on is the reason why we have never really required certified teachers.

I understand the Chairman would like to have that requirement in the law, but then you are going to start to look towards making it an educational program when you start employing certified teachers in the program. The program was never intended to be an educational program.

There should be a link to education, because naturally there is a step up from that program to the educational one, but the fact is, if a particular Head Start program in your district is being wasteful of the money they are getting, the fault lies with the people that approve their budget. Because all the budgets for all of the Head Start programs are submitted, and they are judged not necessarily on numbers of students they would serve, which is one of the criteria, but on all the other expenses they would need to meet to serve any students at all.

So, really, if you are criticizing the amount of money spent, let me go back to the fact you keep talking about the administrative costs in these programs. By law, a local agency can use only 15 percent for administrative costs. Now, if they are finding money someplace else to subsidize some of these salaries, and you mentioned 11,000 to $17,000, you wouldn't get a certified teacher in a Head Start program for even $17,000. Most certified teachers who have been through an AA or Bachelor's degree are going to require more than that even to begin as a starting pay. It depends on the area they are teaching in, too. In California, a starting teacher makes upward of $28,000 to begin with. So I do not think that person is going to want to work in the Head Start program for $17,000.

If the program is working bad, then I think we should have the people that provide the grantee with the funding to look at the program and examine that budget again and take a closer look, because there may be a case and I know where Loretta says that Head Start is working, it is working great in the majority of places. That is not to say in isolated instances that there are not bad programs.

I have sat here in this Congress for 18 years now and listened to people criticize Head Start all those years, but they are usually people that come forward that have examined one particular program and used that isolated instance to damn the whole program, when that is not fair. Because, actually, when you have to look at a program that the Federal Government provides money for, it is on a national basis and overall. What are the majority of the programs doing? The majority of the programs are doing well.

We have a lot of instances. We have a person in Congress who was a graduate of Head Start. I remember at the last Head Start conference that I was at, it was during the NCAA basketball tournament, and the most valuable player of that whole tournament, one of the things he proclaimed that allowed him to become the success he is, he said, was Head Start. He was a Head Start graduate.

So we have an accomplished number of examples of the product of the Head Start. Statistics that have been done by national studies have proven that people that go through Head Start are less likely to drop out of school, they are more likely to finish school and go on to higher education, they are less likely to become involved in teenage pregnancy, and I can go on and on with all the things you have probably heard, but that does not make any less the concern you have for a particular program.

If they are spending the kind of money you are saying that they are, per student, then I think that program needs to be looked at, because the national average, I can assure you, is nowhere near that. So I would think that we, as a Committee and the Committee of jurisdiction, that has oversight responsibilities over that program, ought to be able to take a look at your particular program.

We are going to a program here in the near future in Texas which has not been run ideally, and we want to take a look at that, possibly for the information we gather from that, to improving Head Start and making sure situations like that do not occur.

Mr. Mica. Thank you, Mr. Martinez. Again, I am very laudatory of Head Start. I am not here to bash Head Start. I am here to tell you that a parent and members of their advisory board came to me and expressed concern that under Federal regulations and Federal law they had to have all of these positions, 22 positions. I only have 25 so-called teachers. Here are 22 positions. There are like three health food specialists, or whatever is required, to decide that they get peanut butter and jelly sandwiches; and they are getting $20,000 to $29,000. That is why I do not have enough money to put a certified teacher in the program.

Los Angeles may work fine, Chicago may work fine. I do not want to interfere with what you are doing; go on and do it. But I am telling you that in order to run a program and our school board does not even want to participate any more. They are shopping this out because of the Federal regulations and the morass.

The majority of counties in this country are small counties, and we have real problems in our rural counties, but we are forcing them into this bureaucratic morass of positions that we do not need in this fashion. Not that we do not want to give some of these services to these kids on an individualized basis, and we may have to do that. We may even have to contract out.

And I am not saying, do everything I have recommended. I have a proposal for vouchers, I have a proposal for block grants, we have a proposal for choice. Just let us try to do this. And you do not even have to do it for the whole country. Do it in a few districts and see what the results happen to be.

But I am telling you the reason we do not have the money to put qualified people in these positions is because I am spending it on and, you know, they have their little way of getting around the administrative costs to create every other kind of cockamamie position you can think of. We do not need them, we do not want them; we are just asking for a little bit of flexibility to let us try to do our own thing and then, if it works, my God, we might try it somewhere else and it may be cost effective.

Mr. Martinez. Just let me close by saying, because I see my time has run out, in fact, in many cases I have found that when people accuse the Federal Government and the regulations from the Federal Government in forcing them to do something, if you really look closely, it is not the Federal regulations causing them or forcing them to do any of that, it is their misinterpretation of that Federal regulation.

I can assure you, in law, it is concrete that you cannot use more than 15 percent towards administrative costs. Now, how do they get to the salaries of $40- and $80,000 apiece for those 22 staff people out of 15 percent of the administrative cost of the budget they are given? Explain that to me, if you can, because they cannot. In other words, they are doing something wrong, and they need to be looked at and scrutinized very closely as to how they are running their program. That is the responsibility of the overseer of the program.

Mr. Mica. I went to Atlanta myself and I said, this is ridiculous. They said, you have to have all these positions or you cannot be certified. So here are the positions; it does not lie. Here is the budget approved in Atlanta and here are the required positions. Just look through these.

A program with 470 students does not need 22 positions. Now, some are strictly administrative, and then they have this, like I said, three health specialists, and here are the positions. And these are all required in order to participate in the program.

I have been to Atlanta, talked to these folks, tried to get some waiver; and they said, you pass the laws and you pass the regulations, and these are the rules. You operate on this or we do not follow the program.

Mr. Martinez. We need to take a real close look at it.

Mr. Mica. I really appreciate that. And I come here really with the intent of trying to make the thing work, but in a cost-effective manner; and then, if we can, upgrade.

The other thing, too, is trying to get as many of these programs tied into universities and postgraduate education programs where you have some of the best expertise.

We are finding out more and more, too, in education that the younger the students get this exposure, the better job we can do. So getting that expertise in there, and not just a monitoring system, we can change these lives dramatically at an early stage. Thank you.

Chairman Riggs. I want to observe, I think you had some very constructive and thoughtful suggestions, and perhaps they are ones that would allow us to build upon the recent I do not want to call them "discoveries," but the recent research on early childhood development, particularly brain development.

I want to point out to my good friend and colleague, the ranking member, that under the current act, 50 percent of the quality improvement funds can be used to and I am quoting from the act now, "...to improve the compensation (including benefits) of staff of Head Start agencies."

So that is current law, and that might explain how we get salaries in the range of $40- to $80,000.

Mr. Martinez. That is only if the appropriation exceeds 25 percent of the preceding year's appropriation.

Chairman Riggs. Correct. But appropriations have been going up steadily for Head Start, something I very much support, and which has, I think, attracted strong bipartisan support in the Congress.

Let me turn to our fellow Committee member and colleague, Congressman Scott.

Congressman Scott, both the ranking member and I deferred our opening statements out of respect for the tight time schedules of our colleagues as well, but if you would like to make an opening statement and/or pose questions to our colleagues, please proceed. You are recognized.

Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think I interpreted a mild hint in your comments. Let me just ask one question of Mr. Mica.

In your statement, you indicated that the private programs cost on average about $2,200 less. Is that the tuition cost for nonprofits or for-profits?

Mr. Mica. Both. I think there are some for-profits we looked at. We did a complete study of every preschool program in the area parochial, some private, some for-profit. We just averaged those out. I have two fantastic I mean, the places that the wealthiest people in town put their kids in preschool; they are looking at $1,000 difference.

Mr. Scott. Are you talking tuition?

Mr. Mica. $1,000 less to put them in the very best program.

Mr. Scott. Are you talking tuition or the cost?

Mr. Mica. The tuition. And that includes some of the other things that are provided in Head Start.

The other thing, too, is we even compared the hours. If you are in Head Start, you are going to more than likely be a single mother, and our goal is to get these people into the mainstream, having them working, whether they are a single mother or a single father. So the Head Start program that we have does not give as much time in the program as some of the other ones. They had to be there at such-and-such a time and out such-and-such a time. The others were longer and year-round.

Mr. Scott. Trying to comply with the Chairman's hint, if you could provide us with that, because a lot of the estimates of costs mention tuition and do not factor in the fact that a lot of the programs are very much subsidized by foundations or churches or otherwise. And some of the for-profits have admissions requirements where they do not have to deal with some of the more difficult problems like special education. So if we can get that, we could better be able to evaluate that.

Mr. Mica. Be glad to.

Mr. Scott. With that, Mr. Chairman, I would yield back the balance of my time.

Chairman Riggs. Thank you, Congressman Scott. And I did not mean to cut you off, because I am, actually, going to ask a question or two. So if you want to use your entire time allotment, you are certainly welcome to.

What I would like to do on the second and very brief go-round here is ask Representative Sanchez's help, since she has a very unique perspective indeed, I guess the most unique amongst our colleagues, on how we can increase performance standards in the reauthorization of Head Start.

We have had considerable discussion about establishing minimum levels of education performance standards. We had a joint House-Senate hearing on the Senate side to sort of, if you will, commence deliberation of the Head Start reauthorization; and at that hearing Professor E.D. Hirsch, Jr., of the University of Virginia testified and gave us some very specific and very concrete recommendations on how we can establish, at least as he put it, "minimum levels" of required education performance standards.

But what caught me a moment ago and I want to be sure I am clear on this you, in your testimony, referred to Head Start as a comprehensive program of social services, early childhood development and health care all rolled into one; and then you went on and talked about how it also addresses family needs as well as the child's needs by offering health, nutritional and social services. But I am struck that there is no real reference to the fact of Head Start being principally an educational program. Just a moment ago the ranking member, I think, made some similar remarks along those lines.

We want to strengthen the academic component of Head Start reauthorization. Is that a fundamental point of disagreement? Do you not believe Head Start is principally an educational program?

Ms. Sanchez. Not at all, Mr. Chairman. In fact, going back to my experience, I went into a classroom situation in Head Start, as I said, never having spoken a word, and came out pretty fluent in English, to tell you the truth, after about 6 weeks. So the answer is that, of course, Head Start should have and does have very educational components.

I have been to many of the classes, probably all of the classes that we have in Orange County, to visit and to see what goes on, and in my opinion my personal opinion, but again I do not have an education degree there are things that we could even enhance in Head Start.

For example, I truly believe that all children should be exposed to as much American culture as possible from the very beginning. I am talking about classrooms I have been in where there are not just Hispanic kids, for example, but I have a large Vietnamese population, of 93 languages spoken at home, where kids when they enter kindergarten in my area, they come from 93 different language backgrounds. So I do believe that it is an important place to begin their education.

But what I was speaking to earlier about families and the needs are what I saw happening in my family and what I continue to see happening in these families that I have, in particular in my district, and that is that many people come without a knowledge of the American school system.

My parents did not have that knowledge. They did not know that the right thing to do when your kid turns seven or whatever is that you put them into Little League and you begin to teach them about apple pie and home runs. They just do not have that cultural background. So what is important about Head Start is that it brings the parent in.

As I said, while I was the only one to go to Head Start, the fact of the matter is, my parents have seven children, and that allowed them to understand the process and to talk to parents, not just the ones who were living next door to them, but the parents of other children and those who were mainstream already. That is the importance that I was talking about when I said it is a social program, a social skills program.

There definitely is an educational component, and I would be for strengthening it even more. I happen to be one of the few people probably that thinks phonics is important for children as at early an age as possible. And I would love to see even more emphasis in some areas, even in Head Start, let alone K through 12. But what is happening now in the type of education the kids are getting in that classroom is doing a phenomenal job for our children, at least in Orange County.

All of my school districts come to me, almost every teacher and every superintendent-administrator that has seen the difference between a Head Start kid and a kid that is not prepared, or even a kid that has been prepared in a private preschool situation, and they tell me all the time, they always prefer to get the Head Start kid.

Chairman Riggs. Fine. I don't disagree. And we will ask our next panel of witnesses what we can do to sustain those gains that Head Start children make as they enter the public school system.

Let me follow up on that point you made. If you agree that one of the principal purposes of Head Start is the social assimilation of Head Start children into the I think you put it, "the mainstream of American culture," do you agree then that most conversation, particularly the conversation with respect to instruction or teaching and learning, should be primarily in English as opposed to the child's native language?

Ms. Sanchez. I would hope that you would have someone in the classroom who would be able to deal with a child in his or her native language. I want kids to learn English. It is probably the most important thing that you can teach a child in America these days. But you cannot compensate for every situation. I may have three Vietnamese-speaking kids come into my Head Start class, 14 Hispanics, and some from Bulgaria or something. So you are not always going to be able to have the perfect situation.

I look at the American education system, and I think it is really one of the few places where the client has changed. The client is coming from a different background now, at least where I live, and we have not changed the dynamics of what is happening in the classroom to address that.

One of them is we need bilingual teachers in Head Start and every other place. If that is the majority of the kind of kids we are getting in, you should not put a 4-1/2-year-old in a classroom situation where no one speaks Spanish. Especially if the majority of the kids are walking in there and speaking Spanish, and the mother is dropping them off for the day, you are not going to get anywhere.

Chairman Riggs. But you agree that the majority of the instructional time should be in English?

Ms. Sanchez. Well, if they can understand English at that point, let's do it in English. But if there is a transition to be made, then you are going to have to teach them in their native language.

Chairman Riggs. Let me ask you one more time on this idea of competition and vouchers. As I understand it, one of the principal arguments that voucher opponents make is that it violates the church-state separation. Yet in your testimony, I think you even spoke of a Head Start program being run by or out of a Methodist church.

Ms. Sanchez. That is right, it is run out of the school site of the Methodist church, and they are there as a tenant landlord to the Head Start program there. It was the only available classroom space we could find. Thank God we could find it.

But these people are just as thrilled if the child graduates from Head Start and goes into their program as in a parochial K-through-12 system. We are not adverse in Orange County to working with all of our school systems. As a Congresswoman sitting on the Education Committee, I am responsible, I think, in my opinion, for policymaking for all of our children, whether they go to parochial school or whether they go to the public school system.

Chairman Riggs. Congressman Martinez.

Mr. Martinez. I do not want to prolong our colleagues' stay at the witness table, but I want to mention a couple of things, because it seems like we are always in this same quandary as to whether or not Head Start is an education program or a social program.

Head Start is a social program. It has an educational component, but it is a social program. Because the purpose of the program is to essentially bring the child up to speed and get him ready to learn when he gets to the public school or parochial school. But it also is to bring the family up to speed.

We have seen a number of cases over the years that have been testified to before this Committee, that have shown that component of it to be so important as to take people who might not ever have been that interested in their child's education, not only be interested in their child's education, but be interested in their own.

We had a lady testify before us at the LACO board meeting room in Los Angeles who, when she got her child enrolled in Head Start and realized how important it was for her to be involved in her child's education, and in order to do that she had to be educated, that she went back to school and at the time she testified before us was completing her Ph.D.

Now, here is a black single mother who has gone from a dropout to a Ph.D. Now, that should describe as well as anybody could describe the social aspect of that program.

So let us not get confused that this should simply be an educational program. It was never intended to be that from the beginning. It is to bring the entire family into the mainstream of our society.

Ms. Sanchez. Mr. Martinez, if I could add on to that. I would agree. Because there is an education component, I think that is important. But I think of it all as an educational experience. For my family it was; for my parents it was. For my family to have the ability to make sure that their kids made the most of the public school system, enough to graduate artists and CEOs and the whole works, it was very successful.

It was not just about learning English in the classroom or doing your ABCs, it was all the other components, including, as I said earlier, learning what peanut butter and celery was all about.

Mr. Mica. Mr. Martinez, my family on both sides were immigrants. My grandfather, I am one generation removed from immigrant families. My grandmother's family was Italian and grandfather's was Slovak, and I can imagine what would have happened to my parents and my family if we had a Head Start program, and the Italians had sent their kids to a Head Start program where they just had an opportunity to associate with Italian kids from the same rough background and experience rather than being immersed in society.

I can imagine my grandfather from the tough First Ward and the Slavic background, if he had been put in a program where he just had exposure to that Slavic language and culture, if that is what we want to do, some of these programs we are doing a great job just to keep them exposed as little as possible.

Again, I will let everybody do what they want to do. I am here to say that some of us who have a need who would like to change this rather than spend the $40,000 to $80,000 on administrators, I would like to spend it on the best education professionals.

I tend to think below the age of 5 that education is an incredible component here, and if we haven't emphasized it, we should.

And Ms. Sanchez, she said what happened to her in a short time in that program, if you go into some of these programs today and look at what they are doing, and not everyone is the same, they are not immersing them in our society. They are not immersing them in our culture, and they are not giving them access to the best educational and developmental resources that we have available. I thank you.

Mr. Martinez. I appreciate your view, although I disagree with it.

When I went to school, it wasn't Head Start, it was kindergarten, and it was largely Hispanic. We didn't get immersed in our cultural differences. We became proud of our first heritage, which was American.

I come from a varied background. My mother was half Irish. My father was a quarter Ute and a quarter French. I was raised in a family that was traditional, even though it had diversity, I was raised with the Hispanic background and culture. And as a result, when I went to school, that is what I enjoyed mostly with my classmates. And I think with all of that diverse background, I wave only one flag, and it is red, white and blue.

I always talk about my ancestors as being in this country for generations and generations, except for my grandfather who came from Ireland, and I can't do anything about that. I learned that from school in those classes. I didn't learn to wave the Mexican flag. I learned to wave the American flag. The first thing that they taught us in school was to say, "I pledge allegiance to the flag." And at the end of it, "and justice for all." In this country we haven't seen justice for all because of antiquated thinking about isolation.

People who isolate themselves choose to isolate themselves. Immigrants like your parents, they didn't want to isolate themselves. They wanted their children to become assimilated into that American society and to learn English because they knew how important it was for them to succeed in this new society that they accepted as their own and this new country as their home. I don't think that there is this isolation as a result.

You will find classes, if you go to Kentucky, we have somebody here from Lexington or Louisville, Kentucky, and people that will testify on their Head Start experience they were not of a minority, they were white because it is a program for disadvantaged youth, regardless of your color.

If you are white, disadvantaged, those are the people who are going to be served. If you go into a Hispanic neighborhood, you are going to see the majority is Hispanic. You may see Asians. So the minority separation is there simply because of the district or the neighborhood that they live in, not because they are trying to get isolated from the values of America; and the programs of Head Start are not trying to isolate them into their own cultures, they are trying to bring them up to speed with American values and cultures.

Mr. Mica. Do you think that the parents should be forced then, who have just the choice to send them to that one program?

Mr. Martinez. I think the parents should have the choice to send them wherever they want.

Chairman Riggs. Congressman Scott?

Mr. Scott. We have invited people from all over the country to testify today. I would like to receive their testimony. I thank the colleagues for testifying.

I would want to make one brief comment on the Head Start program located in a church. As our colleague from California said, the church is a the program is a tenant. The students who go to that program are not taught sectarian information. They are not required to participate in certain religious activities. So that is not a violation, and I don't want to get caught up because it happens to be located in the church. I would hope that we would not use that as an excuse to violate the Constitution which was not amended to allow sectarian programs to be funded. With that, I would yield back the balance of my time.

Chairman Riggs. I thank the gentleman.

I would note for the record that a majority of the House did vote, although it fell short of the two-thirds necessary under law.

Mr. Scott. And we can be thankful to our forefather's for requiring a two-thirds vote and for that foresight.

Chairman Riggs. As I prepare to excuse our two colleagues who have been tremendous witnesses, I think, Representative Sanchez, I think it is important for the record to make sure that we understand just a little bit about your personal background. Were you fluent in English when you began the Head Start program?

Ms. Sanchez. I hadn't spoken a word in English or Spanish.

Chairman Riggs. What language was spoken in your home?

Ms. Sanchez. Spanish.

Chairman Riggs. You are the only one of your seven siblings that actually participated in the Head Start program?

Ms. Sanchez. That is correct.

Chairman Riggs. I would like to extend the invitation to both of you to work with the Subcommittee as we proceed with the reauthorization, particularly with respect to strengthening the educational component of Head Start.

We are, I think, very committed to promoting school readiness, which I think you both spoke of, by enhancing the social and cognitive development of low-income children who participate in the Head Start program, although you approach it obviously from very different perspectives. We thank you both for being here, and you are excused.

Ms. Sanchez. Mr. Chairman, I would like to add one other thing for the record.

I think one of the greatest things about the Head Start program is, believe it or not, that you don't come out of the program ever considering or at least I didn't that I was from a minority or disadvantaged or below the poverty line.

I always thought it was one of the greatest things that ever happened to me, and it wasn't until I read 4 or 5 years ago in the newspaper that Head Start was a poverty program that I realized that I would have been considered poor when I was growing up.

I think it does a great service to kids in not labeling them or making them feel inferior. It is a very positive program.

Chairman Riggs. Thank you.

I call forward Panel II, Dr. Joyner, Dr. Zigler, Dr. Snow, Ms. Freeman, Dr. Horn, Ms. Dollar and Ms. Aguilar. As you settle in, I will return here momentarily.

We now turn to our second panel of witnesses. We have a big panel here with, collectively, a very, very broad perspective and experience with respect to the Head Start program. So what we are going to do is proceed right down the panel, solicit your testimony, and feel free to speak informally. You don't have to adhere to your written statement which will be published in its entirety in the official record or transcript of today's proceedings.

When we complete the testimony of each of our witnesses, we will then proceed to have some interactions, some give and take because we find that the question and the answers, as perhaps the exchange with our two colleagues just illustrated, is the most valuable and important part of the hearings.

Dr. Carlotta Joyner is the Director of Education and Employment Issues at the U.S. General Accounting Office here in Washington, D.C.

Thank you for being here, and we know that you have looked closely and continue to look closely at the Head Start program. You may proceed.

Ms. Joyner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee. And I am very pleased to be here today to discuss our work on Head Start.

As you know, this 30-year program is widely viewed as one of the most successful social programs including an educational component of our time, and this program, in its effort to improve the social competence of children, has provided a very wide array of services educational, medical, mental health, social services to over 16 million children since its inception at a cost of more than $38 billion. The funding for the program has been increased from 1.5 billion in 1990 to about $4 billion in 1997 and is now poised for major expansion.

It is because of that major expansion, as well as the congressional interest in reauthorizing it at this time, and the Government Performance and Results Act, which has increased the focus on this and other program on results; all of that, we believe, provides a good setting to consider the two things that are in my written statement.

Two issues: One is how well the Department of Health and Human Services, which administers this program, can ensure and is ensuring that the Head Start program is achieving its purpose; and the second is how well the program is structured to meet the needs of program participants today, a society that is quite different from when it was first created.

My statement is based on two GAO reports, as well as an ongoing study that we are doing at your request that looks at HHS procedures to ensure accountability not only for compliance with laws and regulations, but for achieving program purposes.

Let me take a moment to describe just what we mean when we talk about achieving program purposes. I really mean two things. One is whether the program has achieved the outcomes that were intended and desired, such as improved language skills.

And the second, as well, is whether the program has an impact on children and their families. And when we use that term, we are distinguishing here that these differences that occurred would not have occurred if the child and the family had not been participating in Head Start.

In summary, Head Start over the years has provided a comprehensive array of services that, especially in the early years, would have not have been received by these children and their families. In addition, as envisioned by the Results Act, Head Start has substantially increased its emphasis in recent years on determining the results of those services. Head Start is still faced with challenges in two areas; one is in demonstrating program results and another is responding to changes in society.

Let me say a bit more about each of those points.

HHS has increased its focus on results. It now has a performance assessment framework that includes measurable objectives for how the program will be implemented, such as how it will deliver the educational and other services, and also for outcomes such as enhancing children's growth which is one outcome objective, and the other is strengthening families as the primary nurturers of their children.

Overall, we believe their approach is methodologically and conceptually sound, their approach to assessing these outcome objectives. It has new initiatives that will, in the next few years, provide information not previously available at all on the specific measures and performance indicators they will get this primarily through a national study of a representative sample of Head Start children and their families called the Family and Child Experiences Survey. It will collect data at the beginning of program participation, at the end of each year, and then at the end of kindergarten. For example, the study will show what kind of gains the children have made in their language skills and so forth.

But it will be collecting information only at the national level. At the local level, HHS does not require individual Head Start agencies to demonstrate that they have achieved these or other outcome goals objectives of the program, although it has said that it intends to do so in the future.

In addition, we are concerned that the study's comparisons may be with groups not similar enough to the group of families and children in Head Start with the result that we will still be it will be difficult still to draw conclusions about whether the improvement was actually caused by that participation or by some differences in the groups or some other experiences that they have had.

Chairman Riggs. Dr. Joyner, let me do something I don't normally do and that is interrupt a witness just on one point. I thought just a moment ago you said that you thought their study was methodologically sound?

Ms. Joyner. Yes, sir, for one purpose which is to collect data on the outcomes.

It will be it is a national sample, and it will be it is a sound approach. That particular study is a sound approach to gathering a national picture of the outcomes being achieved. I also would say that beyond that particular study, the whole approach of having clearly stated objectives and measures and indicators is sound and important.

The distinction that I am making is that we will still be left without data at a local level. For example, to go back to Congressman Mica's example, we still will not know what result was achieved with children at any particular local grantee. Even though some grantees are funded at more than a million dollars a year, they are held accountable to do certain things in certain ways. They are held accountable to have funded certain positions and to meet certain standards. What we won't know is whether those children learned anything. That is the distinction that I am making.

Also, in the national sample, in the national study, we will know that these children have better language skills at the end than they had at the beginning; and they are making some comparisons, attempting to make up for the lack of a really rigorous comparison group. So they are attempting to make up for not having that by making some multiple comparisons.

But our concern is this is a large program anticipated or desired to grow larger. We think that it warrants a more rigorous look at whether the program is causing the difference, given that it is more costly, by and large, than other programs, and so that is why we have repeatedly recommended that there be a study that would go beyond this one in that regard.

The other challenge that Head Start faces is to respond appropriately to the changed social environment, and this was alluded to already in the hearing today as well. The fact that, in comparison with 30 years ago, more of the children are in homes with a single parent who is now working outside the home and there is a growing need for full-day, full-year care, but Head Start is predominantly part-day, part-year. And they are aware of this and have been grappling with this, but it does pose a challenge for not only how to take care of the children the rest of the time, but how to allow sort of a fundamental part of Head Start, which is involvement of the parent, how to continue that if the parent is working full time.

And also another very significant difference is, there are a lot more other programs out there, as has already been alluded to in the hearing as well. There are other programs that provide specific services, and in this regard, I think it is important to note that Head Start, by and large, with the exception of the educational component, is not actually delivering these other services in the comprehensive array. They are providing for them, they are making linkages and in fact they are required to do this. The first step is to find out if someone else in the community is offering it: If Medicaid will pay for it, don't pay for immunizations yourself. That is part of their mandate.

So the cost of the program is what they had to pay for themselves, not what they were able to leverage or broker elsewhere, and they are much more able to do that than in the past.

There are many other programs which provide comprehensive services such as Head Start. And there are some States that have statewide programs, Georgia and Ohio.

So the world is quite different now. Our concern is that Head Start has to respond to this. The Congress needs to take this into consideration in deciding what, if any, changes might need to be made in the program, and our concern is that you may be lacking some of the information which would be helpful, such as how many programs are there, what are they doing in comparison with what Head Start is doing, what are the real needs of the parents; and we would hope that you are able to get that through hearings or that Head Start can find out in some way to help with the decision-making.

Chairman Riggs. Thank you, Dr. Joyner.

Chairman Riggs. We now turn to Dr. Edward Zigler, who is Director of the Yale Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy in New Haven, Connecticut. Dr. Zigler is a renowned expert in the field of early childhood development and education and is widely regarded as the father of Head Start. Please proceed with your testimony.

Mr. Zigler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman for the opportunity to speak before this Committee on how to make our Nation's Head Start program better and on how to assess our progress toward that goal.

When I sat on the Committee that planned Head Start back in the early 1960s, we did not have much evidence to prove that comprehensive services and parent involvement could help prepare young children living in poverty for their entry into school. We put these components into Head Start because of our professional hunches, hunches that have now been amply justified in the scientific literature.

And we certainly were not privy to the recent knowledge on how important the early years are to brain development. We were not aware that ages between birth and eight presents a window of opportunity for the actual wiring or structuring of the brain. We did suspect that earlier and more are better, which is why we planned Head Start for 3-to-5-year-olds.

Over the years, the number of 5-year-olds who attend has dwindled as public kindergarten has become more widely available. Unfortunately, the percentage of 3-year-olds has also declined, largely because program expansion has concentrated on children about to enter school. So today Head Start is primarily just a program for 4-year-olds. I am afraid that we are being lured back to the inoculation model, thinking that if we give young children a little bit of Head Start, their brains will develop to full capacity.

The human brain develops throughout life. Age 4 is important, but so are the years that come before and after. Gradually expanding early Head Start for children from birth up to age 3 would be responsive to the new findings on brain development, and so would be reopening Head Start's doors to more 3-year-olds as well as the 4s it currently serves. Ages 5 to 8 can be served by a larger Head Start public school transition program, which puts the elements of effective intervention into school practices.

For any intervention to be effective, it must be of high quality. Quality is clearly related to the child outcomes that we find when we assess these programs. Head Start has long suffered uneven quality, but I am happy to say that this is turning around.

A milestone event in Head Start's history was the work of the Advisory Committee on Head Start Quality and Expansion, a Committee on which I served. This bipartisan group provided a road map for the Clinton administration on how to improve the program. Olivia Golden, Helen Taylor and other officials turned the panel's advice into action.

For the first time in over 30 years, poor programs have been closed, and marginal centers have been put on probation and are receiving technical assistance. After more than 2 decades, the program performance standards have been revised to reflect new knowledge and best practices. Congress has renewed the quality set-aside to enhance salaries, benefits and facilities.

I am very pleased with this process. Head Start definitely is improving. Yet today I want to point out to you one area that needs more attention. Congressman Mica actually made this point very clearly this morning, and I agree with him. A fact that is not very well known, since day one early childhood educators have been unhappy with the quality of the preschool education component in Head Start. Part of their concern is about staff qualifications. Only about half of Head Start's teachers have a college degree, a degree that is mandatory in most private early childhood centers, as well as public preschools.

Many staff do have CDAs, which was invented in my day, although that number is not high enough because of the expense and low availability of scholarships. Many poor women who work in Head Start simply don't have the $300-plus to get the training. But the real problem, I think, is the qualifications we demand of Head Start teachers. The CDA is simply not enough.

Without better compensation, better trained teachers go elsewhere leaving less qualified staff in charge. Just as Congressman Mica would like B.A.-level people, I would, too; but you are not going to pay them with the average pay of Head Start, which is $17,000 for a teacher. The average pay for a teacher in elementary school is about $33,000. I believe there will always be a place for CDAs in classrooms, they should be headed by professionals who are paid a worthy wage.

The type of education delivered in Head Start is also of suspect quality. The planners, including me, did not mandate a specific curriculum because we had no proof that any one curriculum was better than any other. In fact, over 20 years ago when I was a Federal official responsible for Head Start, I studied the effects of various curricula used in Head Start and found no particular model superior.

The same held true in follow-through, which was a planned curriculum variation experiment. Yet because we imposed no curriculum, what happened is that many centers in the early days never bothered to write one at all. They just did whatever came to mind each day.

The new performance standards wisely require a written plan. This has sparked a huge debate among those who recommend a structured, cognitively oriented curriculum versus those who prefer a play-based, individualized, developmentally appropriate model. The latter type has long been used by Head Start, is endorsed by the NAEYC, and was found to have lasting benefits right here in the D.C. public schools where they tested one model against the other.

Still, I believe that if we really knew which type was better, we would have advanced it long ago. What type of curriculum works best, with which students, is an empirical question, and it is time that we answered it empirically.

Head Start is a national laboratory for the development of quality practices. We should use this natural experiment to address the curriculum issue. We can look at child outcomes in centers using various educational methods to see who fares the best. This type of national evaluation study would be more doable than a massive random assignment study a format that the Blueprint and Roundtable panels and many respected scholars have recommended against. It would also be more informative to local councils who could look at the results of different curricula in centers with populations and philosophies similar to their own.

Of course, knowing the success of an educational method depends on what we mean by success. We cannot decide if a program works unless we know what its goal is. To me, it is clear that Head Start's goal has always been school readiness, sometimes referred to as social competence. Readiness basically entails good health and sound cognitive and socioemotional development.

The Head Start bureau is in the process of developing readiness and other performance measures to be used to evaluate quality and child outcomes in Head Start classrooms. That is the FACES effort. These measures can have two valuable uses. One is a tool of quality control; if outcomes in a center are not up to standards, assistance can be offered. Second, a national sample of performance on these measures would be available annually and would enable us to continually assess the program's efficacy.

Research funds have always been scarce in Head Start. They should be increased so we can conduct the naturalistic study of curricula I discussed and continue developing outcome measures that can be used for both accountability and service improvements. Thank you.

Chairman Riggs. Thank you, Dr. Zigler, for being here today and for your testimony and for your pioneer work in this field.

Chairman Riggs. Our next witness is Dr. Catherine Snow. She is the Henry Lee Shaddick Professor of Education and Chair of Human Development of Psychology at Harvard Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is the chair of the Committee on Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, which produced an extensive report by the same name. Please proceed with your testimony.

Ms. Snow. Thank you. It is a great pleasure to be here.

I am speaking here specifically from the perspective of someone interested in literary development and in preventing reading difficulties. And what I would like to bring to the Committee's attention is the importance of the preschool period, the period during which children are in Head Start programs, in ensuring the development of skills which are relevant to preventing reading difficulties.

Clearly, the potential for Head Start to contribute to children's literacy success or to form part of a prevention program, preventing reading difficulties, is enormous, and I will make four points about how to improve that potential.

First of all, who are the children who will have difficulty learning to read when they get to school? The evidence is quite clear that those are children who arrive at school with poor oral language skills and with little familiarity with the conventions of print, children who arrive in kindergarten without knowing a number of the letters of the alphabet, who cannot write their own names, who don't recognize environmental print, who don't know what "stop" says on a stop sign; children who don't know about reading books, starting at the beginning and moving toward the end, who don't understand that books are a source of pleasure and a source of knowledge; children who have not had the pleasure of being read to and the children with small vocabularies.

The differences among children and the size of their vocabularies upon arrival in kindergarten are enormous. Some children know 1,000 words as 5-years-olds. Other children know 10,000 words as 5-year-olds, and those differences can entirely be accounted for by the differences in the quality of the early environments children are exposed to at home and in preschool, Head Start or other group care settings.

So given the importance of these language and early literacy skills, it is crucial that we understand how to design early childhood environments to ensure that children have access to rich language and literacy experiences. And it is possible to do that.

Research has repeatedly demonstrated that parents, including low-income parents, and preschool educators, early childhood educators, can be taught how to engage in styles of book reading with children, styles of conversation with children, literacy-related activities with children that provide children with experiences that promote their language and literacy development.

In classrooms and in homes where children talk more and where they get talked to more, where they have opportunities for sociodramatic play in small groups, opportunities for one-on-one conversations with adults and where they have opportunities to look at books and be read to from books, children acquire more language and more knowledge of print conventions.

Unfortunately, poor children, children from low-income families typically encounter language and literacy impoverished environments not just at home, but also in the early childhood classrooms that they are in; and I am not speaking here exclusively of Head Start programs, but in general, the classrooms serving children from low-income families.

Early childhood classrooms, even classrooms that score quite well on dimensions of quality having to do with health, cleanliness, availability of appropriate materials, typically score much lower on measures of literacy and language environments available to the children. Those are not impossible dimensions of quality to improve, but they are dimensions of quality that can be improved only with the involvement of well-educated, well-trained adults in those classrooms.

So the fourth point is that investment in professional development of early childhood educators can improve early childhood education, but such investment is a challenging task. It is not something we can achieve with a few weeks of quick courses for future Head Start teachers. It really does require a significant educational program, because excellent early childhood educators have a wide array of understanding of skills and knowledge. They know how to talk to kids, they know how to read books to kids, they know how to select which books to read with children. They understand children's language development and their cognitive development and early literacy development, and achieving a cadre of Head Start educators who have the full array and appropriate depth of understanding of these demands requires thinking of professional development as a serious target of investment. Thank you.

Chairman Riggs. Thank you, Dr. Snow.

Chairman Riggs. We now turn to Ms. Bonnie Freeman. She is the Assistant Director for the National Center for Family Literacy in Louisville, Kentucky, my birthplace.

Thank you for being here, Ms. Freeman. Please proceed with your testimony.

Ms. Freeman. I do want to say that I do represent the National Center for Family Literacy, and I want to speak today on the area of family literacy and how it can enhance and support the work of Head Start.

As my colleague, Dr. Snow, said, growing up in a literate environment is critically important, and there is a segment of our population who have parents themselves do not have the skills they need to help their children develop literacy skills. Without these essential skills, the parents cannot achieve their own goals, such as employment or citizenship, so that they can move their families out of poverty.

Comprehensive family literacy programs tackle the needs of families at the bottom end of the literacy continuum. Comprehensive family literacy services integrate the following four components: adult education or English language instruction; developmental experiences for children, birth through seven; parent education and support; and regular opportunities for parent and child interaction.

These programs provide services in an integrated approach and include the following goals: to improve basic and/or English language skills and raise the educational level of parents; to increase the development skills of preschool children and better prepare them for academic and social success in school; to improve parenting skills to enable parents to become familiar with and comfortable in school settings; and to help parents gain the motivation, skills and knowledge that contributes to becoming employed or pursue further education or training.

Head Start works with children and families in a holistic way, addressing their nutritional, cognitive and emotional development needs. Historically, Head Start has engaged parents by requesting and supporting parent involvement and giving parents the opportunity to take leadership in local programs.

Additionally, Head Start programs serve in a resource and referral capacity charged with helping parents advocate for themselves and gain access to other available assistance.

Family literacy, as developed by the National Center for Family Literacy, builds upon this strong foundation by offering intensive services for parents who are not literate or English proficient and do not possess the skills to support their child's education when the child transitions from a Head Start program to a larger school setting. It makes sure that the success of a good early childhood program will be multiplied by helping parents become the first teachers of their children and making sure that learning and messages about education are reinforced within the home.

I would like to dispel the notion that we are taking an either/or position; that is, one either supports Head Start or family literacy. Some of the biggest proponents of family literacy are Head Start providers because they have experienced how family literacy can strengthen the value of Head Start in a child's life.

The new demands of time-limited, work-oriented welfare reform are also pressing the need for more powerful interventions. Parents are meeting the responsibility of entering the work force. Modeling a work ethic to their children is one component of good parenting. The demands of work add new stress on the family unit, particularly in a single-parent household.

The parent in this situation not only needs a job, extra support and better parenting strategies, but also skills that will help them grow beyond a minimum wage job. Before the advent of the family literacy approach, a parent with poor basic skills might simply be referred to a local adult education program that is not coordinated with Head Start programs. Possibly the program hours could be complementary to the Head Start program, but they might not be. Therefore, coordinating additional child care would become a disincentive for parental participation. Transportation between different sites also became an additional challenge for the parents or the agency.

Finally, some adult educational programs didn't provide a clear strategy for helping the individual establish and achieve their own academic and career goals.

The findings from the extensive research performed on family literacy programs illustrates the success and added value that it can have with Head Start programs when comprehensively incorporated. These same findings indicate that well-implemented family literacy programs have significant and lasting effects on children and their families.

We have seen some progress in Head Start programs' seizing the opportunity to strengthen their impacts through collaborating with other agencies to offer family literacy services. Some good examples of these are in the State of Arizona, here in Washington, D.C., and in South Carolina.

In Tucson, Arizona, in 1991, the Pima County Adult Education Family Literacy Project, collaborating with Head Start, initiated three family literacy programs in elementary schools in the Sunnyside Unified School District. These programs continue today.

In Washington, D.C., there is a very successful Head Start-Family Literacy and Collaboration working out of Moten and Adams Elementary Schools, and one of the graduates of that program recently testified before the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources.

NCFL has been working with the State of South Carolina to develop and explore the role of family literacy in welfare reform, specifically with Head Start programs.

In conclusion, as the challenges facing families in poverty grows more intense, we must find models of success like Head Start and Family Literacy collaborations and work to ensure the broadest implementation possible.

During the 1994 Head Start authorization, Congress took important steps toward increasing the role of family literacy as an important strategy within Head Start.

Now we need to seriously think through practical implementation strategies and questions. We do not see the need for broad-scale legislative changes as being necessary, but we would like to recommend several refinements that would be put in place to put a stronger emphasis on assisting Head Start agencies and programs in pursuing that family literacy approach.

Our recommendations would be: Congress should insert into Head Start authorization the new working definition of Family Literacy Services that has already been included in the House Workforce Training Bill and the Reading Excellence Act. Family Literacy needs to be implemented with comprehensive and integrated services and particularly the adult education component.

For family literacy to work, Head Start can't do it alone. Effective family literacy is a collaborative undertaking; and so, therefore, we think the state collaborative process should be strengthened. We also feel that the effect of family literacy coordination can be challenging. Therefore, we suggest placing a greater emphasis on the provision of training and technical assistance within Head Start.

For a program the size of Head Start, the implementation of family literacy services cannot be done in a one-size-fits-all manner. Head Start the Head Start system needs to develop the capacity for greater collaboration and integration of services.

Therefore, significant training funding should be set aside to enable the regional Head Start offices and the State Head Start associations to develop their internal expertise as to how to effectively collaborate with other service providers, especially welfare reform agencies.

NCFL has trained over 10,000 teachers in implementing family literacy and has a certified trainer system which could support the internal training systems of existing Head Start programs. We stand ready to provide this training.

These are broad recommendations and our Washington staff is prepared to work with your staff in developing specific legislative proposals that would reflect these priorities. Thank you.

Chairman Riggs. Thank you, Ms. Freeman.

Chairman Riggs. Dr. Wade Horn is currently President of the National Fatherhood Initiative in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Dr. Horn was the Assistant Secretary of Children and Families at the Department of Health and Human Services under the Bush administration, the position that Olivia Golden currently holds. Please proceed with your testimony.

Mr. Horn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Two years ago this Congress passed and the President of the United States signed into law comprehensive welfare reform legislation. As part of that legislation, the purpose of that legislation was to move previously welfare-dependent heads of households, mostly single mothers, from welfare into the paid labor force.

To helps States with this task, Congress included up to $30 billion in State and Federal funding for child care over 6 years. Now, to many people, $30 billion sounds like a lot of money, but there are some who believe that $30 billion for child care is not enough, and so they are saying, we need to look elsewhere for additional child care opportunities to help with the task of welfare reform. One place to look is Head Start.

Now, coordinating government programs is never easy. Some have said that coordinating government programs is akin to requiring people to engage in unnatural acts between non-consenting adults, and coordinating Head Start with welfare reform and child care has proven to be no exception.

One of the big problems, of course, is that Head Start is a part-year, part-day program, and welfare is not designed to move people into part-day, part-year employment, and so it is unlikely that a part-day, part-year program is going to match up to large numbers of welfare-to-work participants.

In addition to that barrier, there are other barriers as well. For example, a lot of Head Start programs use double shifts so they couldn't expand to a full day program if they wanted to, at least not in the current space. They have different enrollment patterns between Head Start and welfare-to-work programs, and there are also differences in the culture missions between Head Start and welfare-to-work programs.

The difficulties that are faced by trying coordinate these various programs is illustrated by the most recent data collected by the Head Start Bureau, which suggests that 40 percent of Head Start enrollees who were in need last year of full-time, full-year child care, yet only 10 percent of those Head Start enrollees actually received full-year full-day child care through the Head Start program.

Now, this doesn't mean that there are not any effective models of coordination. Of course there are, but it does suggest that the current way of doing things makes it difficult to coordinate these programs.

Might there be a better way? Well, let me suggest two possibilities. First, we could strengthen the current Head Start State Collaboration Grants program by providing within the Head Start Act authorization for governors to seek waivers from current Head Start programmatic requirements in order to more effectively coordinate Head Start welfare reform and other funding mechanisms.

A second and, I admit, more controversial suggestion is that we at least consider the possibility of devolving Head Start from a federally administered program to a State administered program for several reasons.

First of all, Head Start has grown too large. There is simply no precedent for a $4 billion Federal-to-local grantee arrangement which touches millions of citizens within the States where the States have absolutely no say over how that program is administered to its own citizens.

Second, over the past 6 years the Federal Government has been downsizing. Both at the Federal level and at the regional offices, we have seen dramatic reductions in the number of Federal employees. This makes oversight of an expanding Head Start program even more difficult. By some estimates, as many as one-third of Head Start grantees are of inadequate quality.

Devolving Head Start to the States for their oversight would allow, in my judgment, for better oversight of the program.

Third, coordination is made especially difficult because Head Start is a federally funded and administered program, whereas the funding streams that come down for welfare-to-work programs and most child care programs pass through the States.

Devolving Head Start also to a State-administered program would allow for more effective coordination of all three of these funding streams.

And finally, there are many lessons learned from Head Start, as Dr. Zigler has pointed out; and by devolving Head Start to the States, one could have more effective cross-pollination of the lessons learned from Head Start into the broader child care communities.

I know that any program to devolve Head Start to the States would be controversial, and so it shouldn't be done controversially and it should not be done simply because I say so. There may be some who would say that it shouldn't be done especially because I say so, but rather the purpose of my offering this idea is to stimulate a discussion about why it is we are continuing to see Head Start as our only and solely federally administered and overseen program.

Perhaps there are good reasons for us to continue to do so, but one of them should not be simply because that is the way that we have already done it. Instead, we should look at the needs of low-income families and their children, especially within the context of welfare reform, and develop even more effective systems for supporting them.

Now, if I can spend 30 seconds on a second issue which is the impact of Head Start. Dr. Zigler is correct, there is a good deal of evidence that Head Start has an impact on children. There is also a large body of evidence that suggests that much of the impact of Head Start fades by the time children reached the third grade.

Now, I want to offer a little perspective here. I am a psychologist, and in my profession we throw wild parties if we can show the effects of psychotherapy last more than 6 months, so 3 years of impact of Head Start is actually quite extraordinary. But while recognizing that, I don't think that we should just simply say so it is better than psychotherapy. What we ought to do is examine ways to make the impact more long lasting.

There is no evidence that suggests that giving multiple years of Head Start has substantially more effectiveness than 1 year of Head Start. In fact, the Perry Preschool program specifically looked at this question of 1 year versus 2 years and found no difference in the impact of a Perry Preschool program, whether the children got 1 or 2 years.

I think the answer is not giving more years of Head Start; the answer is fundamentally changing the systems that they transition into, that is, the schools. That is one of the reasons when I was Commissioner of the Administration for Children, Youth and Families and not the Assistant Secretary, although I appreciate the promotion, that I started the Head Start transition projects to try to change the public schools.

Unfortunately, no results of that initiative have yet been released even though it has been ongoing for 6 to 8 years. And today I recommend a bolder idea. Why not, this Congress, authorize a demonstration program, just a demonstration program, that would provide vouchers to Head Start graduates when they exit Head Start to use in the schools of their choice after they leave Head Start, and compare the effectiveness of Head Start long term with those graduates who get a voucher versus those graduates who go to the government-run public school system?

I offer these ideas not because I think Head Start is a failure. I think it is an exemplary program. I am concerned that the conditions have changed, and that Head Start needs to adjust itself to changing conditions. Thank you very much.

Chairman Riggs. Dr. Horn, thank you for your provocative testimony. We look forward to the Q and A period to follow.

SEE APPENDIX I -- WRITTEN STATEMENT OF DR. WADE HORN, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL FATHERHOOD INITIATIVE, GAITHERSBURG, MARYLAND

Chairman Riggs. Our next witness is a friend and constituent. Ms. Jackie Dollar is the Director of the Napa-Solano Head Start program in Napa, California, and we are still working on a field hearing in my congressional district, hopefully at one of the Head Start facilities that Ms. Dollar oversees, that would culminate, at least at the Subcommittee level, the congressional review and hearing process leading up to the reauthorization.

The Head Start program that Ms. Dollar operates is serves the Solano and Napa County areas, as the name implies. It has centers in Fairfield, Solano County, and in Napa City, Napa County. These programs have been award winning, and Ms. Dollar recently received the Johnson & Johnson Excellence in Management Award, a national citation for the outstanding administration of an early childhood education program.

Jackie, if I can call you that, please proceed with your testimony. Thank you for being here.

Ms. Dollar. Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to represent Head Start practitioners who are doing extraordinary work on behalf of children and families across the country and in the trust territories.

I would like to address three areas this morning: regionalization of Head Start, community collaboration and key issues that would improve Head Start operational effectiveness.

I will begin with regionalization. In 1995, our grantee was awarded a competitive grant to operate the Head Start program in Solano County, a county contiguous to Napa, and this was due to the dissolution of the prior grantee that had been operating Head Start. The grant was awarded on September 14, 1995 and services to families began on January 30, 1996, a 4-month transition.

The impact of change on our agency was significant. It was a 400 percent increase in size, increased our family population from 200 to over 800. Our staff grew from 42 to 150 members. Funding increased from $1 million to $5 million. We grew from a bicultural, two-language program, to a multicultural eight-language program.

Our region grew from 800 square miles to a total of 1,700 square miles. The growth in the number of income-eligible families in our area increased from 800 to over 5,000. We opened 30 classrooms in addition to our existing nine, and hired over 100 staff.

The transition work elements were enormous, and I have included those in my written testimony. We also learned some incredibly valuable lessons on becoming a change agent. I have also included those in my written testimony.

The benefits to the program have been striking. Each county has benefited from the strengths of the other and the weaknesses are better addressed due to the increased, more efficient funding available through consolidation of staff, facilities and focus.

Napa-Solano Head Start continues to grow with the recent expansion into full-day, full-year capacity, and we are opening four new sites in two counties within the next 60 days. And if I can make a comment about privatization and vouchering of Head Start, we have taken a great risk because we have put ourselves in direct competition with all public and private providers within our two-county region. We have developed a universal application and a centralized waiting list, and all families are referred through the Resource and Referral Agency.

Families receive their vouchers at the R&R and have a choice of choosing any provider within our two-county area, and who are they choosing? They are choosing Head Start hands down. Our program is considered the model of all child development programs within the two-county area, and we have a fantastic waiting list for our centers that are opening July 1.

Now I would like to talk about an example of collaboration that Representative Riggs asked me to please comment on this morning.

A hallmark of Napa-Solano Head Start has been very effective results of collaborative partnerships, and I would like to describe to you just one of the many opportunities Napa-Solano Head Start has seized to create new and better services for families and children in our region.

The Fillmore Head Start Center opened in 1996 as a partnership between Head Start, the City of Fairfield, the Police Department, and the Quality Neighborhood Team. The key players included the City of Fairfield, the Police Department, the County Office of Education, and the property owners. The Quality Neighborhood Team needed the attendant services component to revitalize a decaying area, and Head Start needed a facility with a play area. Mr. Silva had vacancies, Mr. Lee had excess parking space, and we negotiated with the city to lease two apartments and the parking lot. Community Development Block Grant funds provided the play equipment. Residents of Fillmore Street and the city staff volunteered to build the playground, and Head Start converted two downstairs apartments for the center.

The Fairfield Redevelopment Agency provides rent support to Head Start, made a loan to the property owner, provides Quality Neighborhood Team staffing and funded landscaping, driveway improvements and exterior painting for all 16 buildings in the neighborhood.

The outcomes have been significant and many. Fillmore area residents have a free, reliable child and family development program. All buildings are attractive and meet building and housing codes. Property values have rebounded. Tenants are connected through a weekly newsletter. Mandatory housecleaning classes are held for every tenant. Microenterprise training is provided to interested tenants. Services for children with disabilities are coordinated on site. Regular tenant meetings and ESL classes are held. The vacancy rate has dropped from 25 percent to 3 percent. Calls for police service dropped from 300 in 1995 to less than 40 in 1997, and serious crime has been virtually eliminated.

From this project and many others we have learned some important considerations when developing partnerships, and I have also included all of those in my written testimony. That brings us to the present, and I would like to talk about some key issues for reauthorization.

Head Start has been a part of the conceptual landscape of services to family in this country for over 33 years. We have weathered some devastating challenges and have enjoyed the exhilarating crest of success. Current issues facing Head Start are diverse. From my perspective, the following are the issues that are important to address now through reauthorization.

The child care block grant compels Head Start to develop strong and effective collaborative partnerships at the State level. When partnering women, both the State and Head Start benefit from the best that each has to offer in program approach and funding. There is a strong program focus on State-Head Start full-day partnering, but the effective strategies to support that at a policy level have not been adequately addressed. I encourage you to support individual choice of partnership selection at the local level.

Second, the State-Head Start collaboration projects are well conceived in purpose and strategy but poorly funded for the larger States, such as California. Currently, the State of Vermont receives nearly the same amount of support as California. The inequities in terms of size, population, participants, travel and complexity cannot be adequately addressed. Please review funding for larger States for collaboration projects.

Third, quality child care is a key success issue for transitioning families from welfare to work. Head Start must be supported to implement this transition from part-day to full-day as appropriate at the local level. Child care and a job do not necessarily create a healthy family. Head Start must be funded to continue to provide the comprehensive family services necessary for many families to be successful employees and good parents. To meet family needs, programs must be supported to address seamless services, birth to school age, through existing funding and also through expansion grants.

Fourth, the income eligibility of families in Head Start remains one of the lowest of all social service programs. This is particularly critical in States with high-cost-of-living areas. A review of the income eligibility and its effect on full-day, full-year participation for working families must be addressed in order to respond to the changing needs of the individual communities served. Currently, a single mom with one child working 40 hours a week at McDonalds on minimum wage is not income eligible for Head Start.

Fifth, program monitoring is a crucial factor in Head Start, maintaining the high quality reputation it has earned. Each qualified Head Start director must be encouraged to participate as a member of the peer monitoring process. Regional offices must be supported in raising the leverage for poor performing grantees. The unevenness in Head Start programs must be addressed and programs assisted with enhanced training opportunities to achieve the level of accountability dictated by the revised performance standards.

Last, but by no means of least importance, the relationship of Head Start programs to their grantee agencies must be reviewed. When Head Start was granted in 1965,