Head Start A 50 Year Flop? Say It Ain’t So, Joe

[Valin]

Via Meadia:

Walter Russel Mead
1/12/12

“Head Start” has been the poster child of federal aid to education ever since the Lyndon Johnson administration introduced it as part of the Great Society. And for decades liberals have pointed to it as one of the great advances that the federal government has brought to education, and as evidence that creative social engineering by smart professional interventionists can change the world.

But a long-suppressed government report finally released by the Obama administration report is shaking the foundations of Head Start, and the news isn’t coming from right wing conservatives but from Joe Klein at Time magazine. As Klein reports,

We spend more than $7 billion providing Head Start to nearly 1 million children each year. And finally there is indisputable evidence about the program’s effectiveness, provided by the Department of Health and Human Services: Head Start simply does not work.

(Snip)

Choose a reply..
A. But we mean well
B. It's only $7,000,000,000
C. You're a racists
D. We need to spend more
E. All of the above

[Jill]

Yes, Klein's article came out last summer and finally revealed that Head Start wasn't anything close to the successful program that the left has claimed it was for decades. They had the data saying otherwise, and tried to twist it and turn it in order to claim any long-term benefit from Head Start, but they found nothing. Being the left, they still want to throw good money after bad - it just looks like a "free" childcare outfit to me.