Not every wasteful federal program is ill-intended. For instance, the Head Start program, which provides child care and other services to about 1 million children from low-income families, started in 1965 with the goal of helping poor children get a good beginning in their lives.
And some children were helped. But many were not, as shown by a recent U.S. Department of Health and Human Services study. The study found that any academic or social benefit for Head Start pupils pretty much disappeared by the end of their first-grade year.
Still, our nation pumps more than $9 billion per year into Head Start, and all told we have spent $168 billion on it.
Now, it turns out that money is being used not only ineffectively but in some cases fraudulently.
Federal investigators found that workers at most of the Head Start facilities targeted in a recent sting falsified information to let parents put children in Head Start even if the parents exceeded the income limits.
“Now you see it, now you don’t,” a worker in New Jersey told investigators posing as parents who earned tens of thousands of dollars more than is allowed for their children to be in Head Start. The worker simply lied about the couple’s income, The New York Times reported.
At a Texas Head Start, multiple families earning more than $110,000 were able to enroll their children. The maximum income is supposed to be about $29,000 for a family of four.
Whatever your views on the effectiveness of Head Start, it is troubling that it appears to be mired in fraud — at taxpayer expense.