A mother holds her daughter as the executive director for Chattanooga Organized for Action speaks to parents about saving their community Early Head Start program at North Chattanooga Recreation Center.HEADLINE: Sequester brings cuts to North Chattanooga Head Start program
THE RECAP: The North Chattanooga Head Start is among sites across the nation closing because of federal sequestration. Federally funded Head Start services will be discontinued for 70,000-plus children throughout America, but North Chattanooga is the only site of the 15 in Chattanooga that will close. The move is expected to keep more than 60 children from the Head Start/Early Head Start programs.
DREW’S VIEW: Oh no! That means North Chattanooga parents are going to have to take responsibility for their own children, rather than pawning them off on a government program that has been proven ineffective. Heaven forbid!
Not one child who was, or would have been, served by the North Chattanooga Head Start program will be any worse off because it closed. That’s because Head Start doesn’t work. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services discovered as much in a recent study.
The government study, which hoped to find positive outcomes as a result of Head Start, instead found that, “Out of the 142 outcomes measured in four categories — cognitive, social-emotional, health and parenting practices — Head Start produced no measurable patterns of beneficial outcomes for its students.” Zero.