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Article: A head start to nowhere? Four decades and $66,000,000,000 after Head Start was launched, "the school readiness gap between poor children and their middle-class peers remains stubbornly large ... Perhaps ... no government program ever can compensate for what a hard life takes away.".(Education)
- Article from:
- USA TODAY
- Article date:
- July 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Society for the Advancement of Education. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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ON AVERAGE, poor children enter school with far fewer vocabulary, literacy, math, and social skills than their middle-class peers. They start off a step behind and never catch up; the gap in academic proficiency follows them to the end of their schooling.
Since 1965, taxpayers have spent more than $66,000,000,000 on Head Start to provide comprehensive health, social, educational, and mental health services to low income children. Currently, the $6,600,000,000 program enrolls more than 900,000 three- and four-year-olds at a cost of roughly $7,000 per pupil. The Department of Health and Human Services directly funds Head Start's 19,000 centers, which are operated by ...