The Trump administration is reportedly “preparing a major rollback of federal requirements for Head Start.” Long-time readers may recall my repeated harangues regarding that decades-long money pit, so I was pleased to read the next part: “a change that supporters of the child care program fear could gut its longstanding antipoverty mission.”
Cue the usual panic stricken headlines: Children will die! Left behind! Racism! I hope they follow through with this, but I'm still seeing a department of education, so I suppose we can hope for reduced spending at least until 2028.
It's a feature of our system that one person can only do so much. Given the near-50/50 split in Congress and the Dems' "oppose Trump on all things" philosophy, things like DOE abolition are frozen out by the numbers.
It’s disappointing to realize just how few people recognize the out of control spending that takes place. Since 2000 it’s been a never ending borrowing cycle.
The worst part about all those interminable federal government programs and bureaus is that virtually none of them have any constitutional basis for existence. They are almost invariably well outside the scope of the "few and defined" powers granted to the federal government by the Constitution, yet "we the people" (in a generic sense - certainly not me or you) continually cry for ever more government intervention in our lives.
I I adopted Warren through a social services special needs adoption program when he was eight years old. He was placed in the Head Start No Children Left Behind program when he was three years old. He participated in special needs/developmental disability programs through the 12th grade. No Cild Left Behind was basically a babysitting service. His special needs schooling was effective in learning rudimentary life skills, social skills, and some basic educational skills. He has no maths skills and, even though he was taught in every grade since third, to make change for a dollar bill, he still cannot do so. Every year he was enrolled in a couple of general education classes, i.e. social studies, history, music, etc. Imagine my surprise every year when he pulled A’s and B’s in his gen ed classes while unable to do simple math and his handwriting was illegible. He learned to read after he came to us by reading closed captioning that was always on while watching t.v. I am profoundly hard of hearing and closed captioning was always on on our t.v.’s. His reading skills are his best skills to this day. There is no doubt in my mind that Head Start did nothing for his education, his gen ed grades were a product of the school and teachers wanting to score highly in the school academic ratings published yearly. They fought hard to keep him out of the student testing done yearly to determine those scores. They lost that battle and instead he was given accommodations when taking the tests. His scores were minuscule. His high school diploma is a joke to me. He is twenty one years old now and has participated in Occupational Rehab and Employment Skills programs since graduating. He has been deemed unemployable at this time and I was told to give him a couple of years to mature and try again then.
These programs do all seem to devolve into babysitting services. Indeed, some of the coverage on Head Start I read in the context of Trump's actions suggested the same thing - and defended the devolution.
Cue the usual panic stricken headlines: Children will die! Left behind! Racism! I hope they follow through with this, but I'm still seeing a department of education, so I suppose we can hope for reduced spending at least until 2028.
It's a feature of our system that one person can only do so much. Given the near-50/50 split in Congress and the Dems' "oppose Trump on all things" philosophy, things like DOE abolition are frozen out by the numbers.
It’s disappointing to realize just how few people recognize the out of control spending that takes place. Since 2000 it’s been a never ending borrowing cycle.
They don't care. It's like losing weight. People want a way to do so that does not require any behavior changes on their part.
The worst part about all those interminable federal government programs and bureaus is that virtually none of them have any constitutional basis for existence. They are almost invariably well outside the scope of the "few and defined" powers granted to the federal government by the Constitution, yet "we the people" (in a generic sense - certainly not me or you) continually cry for ever more government intervention in our lives.
I I adopted Warren through a social services special needs adoption program when he was eight years old. He was placed in the Head Start No Children Left Behind program when he was three years old. He participated in special needs/developmental disability programs through the 12th grade. No Cild Left Behind was basically a babysitting service. His special needs schooling was effective in learning rudimentary life skills, social skills, and some basic educational skills. He has no maths skills and, even though he was taught in every grade since third, to make change for a dollar bill, he still cannot do so. Every year he was enrolled in a couple of general education classes, i.e. social studies, history, music, etc. Imagine my surprise every year when he pulled A’s and B’s in his gen ed classes while unable to do simple math and his handwriting was illegible. He learned to read after he came to us by reading closed captioning that was always on while watching t.v. I am profoundly hard of hearing and closed captioning was always on on our t.v.’s. His reading skills are his best skills to this day. There is no doubt in my mind that Head Start did nothing for his education, his gen ed grades were a product of the school and teachers wanting to score highly in the school academic ratings published yearly. They fought hard to keep him out of the student testing done yearly to determine those scores. They lost that battle and instead he was given accommodations when taking the tests. His scores were minuscule. His high school diploma is a joke to me. He is twenty one years old now and has participated in Occupational Rehab and Employment Skills programs since graduating. He has been deemed unemployable at this time and I was told to give him a couple of years to mature and try again then.
These programs do all seem to devolve into babysitting services. Indeed, some of the coverage on Head Start I read in the context of Trump's actions suggested the same thing - and defended the devolution.