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7-14-1998 in: 06AM
FROM MARY BOURDETTE 96905750
P. 1
HUMAN SERVICES USA
DATE:7/13/98
&
HEALTH
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
OF
200 INDEPENDENCE AVE., SW
DEPARTMENT
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20201
PHONE: (202) 690-6311
FAX: (202) 690-8425
OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR LEGISLATION
HUMAN SERVICES LEGISLATION
ROOM 413 H HUMPHREY BUILDING
FROM:
TO
: Barbara Chow 395-5730
[X ] MARY M. BOURDETTE
Nicole/Jen/Neera 156-2878 Deputy Asst. Sec.
Melinda Haskins
OFFICE
:
ROOM NO
:
PHONE NO :
FAX NO
:
TOTAL PAGES
INCLUDING COVER) : 3
REMARKS: Here's the House Republican (i.e. Riggs/Goodling) list of what they
"might" include in their Head Start reauthorization bill. Obviously we need
to see their actual legislative language (which we hope to see soon), but
clearly there are a number of serious problems here including the 75/25
quality V. expansion split, the overly specific performance measures (and how
to enforce - through a national test?), the paternity measure and the
waivers. While the vouchers and scholarships are not on this list, I
understand they are still under consideration.
The plan is for Riggs to mark-up in full committee on the 22nd, but most
expect that date to slip. We'll keep you posted.
7-14-1998
10:06AM
FROM MARY BOURDETTE 96905750
P.2
FILE No. 258 V7/14 'Y8 09:24 ID:EDUCATION CLUSTER
202 225 3614
PAGE
Differences between S. 2206 and House Draft Bill
2
EARLY HEAD START AUTHORIZATION- Draft bill includes a 7% set-aside for FY 99-01
and up to a 10% set-aside for FY 02-03, provided HHS has issued a report to Congress on the
results of the Early Head Start Impact Study by January 1, 2001
INCREASE QUALITY MONEY: Goodling issue
26-497-33
FY 99
75% quality - 25% expansion
FY00
75% quality - 25% expansion
FY01
50% quality - 50% expansion
FY 02
50% quality - 50% expansion
75
FY 03
25% quality - 80% expansion
Draft bill retains requirement that 50% of quality money must be spent on salaries. It also
retains Senate language that stipulates that preferences in awarding saiary increases, in excess
of cost of living allowances. shall be granted to classroom teachers and staff who obtain
additional training or education related to their responsibilities as employees of a Head Start
program.
Draft also stipulates that after quality money has been expended on salaries. of the remaining
quality money, the highest priority for quality dollars should be spent on training classroom
teachers and other staff :
to meet education performance standards in the Senate bill;
to train staff in activities listed in the Senate bill. and;
to train classroom staff to provide "competent staff" activities (note: competent staff activities
are defined in the Senate bill).
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Draft bill requires that, by the year 2003, the majority of Head Start classrooms will have a
teacher with a college degree. Retain Senate language on competent staff.
at least AA
LOCAL PERFORMANCE MEASURES
Draft bill retains Senate language on performance measures and local monitoring. However,
the draft stipulates that HHS must develop local performance measures by January 1, 2000. In
addition, the bill adds four performance measures to measure newly established education
performance standards. Measures are as follows:
1. Knows that alphabet letters are a special category of visual graphics that can be individually
named.
2. Recognizes a word as a unit of print.
3. Identifies at least 10 alphabet letters.
4. Associate sounds with written names.
PATERNITY REQUIREMENT
Draft bill requires Head Start grantees to certify in their plan that. prior to delivering services
to a family, they require custodial parents (in cases where there is an absent parent) to
7-14-1998 10:07AM FROM MARY BOURDETTE 96905750
P.3
FILE No. 258 07/14 '98 09:24 ID:EDUCATION CLUSTER
202 225 3614
PAGE
2dnd full committer
cooperate with the State child support agency to establish a child's paternity and to obtain child
support from the non-custodial parent.
FORMULA CHANGE
Draft bill retains Senate language on 1998 hold harmless, but stipulates that new money go out
based on most recent child poverty data.
WAIVER AUTHORITY
FAMILY LITERACY DEMO
HUMAN SERVICES USA
DATE: 6/18/98
&
HEALTH
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
OF
200 INDEPENDENCE AVE., SW
DEPARTMENT
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20201
PHONE: (202) 690-6311
FAX: (202) 690-8425
OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR LEGISLATION
HUMAN SERVICES LEGISLATION
ROOM 413 H HUMPHREY BUILDING
FROM:
TO
: Melinda Haskins 395-6148
[ X] MARY M. BOURDETTE
Jen/Neera/Nicole 156
Deputy Asst. Sec.
Emil Parker
OFFICE
:
ROOM NO :
PHONE NO :
FAX NO
:
TOTAL PAGES
5
INCLUDING COVER) :
REMARKS: Here's a piece we did earlier that gets to the crux of the
difference we are having with the R's -- the issue of mandating a study with
a national control group. GAO is behind this effort, including that their
recommendations be legislatively mandated -- despite the fact that leading
researchers do not think it makes sense. Lets stay in touch on this.
Research
FROM MARY BOURDETTE 96905750
6-18-1998 12 33PM
GAO REPORT ON HEAD START RESEARCH
QUESTION: According to a recent GAO report, existing studies fail to fully establish what
impacts or outcomes the Head Start program produces. Therefore, GAO recommended that
HHS expand its research plan for Head Start to include an impact assessment. GAO stated
(page 19) impact research "could be done that would allow the Congress and HHS officials to
know with more certainty whether the $4 billion dollar federal investment in Head Start is
making a difference." Do you agree with this recommendation?
ANSWER: The GAO states that random assignment studies on Head Start effects are needed
in light of the new results-oriented environment of the Federal Government. However, the
Department has created a wealth of new initiatives and systems to promote stronger
accountability and program quality, notably the Head Start Quality Research Consortium. In
1995, the Head Start Bureau established four Quality Research Centers (QRCs). One
objective of the QRCs is to work cooperatively to develop and test instruments to gather
information on program performance measures. In 1996, the Head Start Bureau established a
Performance Measure Center which will use these instruments to conduct the Head Start
Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES). The FACES is an ambitious effort to assess
the performance of the Head Start program on an ongoing basis through a national
longitudinal study of a representative sample of Head Start children and their families.
We are convinced that the current research design will allow us to have an ongoing,
longitudinal data collection on representative Head Start children, families, staff and
programs. The Performance Measures are in place, and we will continue to develop, test and
refine the instruments as necessary to provide periodic, regular data on these objectives. The
ability to compare data with nationally normed instruments, as well as other data from large
national surveys, will provide good indicators of how Head Start children measure up to their
peers. In addition, the use of observational measures of program quality, often used in
national studies of preschools and day care centers, will provide Head Start with ongoing
assessments of the educational quality of classroom environments. Finally, the opportunity to
link indicators of program quality with child outcome data over time will provide the
strongest test of program accountability.
The Head Start research agenda has been shaped over the years based on input from a number
of leading researchers from the field. The various researchers that have been consulted
consistently have recommended against conducting a single nationally-representative impact
study of the effectiveness of Head Start due to a variety of ethical, methodological and
logistical difficulties. In 1990, the Advisory Panel for the Head Start Evaluation Design
Project put forth a set of research recommendations in the publication "Head Start Research
and Evaluation: A Blueprint for the Future."
P. 2
FROM MARY BOURDETTE 96905750
6-18-1998 12:33PM
"An overall research strategy rather than a single large scale study is the appropriate
framework or addressing critical Head Start research and evaluation questions. The
Panel recommends strongly against a single large-scale study of Head Start as the
principal mechanism for seeking answers to the pivotal research questions highlighted
above. The methodological requirements for the new generation of research and
evaluation issues do not lend themselves to large-scale evaluations that treat Head
Start as a single program. Head Start is not, in any simple sense, a uniform
"treatment." The common denominator of Head Start programs nationwide is
conformity to a set of regulatory performance standards that reflect comprehensive
service requirements in education, parent involvement, social services, and health
services. But programs are allowed and encouraged broad flexibility in how they
deliver the required component services. Moreover, Head Start programs serve
children in different regions and subeconomies of American society. They serve a
number of minority groups and address issues of bilingualism and multiculturalism.
They embody a variety of programmatic formulas and intentions created by local
Head Start staff to respond to the unique needs of families in their communities
It is important to note then, in the view of the Panel, randomized studies designed to
compare the effects of Head Start against the effects of nonparticipation ("treatment
vs. no treatment") are generally no longer viable options. First, as ACYF progresses
toward the Administration's goal of universal services for all eligible children, the
potential for withholding services to form a control group, already difficult for ethical
and practical reasons, will cease to be an option. Second, in view of the expansion of
State and public school preschool programs and developmental child care, it is
unrealistic to expect to find in most communities a representative group of
"untreated" eligible children, even if Head Start services are not provided.
There are a variety of more specific barriers to a randomized study design reflected in the
summary comments of the Panel. First, recruitment of children and families for Head Start is
guided by mandates to serve the most needy of eligible families and to incorporate a
minimum of 10% of children with disabilities in each program. A randomized, control group
design would mean that agencies would be expected to recruit a sufficiently large pool of
children with special needs to provide both a treatment and control group with at least 10%
children with disabilities - and then to inform roughly one-half of the parents that they would
not be allowed to enroll in Head Start. Second, in some states and many communities, Head
Start is already serving more than a majority of the eligibility children and families. For
example, in Ohio, the combination of state contributions and federal Head Start resources is
estimated to be sufficient to serve 85% of all eligible families. In these situations, it would be
impossible to conduct the form of evaluation recommended by GAO because of a lack of
sufficient numbers of unserved children to comprise a control group. In addition, because of
the very success of Head Start-state collaborations and Head Start-child care partnerships, it is
difficult to determine whether control group children are actually participating in care that is
totally non-Head Start.
E
FROM MARY BOURDETTE 96905750
6-18-1998 34PM
One of the other violations to the basic assumptions of randomization is the mobility of low-
income populations like Head Start. The Transition study and other research have
documented the large number of moves among this population. Having children leaving
treatment in unpredictable numbers and at unpredictable time points corrupts the random
assignment design. Crossovers from program to comparison or vice versa are also common.
Randomization also assumes that everyone in the treatment group and everyone in the control
group gets the same treatment (program) within their group. However, it is virtually assured
that control group children will participate in a wide range of other early childhood programs
and settings, of varying levels of quality, intensity, and comparability to the standard of Head
Start services. In the first place, it would be difficult to coordinate recruitment and enrollment
processes across these various program options, in order to identify the full range of eligible
children before they are recruited/enrolled into other programs. Second, it would be
challenging and expensive to track these other arrangements (including transitions between
programs during the year and instances where children participate in a combination of several
different programs simultaneously.) Further, it would be very difficult to interpret or use the
results of a study that compares Head Start participation with such a wide range of other
forms of programming. The types of available alternative programming, and the selection
effects that contribute to parental choices of these programs are locally-determined. They
include such factors as the welfare reform requirements parents face (and their resulting need
for child care), child care licensing standards and effects on the formal and informal child care
market, as well as cultural factors of the community such as ethnicity and family composition
that affect choices parents make.
Finally, GAO has suggested in their 1997 report and in testimony this year that
alternative strategies such as randomly accelerating and delaying Head Start services
or studying partial VS. full versions of Head Start services should be considered as
suitable for evaluation of Head Start effects. However, both of these recommended
strategies have serious flaws and would not provide useful evidence on the central
question of Head Start's effectiveness. Delaying/accelerating Head Start treatment
would presumably involve serving some children as 3-year-olds and others as 4-year-
olds. It would be difficult to draw appropriate comparisons between outcomes from
these different forms of Head Start treatment, given the varying capacities of children
of different ages and the correspondingly different expectations of appropriate
outcomes for these different sets of participants. Such a delayed entry control design
would, in most localities, change the fundamental way in which programs are
operating. For example, current recruitment and enrollment patterns indicate that
programs serving three year olds may select them according to special criteria
(including being at greater risk than fout-year-olds, and deemed by the program to be
in need of services for a longer period).
The proposed design of partial vs. full versions of Head Start would contend with
many of the same complications as the treatment/no-treatment design, given that
D
FROM MARY BOURDETTE 96905750
WASE 8661-81-9
parents would be unlikely to be satisfied with assignment to the "watered-down" or
partial versions of Head Start and could choose not to participate. In addition, this
design would not produce answers to the central questions of outcomes and payoff of
the existing comprehensive Head Start program that drive the call for more research.
The current body of research on early childhood interventions does achieve consensus
on some points. When studying program effects, it is imperative to take into account
such factors as family and neighborhood characteristics, culture and language, quality
and intensity of services received (including observation of classrooms and caregive-
child interaction), as well as parent participation in and satisfaction with the program.
There is less consensus about the best methodolgy for answering questions about
program effectiveness. Some researchers advocate using comparisons to nationally
normed instruments or large-scale studies, while others insist that random assignment
designs are the standard, however difficult to carry out in real-life situations. Given
this divergence of opinion on such an important question, perhaps the best recourse
would be to seek consensus and advice from experts called together by an external
scientific organization, such as the National Academy of Sciences.
P.5
FROM MARY BOURDETTE 96905750
6-18-1998 35PM
Conf can 6/18
Head Start
back of forth Di &R's H/S
work together to reach a bepart trill - paend ( Sen
to rach
uc - only way / Sen Labor com.
both sides leverage
Sen. -
blg -
HHS - met of H - S - subcommentee staff
Dold, Coat, Riggs
Oliva has wet
constlers brifing - research i'mes
GAO -part
born sides talking - mark-up- - slipping
Sen L - next wed in full Comm
House - not marking oft tuly 4.
Sen R stuff disc draft
Fri from at Cakst
read it quickly / come up draft of views letter 4
position for Wed marking.
Issues:
Our bill- status quo - no magor change
'94
4
YE anth
EHS 7%
10
fellows - / -2 mil
chean up ptuff
new gnal study
H - 5
3 y anth anth
R - seem willing - 10 % - tont not at same pace.
6,7,8,9,10
D - may want to go up more quickly
Hakin roncom, moved it to 6% in approp.
,95 law -
cur a prov-
prof. dev.
plane for new
grants to GN -
R - waiver stuff -
Gov dev a plan - Ser anth -
for disap kill us if they
me proz. -
-ch- - had to
approve.
pros need
(Moving away. -
TOP priority
D - NO
For Profit - apply to run h.s. program.
most needay, desab., etc
- contracts - priv
- expensent 4 review
- proofy for maprof. t
Collab w/ then prog - full day/ fullyear
R V. imp to Them
We've sand pronty tous - but we dont want a
Q mand no birding
concern int priority over children - 6/c
Then we d never expand
School readiness, reading literacy.
H-s prepare kids for zchool
Prenemic awareness
Nat testz"
Impact study of control group
Impl.
11/2 can / 1/2 cand
to study
Lumited
outcome data
Faces. / measures - normed on kids, outcome That way
Sep Qual set-aside for EHS:
More input- -
current applies
portn of EHS
some % to 80
LSBG Like
for qual
droft moot now
EHS - what #
Warvers / for profect (how imp?)
Ashcroft chankable choice - keep ions on wall
Faith -
where we'd he
1048
Innov merghborhoods. -
Bob wood
SUMMARY:
EARLY CHILDHOOD, YOUTH AND FAMILIES
SUBCOMMITTEE HEARING
ON THE HEAD START PROGRAM
9 JUNE 1998
The panel of witnesses generally focussed on three themes: Teacher training and qualification;
family literacy and children's literary experiences in the home; and, whether control/oversight of
H.S. programs should be national or local.
Witnesses generally agreed that H.S. programs should be encouraged to collaborate with family
literacy programs in order to ensure solid preparation for learning during the elementary school
years. There was also general consensus that goals for H.S. should be implemented (there are
currently in place operating standards, but no goals or aspirations), but there was disagreement
over whether it is best to make these goals national or local. Generally, however, witnesses
agreed that H.S. curricula should be designed and implemented on a regional level, so as to take
into account localized needs.
Chairman Riggs expressed his support for H.S., and asked several questions during the Q&A
portion of the hearing, concerning funding choices: Should quantity or quality be emphasized?
Witnesses agreed that quality is more important. Riggs's subcommittee is looking at increasing
Early H.S. from 5% to 10% of the H.S. budget over the next five years (with a 1% increase
each year), and expects to have a working draft of the Reauthorization bill sometime within the
next three weeks.
SUMMARY OF TESTIMONY:
Dr. Edward Zigler, "father" of Head Start and director of the Yale Bush Center on Child
Development and Social Policy, Yale University.
Focus: The quality of Head Start teachers, and the quality of H.S. curriculum.
"Head Start is improving, but today, one area needs more attention above all others. Since Day
One of Head Start, early childhood educators have been unhappy with the quality of staff
qualifications. Only about 50% have a college degree. While some teachers have a CDA, many
cannot afford the costs of pursuing one. Many poor people who work for Head Start don't have
the money for better training and certification. A CDA is not enough. To attract "A"-level
teachers, we need better compensation. The average pay of an elementary school teacher in this
country is $33,000/yr, while the average Head Start teacher earns $17,000/yr."
On the issue of H.S. curriculum, Dr. Zigler talked about his own studies of possible curricula,
conducted twenty years ago. He found that no particular model was particularly superior, but
warns that this does not excuse lack of lesson planning in H.S. centers. Because a uniform
curriculum was not mandated at the onset of H.S., many centers did not bother to implement one;
they are play-based centers, not learning-based.
Suggestions: The primary goal of H.S. should be school readiness. Many poor children arrive in
Kindergarten unprepared for learning. H.S. is a chance to give them good health, a sound,
positive environment, and solid socio-emotional development. As H.S. reauthorization goes
through, I would like to see two measures: (1) quality control measures to assure meaningful
curricula implementation; and, (2) provisions for an annual national sample of performance so
that we can assess the success of H.S. curricula.
Dr. Catherine Snow, chairwoman, human development and psychology, Harvard Graduate
School of Education.
Focus: reading development and the importance of the preschool period in developing the skills
necessary for literary success. She sees H.S. as a "prevention program" ideal for combating
reading difficulties. Dr. Snow made four major points in her testimony:
(1) Which children typically have trouble with reading? Kids with poor oral skills and
unfamiliarity with print letters. These are kids who cannot recognize the alphabet, cannot write
their name, and may not even know which way to turn the pages of a book.
(2) Language and early literary skills demand a rich literary experience in H.S.
(3) Studies show that early childhood educators and parents can be taught how to connect with
kids through literary encounters. Where kids have one-on-one conversations with adults, kids
acquire a better knowledge of words and print. Poor kids are typically worse off because they
tend to have fewer opportunities for meaningful literary interactions. Dimensions of quality can
only be improved through early childhood education.
(4) Teachers can be trained, so investing money in teacher training leads to better H.S. quality.
Those teachers with an appropriate depth of understanding ensure a better learning experience for
H.S. children.
Bonnie Freeman, assistant director of the National Center for Family Literacy.
Focus: How family literacy programs can join with H.S. to enhance and support the preschool
experience. She highlighted three successful collaborative endeavors: (1) Pima County, AZ,
where the Family Literacy Council works with H.S. to make sure kids' parents are literate; (2)
Washington DC, where H.S. and the Morton(?)/Adams Elementary School collaborate; and, (3)
the state of South Carolina, in which the National Center for Family Literacy works with H.S.
centers to develop and explore the role of welfare and family literacy.
"When parents are illiterate, they cannot reach a higher educational level or a better class status.
H.S. has historically engaged parents and supported their involvement by giving them access to
programs and guiding curriculum. Success for parents with poor literary skills helps ensure a
more literal-richness for young children."
"I do not see an 'either-or' proposition here. We should support both family literacy programs
and H.S., because the two support each other. Parents must enter the workforce (because of
TANF requirements), and this adds new stress to the family. Previously, adults with poor literary
skills were just sent to non-specific adult education programs. Now, adult ed. is inadequate
because some programs are inaccessible to adults (lack of space, geographic distances), and
others are useless because they do not establish clear goals for participants."
Suggestions: (1) Congress should implement a new working definition of Family Literacy
Services, because comprehensive services are necessary to make H.S. work. (2) Reauth. Bill
should include a measure for monitoring the effects of coordination between higher teacher skills
and better H.S. experience for kids. (3) Congress should fund training to develop internal
expertise (the NCFL has trained over 10,000 H.S. teachers). (4) The Reauth. Bill should open
legal avenues for collaborative partnerships.
Dr. Wade Horn, president of the National Fatherhood Initiative, and former Commissioner of
the Children, Youth, and Families Initiative under the Bush Administration.
Focus: H.S. should be devolved from Federal to State governed. H.S. is too large for the Fed.
government to monitor, making it hard to oversee quality. Further, if H.S. were State-controlled,
it would be easier to coordinate with CCDBG and TANF, since both are State programs.
"Workfare is not designed to be part day/part year, but H.S. is. This is a barrier to constructing a
healthy TANF-H.S. partnership. 40% of H.S. enrollees need full-time child care, but only about
10% get it."
Suggestions: Do not invest money in making H.S. multiple-year, because there is no research to
suggest that additional years of H.S. schooling make a big difference in children. Research does
show that the impact of H.S. schooling 'fades' by the 3d grade. Do put money aside for a
voucher program, so that H.S. graduates could attend the school of their choice. (This would
enable researchers to monitor whether H.S. graduates fare better in public or private schools.)
Jackie Dollar, director of the Napa-Solano (CA) Head Start program.
Focus: Regionalism is the key to success in H.S. programs. Local H.S. centers should have
freedom over their curricula implementation, because a Federally-mandated H.S. curriculum
would not be able to take into account each individual neighborhood's needs.
"A grant given to us in September 1995 enabled us to increase the size of the program by 400%.
We went from 200 to 800 families. Our budget increased from $1 million to $5 million. We
opened thirty more classrooms and hired more staff. There is a central office with waiting lists,
and a universal application form. Yet each community within the region can address its own
weaknesses through its own goals."
"A hallmark of collaborative partnerships is the Fillmore H.S. center in Fairfield, CA. There, the
H.S. program works with police, the City of Fairfield, the City Office of Education, and a
neighborhood 'team' of parents. Each element provides a service: the City gives us rent support,
landscaping services, and paint. The police have a substation on site, to ensure safety. The Office
of Ed. negotiated block grants to provide playground equipment, which the 'team' used to build a
playground. The neighborhood has benefited: the vacancy rate has dropped from 25% to 3%,
serious crime has been eliminated, property values have gone up, and there are more ESL classes
for bi-lingual families."
Suggestions: CCDBG partnerships should allow individual choice of collaboration partners. H.S.
must provide full-day services to meet family needs, particularly those affected by TANF work
requirements. A review of income eligibility is necessary (currently, a single mom with one
baby, working at McDonald's 50 hrs/wk., is not economically eligible for H.S.).
Corey Aguillar, President of the Los Angeles County Board of Education, Executive Member of
the Children's Play Center. Ms. Aguillar is responsible for operating the largest H.S. program in
the nation, with 15 school districts, 15 non-profit agencies, and two cities. 21,000 children are
served in this district.
Focus: School readiness and family literacy. The foundation of a child's success is richness of
literary experiences in the home. HR 3880 (Martinez, D-CA) supports better transition services
from H.S. to elementary school. Such a bill should look at staff development, teacher-student
ratios, continuity, and curriculum.
Suggestions: The Reauth. Bill should require specific literacy services for the whole family; H.S.
should be linked to literacy services as well as pre-employment training. The E.L.F. should be
expanded, along with early H.S., to support cognitive and social development. Concrete
objectives and timelines for a child's achievement should be established. H.S. should work with
the Dept. of Justice to ensure the safety of H.S. environments. Parents' child care skills training
should count towards their TANF educational requirements. Reauth. Bill should include goal of
serving 1 million families by 2003.
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Chmn. Riggs (R-CA): Will the Dept. of Ed.'s recommendations on H.S. learning be enough?
Dr. Snow: It's a step in the right direction, but we should see more focus on language and
literacy, because social development alone is not sufficient for preparing children for school.
Dr. Zigler: But local community control is best, not one national curriculum. We need clear
goals, and these can be uniform, but we need to allow individualized approaches to those goals.
Dr. Snow: The problem is, we have uniform standards, but not uniform practices. I would like to
see that all H.S. programs emphasize adult interactions, book reading, and literary challenges.
Chmn. Riggs: Dr. Horn, where do we go from here if H.S. doesn't "devolve" from Federal
controls to State controls?
Dr. Horn: As Dr. Zigler said, we do not know which one curriculum is best. We also don't know
whether kids are better off with one or two years of H.S. - whether that really makes a big
difference. H.S. is not a "one-shot inoculation" against crime, abuse, neglect, and illiteracy.
Chmn. Riggs: How do you promote literacy in non-English households?
Ms. Freeman: Parents come to family literacy programs for ESL classes, and their academic time
is conducted in English. However, parent training is done in the native language. Neither
language is "promoted" by the family literacy program; that is left to agency case workers.
Ms. Aguillar: Speaking and reading English should be a goal for H.S. kids. They should be ready
to master English by the time they get to Kind. But, families make the difference for kids'
readiness. We all must learn English, but we must not jeopardize familial relations by rejecting a
family's native language. Communication between parents and kids should not be broken down.
Dr. Snow: If English is the dominant language in H.S., the kids will realize the importance of
speaking English and will learn it. Kids who arrive in Kind. with strong language skills in any
language, whether Spanish or Chinese or English, will be poised for success in learning.
Rep. Martinez: If H.S. children do "fade-out" in elementary school, it's the fault of the school.
As Ms. Aguillar says, there should be continuity with K-12 education. Parental involvement and
further education helps in combating fade-out. But how do we reconcile doubling H.S. funds
with doubling the training of H.S. teachers? Shouldn't we instead put money towards K-12
teachers? They touch everyone.
Dr. Zigler: It depends on what you're trying to accomplish. I have evidence that two years of
H.S. are better than one year. But right now, 70%* of eligible children are not getting even one
year. (*this number contested by Dr. Horn, who estimates the percentage of unmet need among
H.S.-eligible children to be closer to 20%.) We should do a cost-benefits analysis of whether it's
better to have H.S. teachers with a BA or a CDA.
Rep. Martinez: What is quality? What is "readiness"?
Dr. Zigler: This is tough to define. 35% of kids are not ready for Kindergarten in the average
school district; this rises to 65% in rural "slums" (according to Kind. teachers). We need to set
clear goals for H.S., focussing on language, behavior, oral communications, heath, etc. H.S. has
always had minimum operating standards, but never specific goals.
Dr. Horn: We need to see not just whether H.S. prepares kids for Kind., but whether Kind. is
prepared for these kids.
Rep. Roemer (D-IN): Should Congress reauthorize with specific readiness standards?
Dr. Zigler: We have performance standards. These are different from goals, which H.S. has never
had. We have basic minimums, not aspirations. (Supported by Drs. Snow and Carlotta Joyner.)
Rep. Roemer: We pay zookeepers and car attendants more than we pay those caring for our kids.
I think we need better pay and better qualification standards and more incentives to stay on.
Dr. Zigler: Amen! I would like to see higher pay for higher-educated teachers.
Dr. Snow: Attrition is terrible at the low end of the pay scale. But the rate of attrition in the state
of MA was halved ten years ago, when state gov. started putting in funds for training.
Ms. Dollar: We had to compete with CA public schools for teachers because they make more in
the public schools. 50% or our program is funded by parent fees, and we cannot charge them
more in order to pay teachers more.
Chmn. Riggs: Should the primary goal of H.S. be school readiness?
Snow, Zigler, Aguillar: Yes.
Dr. Horn: I'm more ambivalent. Transition should not just focus on "ready," but ready for what?
adjourned: 1.45pm
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Helping Families Move
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