Head Start?

The Ragister editorial board fails miserably in their buttering up
of CommieTommie Harkin as well as their defense of the Head Start program.

Head Start's success has been proven
Congress needs to continue this difference-maker

I'm always instantly leery of anything that is deemed "proven" when it can be disputed, especially when it's voiced by fiberals and the scientific community is united in that fact.

The foole's at the Ragister state --

Head Start works. Unlike other endeavors the government funds, this one has been intensely studied, tracking children over long periods of time and evaluating the impact of the program.

Really?

That bastion of Conservatism, Joe Klein, disagrees.

Writing in Time, July 7 of this year, Klein states --

We spend more than $7 billion providing Head Start to nearly 1 million children each year. And finally there is indisputable evidence about the program's effectiveness, provided by the Department of Health and Human Services: Head Start simply does not work.

Proven?

Klein continued --

According to the Head Start Impact Study, which was quite comprehensive, the positive effects of the program were minimal and vanished by the end of first grade. Head Start graduates performed about the same as students of similar income and social status who were not part of the program. These results were so shocking that the HHS team sat on them for several years, according to Russ Whitehurst of the Brookings Institution, who said, "I guess they were trying to rerun the data to see if they could come up with anything positive. They couldn't."

The Head Start Impact Study was mandated by Congress during the 1998 reauthorization of the program and it found little impact on student well-being. After collecting data on more than 5,000 three and four-year-old children randomly assigned to either a Head Start or a non Head Start control group, the Department of Health and Human Services found “few sustained benefits”.

Why is wasting more of our taxpayer dollars one of the highest priorities for the Ragister and CommieTommie?