Landrieu lauds Head Start efforts

LAFAYETTE — Sen. Mary Landrieu visited the United Way of Acadiana’s new Early Head Start Early Learning Center Friday and discussed the importance of providing proper care for children during the early years of their lives.

The Jefferson Street center opened in May and serves 36 children ages infant through age 3 who live in the 70501 ZIP code, an area selected because of its high-rate of poverty.

“Think about what a gift this is not just for the families, but for the community,” said Landrieu, D-La. “At kindergarten, they’ll know their colors, they’ll know their numbers...Maybe some of these children will be reading at 4 and 5 years old. What happens when a child reads early, a miracle occurs because then a child can start teaching himself.”

Landrieu was recognized during a ceremony at the Lafayette center for her support of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 Early Head Start Expansion, which made the Lafayette and Abbeville centers a reality, said Margaret Trahan, president and chief executive officer of the United Way of Acadiana.

“Children starting school ready to learn is so essential if we’re going to improve graduation rates and improve the quality of our state,” Trahan said during the ceremony.

The agency received a $3 million grant in 2010 to create an Early Head Start center in Lafayette and another in Abbeville. Both centers opened a few months ago. The Abbeville center also serves 36 children, ,and another 31 families receive home-based educational services.

A goal is to expand both center and home-based educational services to reach more families and whittle down a waiting list for the services, said Margarette Derise, executive director of the United Way of Acadiana Early Head Start program.

The United Way is also a partner in the Lafayette Parish School System’s efforts to strengthen early childhood education in the parish with an outreach to child care centers and families who don’t have their toddlers in any educational program.

Landrieu credited the community collaboration, which also includes the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and its Picard Center for Child Development and Lifelong Learning. She encouraged private business to invest in early childhood initiatives.

“That doesn’t start in seventh grade. It doesn’t start in high school. It starts literally in prenatal care, but it most certainly starts in the first three years of life,” Landrieu said.

In Lafayette Parish, about 400 children enter kindergarten who have not had a “proper early childcare” program, said Lafayette Parish Schools Superintendent Pat Cooper.

Community partners will help identify those toddlers not receiving any educational services before kindergarten and help find a program for them, which will take private support, Cooper said.

Comments

1) Comment by ScotB - 26/08/2012

When the Head Start program was reauthorized in 1998, Congress mandated an evaluation by randomly tracking 5,000 youngsters within and without the program. Here is the quote of the summary of their findings...."the benefits of access to Head Start at age four are largely absent by 1st grade for the program population as a whole. For 3-year-olds, there are few sustained benefits". So, since 1965, the US has spent $100 billion on a program with few benefits and no lasting benefit. $7 billion every year for very little. An expensive, taxpayer funded babysitting program is how I would describe Head Start.

2) Comment by 8point6 - 25/08/2012

Great comments. And sooo true!

3) Comment by Whatnow - 25/08/2012

@Frustrated, that's it in a nutshell.Total waste of our money. But, it's easier to spend someone else's money.

4) Comment by Frustrated - 25/08/2012

Good idea morgaine67. But let's get realistic. Once you adopt those incentives, you will get complaints that the standards are set too high and they're being discriminated against. So the standards will be dumbed down and we'll be right back where we started. That's progress? Mary L. will not agree to what you propose because she knows where her votes are coming from. Just that simple.

5) Comment by morgaine67 - 25/08/2012

Two points and an idea: First, studies have shown that any advantage gained by having children go into government care this young is lost by about age seven. This is a huge investment of time and money with very little return. Second, parents - yes, even poor single parents - are just as capable of teaching children to count, to recognize colors, and to recognize the alphabet and simple words as institutions. Now the idea: Right now we pay for a woman to have a baby and put it in daycare immediately. SSI provides a disincentive for children to learn - if they can convince a doctor the child's IQ is low enough, they get benefits. That's about $1000/mo per child between day care and SSI; this doesn't include WIC, food stamps, LaChip, Medicaid, etc. The parent has good reason not to let the child achieve anything academically. We should stop doing this immediately. Instead of throwing more money at a programs we know don't help, let's take, for instance, half the money we'd have spent on Head Start. Use it instead as incentive payments. Pay the parent a "bonus" upon proving the child has reached certain academic milestones, from learning to talk on time to maintaining a certain grade average and average to above average performance on standardized tests. I don't like the idea of paying parents to teach their children these basic things, but it's better than what we're doing now. It'd take far fewer staff to check for achievement than it would to run the Head Start facilities - a moderate cost savings both in the short term and an immense savings in the long term.

6) Comment by bourbon-soda - 25/08/2012

Celebration of an immortal ineffective expensive federal boondoggle tra-la tra-la.