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Dr. Leanna Levine's avatar

Well, head start has been pretty damn successful, we need a head start for young adults. Either that or mandatory service in the armed forces, both boys and girls.

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Jim G's avatar

How would that work, then, Leanna? Many would simply refuse to work, and then what do you do? We've spent decades tearing down civilization in America. Rebuilding it will take a lot of time, and has to come before we can even consider forcing people to do anything.

Head Start has seen some success, but only in the sense that in an education world that is failing so miserably that even the most die-hard teacher's union leader *should* (but doesn't) take pause, a year of Head Start is better than a year of nothing. When some urban areas are reporting 2% or less of high school students achieving basic competency in reading and math, Head Start is like waving one hands and expecting to stop a hurricane.

What we need, instead, is a massive reduction in the size and scope of government. Let private industry employ people voluntarily - economic success provides far more opportunity than the government blob.

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Dr. Leanna Levine's avatar

Head start has been around since before the Clinton administration. ItтАЩs one of the success stories. Please read more about it. Head start also educates parents. So itтАЩs a more holistic approach. Head start success measurements show that over the long term, into high school, these kids do better.

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Jim G's avatar

Please read more about the complete failure of public education in many of our most impoverished areas. I'm not against Head Start, but the long-term studies on it are less relevant today because the whole system is in ruins.

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Dr. Leanna Levine's avatar

IтАЩll be sure to let my daughter know that all her effort as a director at head start and the visible impact she observes just isnтАЩt so. All that data they collect and report every year, just a waste. Investment in new and safer playground equipment a waste.

What would help head start enormously is the ability to hire teachers at something better than daycare wagesтАжminimum wage.

Why do we persist at all these failed, wasteful things. LetтАЩs just quit and let тАШsomebodyтАЩ figure out something we could all feel good about spending tax dollars on.

Anybody here got a suggestion?

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Jim G's avatar

Ummm.... public school teachers are not paid minimum wage. They do very, very well, including benefits. And if they have seniority under the irresponsible teacher-union-backed scale, they are quite wealthy and by then they don't need to work at all over the summer break.

My suggestion is privatization and a voucher system. Competition forces schools to focus on better outcomes for the students. Wealthy parents have options. Poor parents do not.

Please read about the failures in public education. As I keep saying, it's not that Head Start doesn't help - you seem determined to misread that - it's that with relatively recent changes in public education, exacerbated by the ill-advised COVID shutdown of the public school system (teacher's unions "won" at the expense of everyone there), things are so bad that even good policies like starting school a year earlier are leading to a shocking lack of even basic literacy in our most vulnerable populations.

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ex nihilo's avatar

Could you be specific about the "success" of the Head Start program? I've also read that it has never achieved or measurably contributed to its intended purpose. I'm not trolling you, I genuinely would like to see some reliable metrics showing successs.

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Dr. Leanna Levine's avatar

IтАЩd suggest going to the head start website and find publications. Try perplexity to help find suitable references.

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ex nihilo's avatar

I imagine any organization's website is going to claim marvelous success. I'm more interested in objective 3rd party evaluations. I know how to use Google; I was hoping you had specific references in mind when you made the claim to Head Start's success contrary to what resources I've read state. So, I'm assuming now that you do not. I'm not trying to be confrontational but when an interest group on one hand keeps beating the drum that society's efforts to ameliorate the plight of the disadvantaged have been an abject failure and that minority groups continue to fall further and further behind despite these efforts, I am puzzled when the same interest group on the other hand would then cite the success of these programs as reasons to demand more such programs. Everything I've ever read about Head Start is that longitudinal studies cannot demonstrate any closing of the educational gap, which is exactly in conformity with the poor performance of public education in general. Unless you can provide evidence to the contrary I'm continuing with the widespread conclusion that Head Start is just expensively-administered day care.

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Dr. Leanna Levine's avatar

Okay. Best to cling to your opinion. Perplexity isnтАЩt google. Just those kinds of assumptions that enable an entrenched opinion to remain so. This is why we find ourselves being armchair quarterbacks about the state of things, but with no nuanced perspective.

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