Govt. Criticized on Head Start Oversight (Reps. call for program change)

New York Times:
Government Is Criticized on Oversight of Head Start
By GREG WINTER

Published: March 18, 2005


The government's efforts to weed out financial mismanagement in Head Start, the federal preschool program for poor children, are too spotty and ineffective to prevent blunders or abuse, even among providers known to be out of compliance with regulations, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office.

More than three quarters of the federally supported preschool programs that were reviewed by the government in 2000 had some form of financial irregularity, the report said, and sometimes more than one. Yet even after they were judged to have problems, more than half the programs continued to have financial inconsistencies over the next three years, it said, in part because the government did little to resolve them.

House Republicans, who provided a copy of the report, have been demanding an overhaul of the program in recent years and narrowly passed a bill in 2003 to allow eight governors to take over Head Start in their states. The legislation never made it through the Senate, but lawmakers seized upon the report yesterday to renew their call for change....

***

Head Start provides educational, health and other services to almost one million poor children around the nation, and throughout most of its 40-year history, it has enjoyed bipartisan support.

When the program was up for reauthorization in 2003, the Bush administration sought major changes, like handing over control of Head Start to individual states....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/18/politics/18start.html

shouldn't its agencies do the same? wink wink

.....When financial problems with Head Start centers do arise, the department does little to correct them, the report said. Rather than scrutinizing centers to ensure that their records are orderly and accurate, the department allows them simply to declare that they have fixed the problem, with few controls beyond that. The process can take up to two years, during which time the centers continue receiving money.

...about WHY and HOW various forms of financial "inconsistencies" and "irregularities" occur:

Head Start at one point was the most thoroughly monitored and supervised of any direct-funding Federal program (that is, Federal funds dispensed to localities based on Federal standards, although in most states there was also some form of state participation in identifying needs and planning.)

Each Head Start program received up to four (count 'em, FOUR) levels of monitoring and review:

1. Reporting/monitoring by the local coordinating agency (different types of agencies in different states & localities);

2. Reporting to/monitoring by a State coordinating committee;

3. Reporting to/monitoring by a Federal regional Head Start office; and

4. The most stringent and detailed of all, the peer-to-peer Head Start monitoring and quality control visits every three years, in which Head Start professionals and parent volunteers from some other state or region conducted an obsessively detailed, fine-tooth-comb review of each program.

Two things happened to mess this up: First, the Feds got obsessed with expanding the number of kids served by Head Start, and thought they could do it on the cheap, allotting more capitated direct services dollars without increasing the administrative dollars to the Federal and local coordinating agencies, and no additional administrative dollars to the local programs themselves.

Second, the Feds started to fall behind in the necessary adjustments for inflationary cost increases, but demanded that the number of kids served per program remain the same.

DO THE MATH, for godssakes. What did they THINK would happen?

Most of these "irregularities" and "inconsistencies" simply reflect the program administration's inability to keep up the extremely detailed reporting to all of the many levels demanding reports, in the face of increasing costs and decreasing dollars. Others probably reflect the inability of Head Start to keep up the peer-to-peer review process, which was very expensive (though very effective.)

Knowing Head Start sponsoring agencies, program directors, and Parent Councils like I do, I'm guessing that when faced with a choice between preparing and submitting necessary reports, or bringing financial documentation up to date, etc., versus making sure there are enough qualified instructors in the classrooms, safe food preparation, secure Head Start premises, vans that run safely, etc., they chose the latter.

What would YOU choose, GOPpie assholes?

fumingly,
Bright

I hope it's not lost to the many who benefit from it.

if the report is read in detail many of these so called irregularities will be found to be little or nothing of consequence as an example--a page inadvertendly left out of report, etc.

Go to the National Head Start Association to get the real facts behind this assault on the most successful program remaining of LBJ's Great Society. This is an unmitigated assault on the poorest and littlest ones in our society.


http://www.nhsa.org/press/index_news_031705.htm

Three trillion dollars missing and yet we will cut Head Start because of fifty dollars mispent in some small town....Maybe we could get Halliburton on a No-Bid contract to run Head Start for us. We know they manage money well :crazy:

heaven knows we can't let any little poor person get away with anything. it would set a bad precedent.

Why do poor kids need an education?

They're just going to eventually be sacrificed to the military industrial complex, right?