Onus is on you to prove that Head Start and funding for public education was ineffective before you started harming the futures of innocent children. Furthermore the onus was on you to ensure that they would still be able to obtain an equivalent or better education before you threw them under the bus.
Well, I generally am no fan of Unkotare's take on a number of subjects, but I will respectfully protest here as I do not see that he threw anybody under anything. He is offering a very defensible reasoned argument suggesting that which has no proven track record of benefit or success should not continue to receive public funding.
There is no proof available that Head Start is living up to its advertising. Even some, maybe many of those who promote and support the program admit it is usually little more than a different kind of child care service for low income families.
A good pro and con argument for Head Start can be found here:
Pros and Cons of Public Preschool: The Debate | PublicSchoolReview.com
Elsewhere I recently read, though I can't immediately lay my hands on the link, a comprehensive study showing that First Graders who had Head Start do usually have a leg up on their classmates in some areas. But by Third Grade, that advantage has evaporated and there is no difference noted between those that had Head Start and those that did not.
And anecdotally, I refer back to my early education in a time that such things as kindergarten and preschool did not exist. For me and essentially all my peers, our first day in First Grade was our first day in any kind of classroom or formal learning experience. But we all received a Class A education that allowed us to compete with anybody. And I am going to guess that 90% of us went on to get at least some college and we have a very high number of college graduates.
The title and advertising on many government programs, no matter how high minded and noble they might look, simply do not deliver on giving us our our money's worth.
In my opinion the government would utilize its limited resources much more effectively and altruistically by focusing on re-establishing the nuclear family, preferably two-parent homes, and promoting that as the national norm. That and getting itself out of the education business altogether would do wonders for the education of our children.
The benefits of Head Start were working exactly as intended according to the links you provided. Prior to HS underprivileged children were lagging behind their peers in those initial grades and never subsequently catching up. The HS program was intended to ensure that would not happen and it worked. Or at least it was working until the budget was slashed and now children who would have benefited are being denied the program because there is insufficient funding.
As far as the government getting out of school funding that is already happening nationwide. The funding that schools relied upon from the Federal and State levels has all but evaporated. Districts are struggling and there are layoffs and school closings. Some districts are on the point of bankruptcy. Parents can't afford to pay higher taxes since their own incomes are shrinking. They most certainly can't afford to send their children to private schools either.
While the existing public school system had problems primarily with inner city schools it was providing an education for about 50 million children nationwide. That is now in jeopardy because of people like unokatore who supported the sequester and slashing government funding of public schools. No provision was made to ensure that the existing public schools would still have funding. No provision was made for alternative schooling either.
50 million children are now facing a substandard education assuming that the public education system manages to remain afloat. This is a national disgrace in my opinion. If you thought that our public education system was bad before now it will drop to 3rd world standards without any government funding. The futures of our children and grandchildren are in jeopardy because we are literally throwing the baby out with the dirty bathwater because we are too cheap and stingy to pay for their education. This will be recorded as a shameful period in our history.
50 million children are now facing a substandard eduction that is wholly controlled by state and federal governments. Until the bleeding hearts and presumed do-gooders acknowledge that fact, there will be no solution as the federal government, most especially, has yet to competently and effectively manage a single social program that does not have more negatives than positives and/or is far more costly than it ever needed to be.
It is absolutely absurd to take the taxpayer's money away from the citizens, absord up to two-thirds or more of it into an ever more bloated bureaucracy, and then dribble whatever is left out to the schools along with a lot of nonsensical mandates that further restricts the school districts from being able to utilze the funds in the most effective manner.
Get big government out of it and leave the money, resources, and incentives with the local school districts for the teachers, parents, and local citizens to manage.
As for what my links showed about Head Start, we'll just have to disagree about that. I read the whole essay. You apparently did not.
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