Editorial: Tests will not reveal big picture

Thursday, Jan. 9, 2003 | 9:11 a.m.

The Bush administration is right to focus renewed attention on the national Head Start program, which since 1965 has been working with extremely low-income families to remedy the social, nutritional, health and educational needs of their pre-school children. Unfortunately, the administration is focusing attention in the wrong area. Instead of providing sufficient funding so that all eligible children can enroll -- there are long waiting lists in Clark County and the rest of the country -- the administration will spend time and money issuing standardized tests to 4-year-olds in the program. The government will use the "outcomes" in determining which programs will continue to receive funding.

The testing, scheduled to begin in the fall, follows a Bush administration initiative last year to push literacy in Head Start programs, on the premise that children were not academically prepared upon entering public grade schools. Our view is that the administration does not fully understand who Head Start serves or the full scope of the program. Head Start has never been simply about education in the traditional sense of taking and passing tests. It's about literacy and numbers, yes, but it's also about teaching social skills and encouraging parents to spend quality time with their children. It stresses nutrition and other physical health issues. It's concerned with mental health -- sometimes the program must deal with children whose emotional disabilities have left them barely able to speak. Evaluations are already in place for Head Start programs and they are competent, as proven by tests given in students' later years that consistently show Head Start is working.

Reforms in the 1990s aimed at improving Head Start curriculums and the skills of those who teach them were sensible. But we shudder at the thought of cutting off money to programs based on the results of tests that cannot possibly measure what is perhaps Head Start's primary mission -- readying children, physically, mentally and socially, for the learning opportunities ahead.