George H. W. Bush, the “Education President”
George H. W. Bush, the “Education President”
This chapter discusses the status of the Head Start program under George H. W. Bush's administration. Head Start received a great deal of additional money during President Bush's term, but actual appropriations never came close to meeting the goals inherent in the amounts authorized. In the debate over whether the new money being poured into Head Start should be spent on serving more children or shoring up quality, President Bush strongly sided with expansion. Head Start enrolment grew from roughly 450,000 children when he took office to over 700,000 children when he left. However, Head Start never got close to fulfilling the president's promise (or that of Congress) to serve all eligible children. Not only was the full funding of Head Start not achieved by 2000, it had not been achieved by 2008, when about 50% of eligible children attended. Further, the drive to expand greatly exacerbated the program's quality shortcomings, which had a direct effect on the experiences of participating children and families.
Keywords: poor children, pre-school children, intervention programs, education programs, Head Start, education policy
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