January 25, 2013: Early childhood education advocates met on January 15 with Linda Smith, at left, Deputy Assistant Secretary and Inter-Departmental Liaison for Ealry Childhood Development, at the Administration for Children & Families, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. Smith, who began her career in early childhood education on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in her native state of Montana, was previously the executive director for the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies. At the January 15th meeting, she presented the group with an outline of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's proposal, a "major step to boost early childhood education" at the federal level, according to a report in the Huffington Post by Joy Resmovits.
... According to sources close to the administration, Duncan and the Department of Health and Human Services are outlining a plan to create universal pre-kindergarten for 4-year-olds from low- and some middle-income families -- approximately 1.85 million children. The plan, which is projected to cost as much as $10 billion to implement in full, is still under review by the White House...
...Depending on how the final proposal works, the push could be very controversial... But some [advocates] worry that the change takes a holistic, somewhat successful federal program [Head Start] targeted at poor kids, turns it into a broader, more academic one -- and turns it over to the states, making [it] vulnerable to state budget cuts.
"These ideas have been floated before and shut down by Head Start folks who worry that it's letting Head Start wither on the vine," said Lisa Guernsey, who is the director of the early education initiative at the New America Foundation. "Head Start is for the poorest of the poor … so if you say, 'Let's stretch the program so that it's helping the middle class with pre-K access,' you risk not being able to reach all those children in poverty."
At the meeting of early childhood advocates, sources say Smith described the administration's plan as a 10-year project "to transfer responsibilities for public funding of 4-year-olds' education to states from the feds and supporting [the] states." Another senior administration official is said to have suggested that instead of paying for the entire expansion itself, the administration would try to "incentivize" change, as it did with the Race to the Top...
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