Head Start Resiliency

American families started from a place where women stayed home, raising children, while men worked. In attempts to defeat poverty, the Johnson administration supported the development of head Start in 1965. This challenged the traditional American family. In the decades following the inception of Head Start, it has faced various challenges, based on whom represented American in the presidential office. Head Start continued to remain, despite funding challenges lack of quality control, presidential perception, and public opinion. Head Start demonstrates resiliency, changing as necessary to remain a program available for children and families living in poverty. This resiliency is clear during the Regan administration. Regan fought to decrease …show more content…
This would soon change again during the George W. Bush administration, particularly when the No Child Left Behind Act was written into law in 2001. The Bush administration wanted evidence of the quality of education being provided to all children in America, including Head Start. The administration wanted accountability for the federal money being provided to educational programs. The quality would be measured with a strong literacy program (Zigler & Styfco, 2010). The micromanagement of the Bush administration challenged the foundation of Head Start since it was built around families as the leaders, not the governing agents. As his administration implemented the expectations, the manipulation of funding dollars was used as a weapon against Head Start, to attempt to eliminate parent control and Policy Councils. It was determined that some programs did mismanage the money provided, but many did not. With Zigler’s persistence to maintain parent involvement and Policy Council, he was able to persuade Senators to reconcile the adversity and allow it to remain. In all the political turmoil, Head Start missed reauthorization, which impacted the lack of financial growth to match inflation and increasing financial challenges to manage and maintain the programs. By 2007, after great efforts, reauthorization finally completed, titled Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act (Zigler & Styfco, …show more content…
Despite expectations, funding continued to lack progressive growth (Zigler & Styfco, 2010). The Bush administration ended, leaving Head Start and other federal childcare and health programs in turmoil. As the Obama administration begins to transpire, there is hope as Obama is a supporter of the Head Start program goals. As administration changed so did the operations of Head Start programs, including classroom management. The changes included a focus on the health and school readiness of young children living in poverty. Head Start programs have manipulated to meet the challenges of financial strain but implementation of quality control and performance standards. It acts in context with society to meet the needs of eligible children and the realities they present within the classrooms, also. To meet the ecological impacts of children by their exosystem, Head Start classrooms have identified the importance of connecting with families and community resources. Quality Head Start programs have made the commitment to refine their approaches to foster social competence, leading to the ability to meet defined school readiness goals and program performance