Salon.com > Head Start

Obama’s real leadership challenge: Democrats

Mon, 06 May 2013 11:45:00 +0000

There’s been so much trolling President Obama in the last two weeks, with columnists and pundits and politicians calling him “a lame duck” or “just lame” -- Peggy Noonan knows lame -- or comparing his leadership unfavorably to fictional characters in movies and TV shows (not to mention LBJ), that the most important task for a reasonable political analyst has been to swat aside the silly and try to clear the air of delusion, projection and dejection.

Chasing delusion and projection is easy. Dejection, not so much, especially when some of it seems to come from the president himself.

First the easy part: Obama is a real president, Michael Douglas wasn’t. LBJ had overwhelming Democratic majorities in the House and Senate; Obama’s party lost the House, and its Senate majority is meaningless because of the outrage of current filibuster rules. LBJ also dealt with reasonable Northeastern Republicans, who gave him overwhelming majorities for civil rights legislation when the Solid South began to secede from the Democratic Party largely over race. Obama, by contrast, has mainstream Republican leaders who are terrorized by their right flank and who declared their highest priority was blocking his reelection and his agenda; they failed at the first part but are doing a good job at the second.

The danger in hyping preschool

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 22:40:00 +0000

There’s a first time for everything, and this is the first time I’ve agreed even a tiny bit with conservative social theorist Charles Murray. His three big books, “Losing Ground,” “The Bell Curve” and 2012’s “Coming Apart” all make the case that social interventions to reduce poverty are doomed, because the keys to success are male-headed households, hard work and basic intelligence (which “The Bell Curve” argued was genetically determined, highest among white people, and mostly a matter of nature, not nurture).

So it’s not surprising that Murray takes a dim view of President Obama’s ambitious preschool program. What’s surprising is that I agree with one point he’s making, about the data the White House is using to sell the program. “Every dollar we invest in high-quality early education can save more than seven dollars later on – boosting graduation rates, reducing teen pregnancy, reducing violent crime,” Obama said in his State of the Union address.

Obama’s tough love for Head Start

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 22:06:00 +0000

Before an audience of voters in Yeadon, Pa., on Tuesday, President Obama announced major changes to the Head Start program, which provides preschool access for children from low-income families, and scolded Congress for not doing more for education.

“This is the first time in history that Head Start programs will truly be held accountable for performance,” Obama explained during the speech. It’s surprising but true: While No Child Left Behind and other education reform measures have placed a spotlight on school and teacher accountability, Head Start has been plodding along untouched. Head Start preschools that do a poor job can keep receiving funding for years without ever making changes to their programs, the GAO reported in 2005.

In the future, Head Start programs will be thoroughly evaluated on a regular basis, and programs that aren’t doing a good job will have to recompete for their funding with other preschools in the area that want Head Start funding. It’s a classic example of Obama the policy wonk doing one thing he does well: taking an existing liberal program and sprucing it up, but in a way that is cost-neutral so the change draws minimal criticism.