Originally Posted by Thriftylady:
Well I can only speak for my experience with HS. DD qualified when she was little, due to her assessment. She also qualified for pre K where she would have been bussed. I beleived that HS would be better so sent her there. She learned nothing that she wouldn't have learned at my home daycare, maybe less. When I asked them about it, the teacher told me (and I can quote I was so appalled I remember it to this day) "we don't teach in HS, this is more for socialization so they can learn to play". I was at least doing some teaching in my daycare. I really feel like I cheated her sending her to HS. She was not ready for kindy. Now to be fair, she has a July 23 birthday so part of not being ready MAY have been age, but the school wouldn't hold her back when we asked they wanted to put her in special ed with in the autistic room 4 hours a day for first grade. DD did not then and has never been diagnosed with any medical or mental issues to cause learning problems. They threatened to take us to court to put her in that classroom. We changed schools she had the same teacher first and second grades who worked her backside up to help DD catch up.
We moved to Ohio in the middle of second grade, the teacher told us there was no way DD would pass the test in third grade to move on and suggested we hold her back in second. It made a world of difference for her with NO special ed, and no autistic classroom.
So in my experience, HS is a complete and total waste of taxpayer dollars and gets us nowhere.
Which brings me to my next question. Now not only do we have HS but we have "no child left behind". How do we go from Head Start to left behind?
I don't doubt this one bit! However, the children I work with are not IN daycare. They are at home, most of them in fairly disfunctional families. Most all the parents work, but they work part-time/split-shift/second shift low-income jobs. Our job as Home Visitors is to try to help the children develop socially, emotionally, and cognitively so that when they get to school, they are where most of their peers are. We do health screenings, make sure they get their checkups, immunizations, and dental exams.
As for our centers, yes, they are play based. They also do developmental and mental health assessments,provide healthy meals (food program), set goals for individual children, and plan activities based on those goals. The social aspect his HUGE, but as childcare providers, I'm pretty sure that's what we've been arguing all along. It's not about craming a whole lot of facts into their brains before they get to school; it's about them being ready to learn once they get to school. With HS, we just have to document everything. To death...
Children who live in poverty are less likely to have the experiences middle-income children do. There are no trips to the zoo, the children's museum, sometimes even the grocery store. They don't get read to, they don't go to the library. We've got families of 5 or 6 people who live in campers year round. Not exactly an ideal learning enviroment.
So, I agree that maybe it didn't help your DD any more than your daycare did. But, that's because you run a quality daycare program. Most of our kiddos would be at home, with the same 1 or 2 adults, until they reached Kindy if it weren't for HS. "Head Start" is really a kinder way to say "So they're not so far behind". If we sold it as "hey, we don't want your kid to be behind when they get to school because your poor and undereducated", most people would probably not say "yeah, sure, that's me".
I don't know if HS is the most efficient way to spend taxpayer money to make sure low-income children are ready for school. But, I will say that I do not beleive it's a waste of money.