The federal government spends more than $20 billion a year on a slew of programs intended to improve the education of young children, with the best known being Head Start – a program riddled with problems.
To this, the administration proposes to add another $7.5 billion for state pre-K. Pushing for a new program without addressing the need for comprehensive reform of the existing total package of federal pre-K spending represents a failure of will and vision. One solution might be to replace Head Start with Preschool for All.
Russ Whitehurst is senior fellow and director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution. He is the former director of the Institute of Education Sciences within the US Department of Education.
