How Congress came together to create a better preschool

Political division may be at its peak, but at least one bipartisan program is working out.

Just five years ago, Jacksonville, Florida's classrooms were literally falling apart under the nation's largest preschool program. But as new congressional standards took hold, Jacksonville's preschools — and Head Start programs around the nation — have enjoyed a drastic upswing, The New York Times reports.

Head Start began under former President Lyndon B. Johnson's watch, and has its budget has skyrocketed $900 million since. It's generally gotten bipartisan support because it's a poverty program "aimed at young children, who cannot be faulted for their poverty," the Times details. Yet despite its general success, it soon became clear that Head Start could do better.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

So in 2007, Congress overwhelmingly approved the Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act of 2007. Along with introducing a sweeping list of educational standards, the law implemented more federal oversight to make sure those standards were enforced. That oversight is what unmasked severe "neglect" in Jacksonville's schools: "Moldy classrooms, exposed wires, leaking sewage," not to mention how some teachers roughly treated children, the Times writes. Federal inspectors were able to fire the nonprofit running Jacksonville's Head Start, and require the new nonprofit they hired to "compete for funding that was once virtually automatic" if it wanted to stay in charge, per the Times.

Today, Jacksonville's preschools are nearing the average CLASS score that federal overseers give to Head Start programs nationwide. It all "reflects an unheralded trend:" Across the country, Head Start "is getting better," the Times writes. Read more at The New York Times.