Head Start: The Effects Of Poverty On Children's Education

Lyndon B. Johnson discussed the War on Poverty during a speech in 1964. After the speech was given a group of experts was created to help develop a program that would help disadvantaged preschool children. The experts included a pediatrician and a professor of psychology that was also the director of the Child Study Center at Yale University. The government’s decision to create a child development program for disadvantaged preschool children was based off of research on the effects of poverty on children’s education. Head Start has come a long way since Lyndon B. Johnson’s speech in 1964. Head Start has helped over 30 million children since beginning in 1965. Head Start helps over a million children and their families each year in the fifty …show more content…
The experts were the following people: Dr. Robert Cooke, pediatrician at John Hopkins University, and Dr. Edward Zigler, a professor of psychology and the director of the Child Study Center at Yale University. New research during that time showed that poverty did impact education. Head Start was created to break the effects of poverty on children’s education. The Head Start program began serving preschool age children from low-income families by meeting their health, nutritional, emotional, psychological and social needs. The summers of 1965 and 1966 were used testing out an eight-week Project Head Start. The Office of Economic Opportunity was in charge of the Project Head Start. In 1969, Head Start was no longer controlled by the Office of Economic Opportunity. The Office of Economic Opportunity transferred Head Start to the Office of Child Development in the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Dr. Zigler was elected as the Director of the Office of Child Development. In 1977, bilingual and bilingual classes were offered in twenty-one states. In October 1984, Head Start’s grant budget was over $1 billion dollars. In 1995, the first Early Head Start grants were given out. In 1998, Head Start was reauthorized to operate on full day, full-year services. In 2007, Head Start was reauthorized with a few requirements to enhance the quality of Head Start. One requirement is making sure that Head Start’s readiness goals match the state’s early learning standards. In 2009, the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act added 64,000 more spots for children to register for Early Head Start and Head Start programs (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2016,