Head Start Program

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The Head Start program, is a nationally funded early childhood education program for low-income children who are not yet old enough to attend school. Generally the ages of head start students are five years old and younger. President Lyndon Johnson initiated the program during his war on poverty. “The Head Start program carries an implicit goal of improving equity among children by targeting vulnerable groups, mostly low-income children, a disproportionate share of whom are racial or ethnic minorities” (Joshi). President Johnson believed providing minorities educational preparedness would ensure a better education overall and stem the tide of poverty. Vicki Maloney, director of the Shirley Mays Head Start center in Wichita Kansas, stated that the children in their program came from many racial and ethnical backgrounds, but they all have one thing in common, …show more content…

Ms. Maloney said that the majority of their students would not receive any type of pre-school education if not for the Head Start center. When asked if she believed that the programs offered through the Head Start profited the targeted groups, Ms. Maloney emphatically stated “yes, children who receive early educational intervention go on to perform better in school.” The U.S Department of Health and Human Services website offers testimony to support this belief. Oscar Dominguez writes this; “Head Start has offset many of the challenges I faced early in my life, including a father in prison and a mother on welfare raising two boys in public housing. With a hand up from programs like Head Start, I was able to graduate near the top of my Texas public high school class, from Stanford University, and from the Master in Business Administration program at San Francisco State. Today, I work in a field where I can pay forward this type of empowerment, by administering programs that help people start and develop assets through entrepreneurship and