Head Start

Recently on the ridiculous Fox News show Hannity, the token Democrat on the show, had his fill of republican ignorance and dropped the “F-Bomb” on live TV.

While the right wing is making the take away from this, the fact that someone who skews democratic, swore on national tv(so all democrats are barbaric), that is not what I take away from this. Nor is it the fact that this could be 6 of THE worst minutes ever recorded on television(what a horrible show this is). The key take away here is that there is not a single program that helps minorities, that is not currently under fire by the republican echo chamber. Here, some obscure republican talking head was running down head start. Then she doubled down!

Head Start is an early childhood development program aimed at low-income children. It, too, is an example of a failed government program.

I told Bob about a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) report released in January 2010 called the “Head Start Impact Study.” While the report acknowledges that four-year-olds enrolled in Head Start showed modest short-term gains in some subject areas as a result of the program, those gains disappeared after a few years, and “no significant impacts were found for math skills, pre-writing, children’s promotion, or teacher report of children’s school accomplishments or abilities in any year.”

Of Course this simple minded talking head, is parroting one study while not even really looking at the results of this study. The study that she refers too, actually points out the benefits of Head Start, but the benefits and gains get diminished if you do not build upon them moving forward. Of course she is just part of the echo chamber and just doing as she is told. If she would have an original thought, she could have actually looked at some other studies.

This study found some last effects:

The study found evidence of important effects on school success and crime. For females (but not males) at one study site after adjusting for background differences, only about one-fourth as many Head Start participants as nonparticipants (5% versus 19%) failed to obtain a high school or GED diploma, and only one-third as many (5% versus 15%) were arrested for crimes.

This 2005 study from the universityof Washington:

Research on Head Start and
similar programs has found substantial longterm
benefits in educational achievement and
attainment, employment, and social behavior.
It is reasonable to conclude that Head Start has
positive benefits for school readiness and at
least some educational benefits are sustained
over time.

The Department of Health & Human Services Report from 2011:

A 2011 report by the Department of Health and Human Services determined that the Head Start program to provide education, health and nutrition services had a “positive impact” on low-income children since its creation in 1965.

“Head Start has benefits for both 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds in the cognitive, health, and parenting domains, and for 3-year-olds in the social-emotional domain,” the report found. ” For 3-year-olds, there are few sustained benefits, although access to the program may lead to improved parent-child relationships through 1st grade, a potentially important finding for children’s longer term development.”

So Ms. Nameless Blonde, Beckel was correct. You do NOT know what the F*CK you are talking about.

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3 thoughts on “Head Start

  1. We never watched Fox News, but most of the programs on TV are of similarly low quality. That’s why we got rid of the cable, saving over $100 a month. I don’t know why anyone wastes their money on it. We upgraded our broadband connection, which gives us access to quite a bit of entertainment when we want it and we read more and play Scrabble quite a bit. And talk. So my recommendation is to quit supporting the regressive propaganda that’s taking down this country. Cut the cable. You won’t be missing a thing. And think of all the money and time you can donate to progressive candidates and causes if you’re not stuffing it in the craw of the very people you despise.

  2. Yes. Get rid of cable and use your broadband. You can see a number of programs for weather, local news and, depending on your location, PBS by using a digital antenna on your digital TV–either inside or outside.

    Head Start G benefits children by getting parents involved at an early low study, high social play time. A lot depends on the social ability of the teacher, of course. Not perfect, but anyone who says it’s a failed program is doing a great disservice to this nation, and doesn’t know what the f*uck they’re talking about. Don’t approve of the vulgarity that’s become so ubiquitous in our society, however.

  3. Here in Charterville it’s an easy decision to dump cable. Although many popular shows are available via Adobe Flash or some other proprietary software product over the Internet, many aren’t. Quite often those that are available for free are only available long after the air date, and with inferior quality. So there’s still a place for satellite delivered TV programing. (For those who don’t know, over 99% of their programming that’s not must-carry comes in by satellite.) I currently have a deal with DISH that gives me every channel that I want in HD for around $60/mo.

    There’s nothing wrong with cable per se. It’s the GOP-led Congress’ “welfare for the wealthy” deregulation binges that are the root of the problem. For decades cable customers have been demanding à la carte payment, which is fair. But the cable operators are still making money by the ton by bundling hundreds of channels that nobody watches with the couple of channels that we actually want.

    ATSC broadcast HD programming is the best deal going as long as you have the ability to receive OTA signals. There’s no such thing as a “digital antenna”, but because the new ATSC licenses give terrestrial TV broadcasters a lot less transmitter power than the old system allowed, so it’s a lot harder to get a reliable ATSC signal in general. Homeowners who can just put up an outdoor antenna (or use their existing one) don’t have many worries. But apartment dwellers like me have little choice in whether they can get ATSC TV or not.

    Eventually everything will travel by packet, from phone calls to TV shows. The antenna maintenance engineer who did work for my station in Chicago predicted that he’d be out of a job soon when everyone had cable. He was part-right. But that’s a whole ‘nuther can o’ worms…

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