[Senate Hearing 106-139]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 106-139
MULTIPLE PROGRAM COORDINATION IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
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HEARINGS
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT
MANAGEMENT, RESTRUCTURING
AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MARCH 25 AND MAY 11, 1999
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
57-615 cc WASHINGTON : 1999
_______________________________________________________________________
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office
U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
FRED THOMPSON, Tennessee, Chairman
WILLIAM V. ROTH, Jr., Delaware JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut
TED STEVENS, Alaska CARL LEVIN, Michigan
SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois
PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey
THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi MAX CLELAND, Georgia
ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania JOHN EDWARDS, North Carolina
JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire
Hannah S. Sistare, Staff Director and Counsel
Joyce A. Rechtschaffen, Minority Staff Director and Counsel
Darla D. Cassell, Administrive Clerk
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, RESTRUCTURING, AND
THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio, Chairman
WILLIAM V. ROTH, Jr., Delaware RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois
JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey
Kristine I. Simmons, Staff Director
Marianne Clifford Upton, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Julie L. Vincent, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statements:
Page
Senator Voinovich............................................ 1, 21
Senator Durbin............................................... 3
WITNESSES
Thursday, March 25, 1999
Marnie S. Shaul, Ph.D., Associate Director, Education, Workforce,
and Income Security Issues, accompanied by Eleanor Johnson,
Ed.D., Assistant Director; Harriet Ganson, Ph.D., Assistant
Director; and Janet Mascia, Senior Evaluator, General
Accounting Office.............................................. 5
Tuesday, May 11, 1999
Olivia A. Golden, Assistant Secretary, Administration for
Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services....................................................... 24
Judith Johnson, Acting Assistant Secretary, Office of elementary
and Secondary Education, U. S. Department of Education......... 26
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Golden, Olivia A.:
Testimony.................................................... 24
Prepared statement........................................... 51
Johnson, Judith:
Testimony.................................................... 26
Prepared statement........................................... 54
Shaul, Marnie S.:
Testimony.................................................... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 45
MULTIPLE PROGRAM COORDINATION IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
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THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 1999
U.S. Senate,
Oversight of Government Management, Restructuring,
and the District of Columbia Subcommittee
of the Committee on Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:04 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. George
Voinovich, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Voinovich and Durbin.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH
Senator Voinovich. I call this Subcommittee to order. Good
morning. I am not as good as the Chairman of this Subcommittee
on being on time, but it is not too bad. We would like to
welcome you to this hearing on Coordination of Early Childhood
Programs Across Federal Departments and Agencies.
This is the first hearing of the Subcommittee on Oversight
of Government Management in the 106th Congress, and I am
pleased that we are holding it on a subject as important as
early childhood education. Ensuring the best learning
environment of our children, even before they reach school age,
was my number one priority when I was governor of the State of
Ohio.
It is also important to know that all children entering
school ready to learn is the number one national education
goal. I think we forgot about our eight national goals. But
number one is that all children by the Year 2000 will enter
school ready to learn. Every year, while I was governor, we put
out a report on how we were doing on those eight national
goals.
In my first State of the State address as governor, I said
the only way to stop the cycle of poverty is to pick one
generation of children, draw a line and say this is where it
stops.
In order to deal with that, we created something called
Family and Children First, and that was an effort to promote
coordination and collaboration among State and local
governments, nonprofit organizations and parents and bringing
together service providers to cut red tape and refocus systems
on families rather than on bureaucracy, and it has really given
us a boost in terms of dealing with the problems of our
youngsters. I am proud to say that every eligible child, whose
parent wants them to be, is in Head Start or preschool.
I would like to see if the commitment that I have had could
be followed here in the Senate. And that is why I have been
disturbed by recent reports putting the number of Federal
education programs in the hundreds. A high number of programs
was not always indicative of a well-managed effort. In fact, it
may indicate that we have lost track of what is out there and
who is being served.
The House Education and Workforce Committee's Education at
the Crossroads Project produced a comprehensive list of 760
Federal education programs across 39 agencies. And Senator
Frist's Education Task Force published a figure from the
General Accounting Office stating that there are 552 Federal
education programs and 31 agencies.
If you look at the chart behind me, you can see for
yourself that GAO found that just 34 of the 552 programs are
within the Department of Education. Twenty-eight other
programs, like Head Start, are administered by the Department
of Health and Human Services, and scores more by other
departments and agencies. It is all over the place. It will
take you several hours to figure out what is going on there,
and then some.
In the long term, I believe we need an accounting of these
programs to find out the extent to which they overlap and
duplicate each other, identify gaps in coverage that need to be
filled and learn whether this web of education programs we have
developed is the most efficient way to benefit student learning
and support quality teaching.
In the short term, we need to examine the degree to which
the programs we already have are being coordinated in order to
achieve maximum results. This need for coordination among
agencies with responsibility for early childhood development is
the focus of our hearing this morning.
Every day I wear this pin, it says, ``Our Children,'' and
people think I am kind of a nut because I always wear it, and I
wear it because it reminds me that you can make a difference.
It came about as a result of Mothers of Fragile Children
picketing my office as governor for 6 months, and they wanted
to have their children taken care of at home rather than in
institutions. I was told by my agencies there is not anything
we can do for them. And after we created our Children and
Family First Cabinet Cluster, we got all of the agencies in
State government that deal with children and families and got
them in the same room. We spent a year, actually, kind of
getting them to understand they had a symbiotic relationship.
The first challenge I gave them was figure out how we can
take care of these moms, and they figured it out. Today, we
have 3,000 kids that are at home that are fragile. As a result
of that effort, we have two child care centers now in the State
that are open for these fragile children and regular kids,
where they can go to school together. It proved to me that if
you can get everyone working together, if you have shared
goals, that a great deal can be accomplished.
I have been working on a piece of legislation to deal with
prenatal to 3 and looking at various Federal programs. But I am
convinced that far more will occur, in terms of prenatal to 3
if we could get all of the Federal agencies together at a
table, have them talk about the challenges that are there and
figure out how they could do a better job of coordinating their
efforts. That would really, I think, make a much better
difference than perhaps legislation that we would pass because
the people who really know the programs would be getting
together and talking about how it can be done.
Today, we are going to be hearing from the General
Accounting Office. I understand at the Federal level that we
have something called the Government Performance and Results
Act. Senator Durbin, I think they call it the Results Act. I
guess that is the vehicle to bring all agencies together. I am
anxious to hear from the General Accounting Office just how
well they are coordinating their efforts and if there is
duplication. I would like to welcome today witnesses from the
General Accounting Office.
Before we proceed, though, to introduce you, Marnie, and
other members that are here with us this morning, I would like
to call on Senator Durbin, who is the ranking member of this
Subcommittee, for his comments.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DURBIN
Senator Durbin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really
appreciate the opportunity to have this hearing. Education is
so near and dear to my heart and yours as well. I know from our
conversations that, as governor of Ohio, you made it one of
your highest priorities.
It is interesting to me that there are times that are kind
of downers or depressing in public life, and whenever I feel
that way I head on out to a Head Start program. It is a real
shot in the arm to sit there with those kids and those
teachers. I always leave there charged up and ready to go. That
is just one example.
Education, particularly of the youngest, really gives me
such hope for this country. I mentioned to Senator Voinovich
yesterday that I put my staff to work to answer a very basic
question, and that is why education in America starts at age 6.
How did we come up with age 6? They never could find an answer.
They went to the Congressional Research Service, the Department
of Education, and I finally concluded, just from my experience
as a parent, that is about the age when kids will sit still.
When I started school, that was one of the prime requirements;
sit at your desk and be quiet, and if you could not do that,
you were in deep trouble.
But I think that this is important because, as I reflect on
education, I really come to the same conclusion as the Chairman
of this Subcommittee. The educators I speak to, if you ask
them, ``If we could add a year of education to a child's
education, where would you put it?'' without fail, say at the
beginning, an earlier start in education so that we can really
try to give kids a positive learning environment and some
constructive help toward becoming productive citizens. And that
is why these early childhood programs are so important.
Having said that, I think some of the agencies involved
here and some of the people involved here, despite their best
intentions, get caught up in a mind set, a turf battle,
jurisdictional problems. I read here that the Federal
Government administers 90 early childhood programs through 11
agencies and 20 offices. That is a recipe for duplication and
inefficiency.
I have addressed the food-safety issue, which has similar
contours in terms of its problem. But when it comes to
education, we have so few dollars and so many kids, we just
cannot waste them on overlapping administration and conflicts
that are created by bureaucracy inspired by Congress or other
sources, and that is why this hearing is so important.
I hope that the General Accounting Office will help us get
to the bottom of this and to try to find ways to come up with
more effective delivery of resources so the kids across America
have a fighting chance. And I hope that we will challenge some
of the basics before it is all over.
We are about to embark on a new century, and I would like
us to really step back and ask a few basic questions. Should
school start before the age of 6? Should a school day end after
3 o'clock? Should kids be off for 3 months in the summer? There
are some students back here who will probably nod yes, but that
really comes back to us from an era when kids had to go work on
the farm, and I do not think a lot of kids do that any more.
There are some basics that we ought to be asking and
answering, and I am glad that this opening session of this
Subcommittee will start asking those questions.
Thanks, The Chairman.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Senator.
I think that the one fact that the American people have got
to understand is that all of the research shows that what
happens from conception to age 3, that period, is the most
important period in the development of a child, and it is
probably the most neglected area on the Federal and on the
State level. I would hope that, as a result of the efforts that
we are making, that we can reorder our priorities and start
putting our resources into that area, where it will make the
most difference in the lives of children. And the other side
benefit of that is, is that it be the greatest return that we
can make on investing in education.
It would be interesting, Senator, for you to know that when
I got started with this effort to increase Head Start in Ohio
that many people did not look at Head Start as education. We
had to convince some of the teachers that, if the kids do not
get the Head Start, when you get them to school, they are not
going to be successful when they are there and that, frankly,
if that money is not invested, your chances of being successful
with them later on are diminished.
So we are looking forward to the testimony this morning. We
have with us, today, Marnie Shaul, Associate Director of
Education, Workforce, and Income Security Issues for the
General Accounting Office. That is a mouthful, Marine.
Ms. Shaul. It is also our new name. We just merged with
another group on Monday.
Senator Voinovich. Dr. Shaul is accompanied by Eleanor
Johnson, Assistant Director; Harriet Ganson, who is the
Assistant Director; and Janet Mascia, who is the Senior
Evaluator. All of them are with the General Accounting Office.
We welcome you today, and we are anxious to hear what you
have to say.
Dr. Shaul.
TESTIMONY OF MARNIE S. SHAUL, PH.D.,\1\ ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR,
EDUCATION, WORKFORCE, AND INCOME SECURITY ISSUES, GENERAL
ACCOUNTING OFFICE, ACCOMPANIED BY ELEANOR JOHNSON, Ed.D.,
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE; HARRIET GANSON,
Ph.D., ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE; AND JANET
MASCIA, SENIOR EVALUATOR, GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE
Ms. Shaul. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the
Subcommittee. We appreciate the opportunity to discuss how the
Results Act can assist congressional oversight, especially in
the area of early childhood where, as was pointed out, the
Federal Government invested about $14 billion in multiple
programs across multiple agencies in 1997.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Shaul appears in the Appendix on
page 45.
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As the Chairman pointed out, I have with me a team today
who are the folks at GAO who have been most responsible for our
work on early childhood education and early child care.
Specifically, I would like to discuss how the Results Act
can address congressional oversight, especially where there are
multiple programs within and across departments serving similar
target groups. Then, I will discuss how two departments, the
Department of Education and HHS, which together administer more
than 50 percent of the early childhood program funds, address
the coordination of these programs in their strategic and
performance plans.
In summary, the Congress can use the Results Act to improve
oversight of cross-cutting issues. However, based on our
review, the Departments' plans fall short of the potential
expected from the Results Act. While the plans address
coordination, to some extent, they have not described in detail
how they will coordinate their efforts. Therefore, the plans'
potential for addressing fragmentation and duplication have not
been realized, and we cannot assess whether the agencies are
effectively working together based on their plans.
I would like to briefly elaborate on each of these points
and ask that my written statement be included in the record.
The Results Act can be used to address mission
fragmentation and program overlap. The act requires executive
agencies, in consultation with the Congress and other
stakeholders, to prepare strategic plans that include mission
statements and goals and also prepare annual performance plans
that link the long-term goals with the day-to-day activities of
the program managers and staff.
As the agencies began developing their plans, they were
told that the Federal programs contributing to the same or
similar outcomes were expected to be closely coordinated,
consolidated or streamlined. By doing this, it was expected
that goals would be consistent and program efforts mutually
reinforcing across agencies.
The Results Act requirements provide opportunities for
Congress to intervene to address mission fragmentation. For
example, as the agencies develop performance measures, it will
be easier to tell whether they are addressing similar goals.
Common performance measures also will permit comparison of
programs across agencies, and that will help decisionmakers
sort through competing requests for funds for these programs.
Education and HHS's Administration for Children and
Families, which is where their early childhood programs are
housed, address the goals and objectives of their early
childhood programs in their strategic and performance plans.
However, the strategies and activities that relate to
coordination are not as well described. The Education plan
provides a more detailed description of coordination strategies
and activities than the ACF plan, including some performance
measures that may cut across programs. For example, the
Education performance plan states that the Department will work
with HHS and other organizations to align indicators of
progress, such as children's school readiness. These common
indicators could potentially be used as a basis for identifying
how different agencies contribute to goals related to
children's cognitive development.
The ACF plan describes in more general terms the Agency's
plans to coordinate with external and internal programs dealing
with early childhood goals. For example, it identifies the need
to coordinate with the Department of Education concerning the
Head Start program, along with other internal and external
stakeholders in this area. However, it does not define how this
coordination will be accomplished or the means by which cross-
cutting results will be measured.
Overall, the information presented in both plans does not
have the level of detail, definition and identification of
common measures that Congress needs to assess results and
identify potential inefficiencies in program operations.
GAO reviewed the performance plans in 1999 for all of the
agencies who were required to prepare plans, and we observed
then that progress in coordinating cross-cutting issues and
programs is still in its infancy with regard to these plans,
even though the agencies are recognizing the importance of
coordination.
We believe that the agency performance plans can provide
the building block for recognizing cross-cutting efforts, but
that performance plans, at this time, are not sufficiently well
developed in order to do that across all of the agencies,
especially for early childhood programs. This underscores, I
think, the importance of congressional hearings, like this one,
to explore ways to identify and resolve program fragmentation
and overlap.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement, and I
would be happy to answer any questions you or members of the
Subcommittee might have for us.
Thank you.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you.
Obviously, this Results Act had some admirable goals. And
from your observation plans have been absent of the information
that you need to ascertain whether or not there is an effort to
coordinate with other agencies and to assess whether or not
there are common goals among those agencies.
Ms. Shaul. I think that, when you read the plans, you can
see that agencies mention each other. So there is a recognition
that there are agencies that are contributing to a goal like
early childhood development. However, it is a question of what
do you mean by coordination. Just talking to another agency or
saying you are going to talk to another agency is not really a
sufficient level of detail to see exactly how coordination will
occur.
What one would want to see, I think, is whether the
agencies are developing some shared goals, say, around early
childhood or perhaps their performance indicators could be
better aligned so that they are measuring similar kinds of
things, and you can see how together they are contributing to
the same goal.
The performance plans are very detailed plans, but there is
more emphasis on individual programs within a particular
department, and the cross-cutting issues are not as well
developed.
Senator Voinovich. The Department of Education has the
first national goal, and from our information, HHS does not
have that goal as part of their Head Start program. Is it your
opinion that, if they both had that goal and then figured out
those agencies and programs within the departments, that it
would be a much better way of achieving the coordination that
we would like to see?
Ms. Shaul. I believe that is true, Mr. Chairman. When the
agencies first started developing their plans, they were asked
to, as I said, develop the performance goals and measures, and
there was not an explicit requirement for them to demonstrate
exactly how they were coordinating. When the plans were
developed, the Congress said we believe this is the vehicle
that should be able to be used by us to determine whether there
are programs that are cross-cutting in nature and whether there
are programs that should be consolidated, streamlined or
whether they are duplicative. OMB followed that up with some
guidance to the agencies indicating that agencies were expected
to include this kind of information in the plans.
The agencies are beginning to acknowledge that and
beginning to do that. This is the second round of performance
plans. In our opinion, the plans are not at a point yet where
the cross-cutting issues are as well developed as the things
that were originally required in the act.
Senator Voinovich. Are they privy to your report and have
you had an opportunity to sit down and talk to any of the
Secretaries or their deputy secretaries or whoever you get a
chance to speak to?
Ms. Shaul. The GAO has issued some reports about the
performance plans, the 1999 series. We are currently in the
process of reviewing the year 2000 plans as an agency for all
of the agencies that were required to do the performance plans.
So we will be briefing members of Congress, their staffs, over
the recess period on the results of our findings, and we will
make that information available to the agencies as well.
Senator Voinovich. Senator Durbin.
Senator Durbin. Dr. Shaul, you said in your testimony one
disadvantaged child could potentially have been eligible for as
many as 13 programs. Many programs reported serving only a
portion of the target population with long waiting lists. You
give an example of the child care programs associated with
retraining people to return to work, contrasted with Head
Start, which certainly has a child care component to it.
How do we break out of this? I sense that we have here a
lot of people who understand their own version of the world,
but can't see the big picture. I'm not sure if it was Mark
Twain or someone like him who said, if the only tool you have
is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
And in this situation, we have people who just view
children in a narrow category, in a narrow context, instead of
looking at the big picture. Have you seen examples where this
has been overcome, where people have said let us look at the
child instead of the program and try to get a result in terms
of that child's life?
Ms. Shaul. That certainly is the way in which I think one
should think about these issues. Actually, on this question, I
would like to turn to Ms. Janet Mascia, who has done much of
our work on early child care. Because I think one of the issues
has been the difference between how the child care system views
what it is trying to do with the child, especially in the world
where more and more families have both parents working, as
contrasted with the developmental role that Head Start has
tried to play, and how it is the two groups are beginning to
try and think about this problem differently.
Ms. Mascia. Well, I think at the State level, as you know,
Senators, that is where a lot of the overcoming of these
barriers happens. And, for example, under the new block grant,
with the merging of several of the old AFD funding for child
care, States now have a lot more flexibility because they are
not dealing with different eligibility requirements to use
those funds, for example, at the service delivery level with,
for example, merging with a Head Start provider to provide more
of a full day, full year kind of child care.
So I think, at the service delivery level in the States and
localities, this kind of thing is happening. However, it still
is a struggle to bring all of those resources together because,
as we all pointed out, you are dealing with different agencies
and different funding sources, and there still exists, to some
degree, those kinds of barriers in terms of making those funds
seem seamless to the child and to the family and to make it
work for the child where the impact happens.
Senator Durbin. So as you are peeling away the layers on
the onion to find these barriers, does it start with the
legislation that we pass? I mean, does Congress establish
standards, eligibility standards, for example, funding cycles
that really create conflict so that leadership at the State
level, whether it is a governor in Ohio or Illinois, that wants
to overcome it, says so the first thing we have to do is figure
our way around all of these Federal requirements, this maze of
regulations and laws that make it so difficult to get to the
bottom line?
Ms. Mascia. Right. It certainly does start at the Federal
level, in terms of the Congress, as well as the Executive
Branch. There is certainly legislation out there that does not
plan these kinds of barriers. But as we know, all of that gets
translated into regulations, and sometimes inadvertently those
barriers crop up there. So it does happen.
And even at the State level, there are the State's
priorities that goes on at the State level. So it is a chain,
so to speak, a chain reaction all of the way along. So at any
point along that continuum, and certainly, obviously, our
influence is at the Federal level, where we can lift that or
help that, certainly affects it along the way, I believe.
Senator Voinovich. I can say this to you: We created these
Family and Children First Councils, and it came from indigenous
leadership. It is an interesting thing that after our Cabinet
Cluster met for a year, they had this great idea, we are going
to create these councils on the local level, and I am a former
county commissioner, and I said, ``If I am a commissioner, and
you are going to mandate this, I am going to be very irritated
with you.''
So we turned it around. We put an RFP, and we challenged
the counties to come in with plans on how they would coordinate
the public-private for young children and families, and so they
came back with their plans. We started out with 13, and today
we have one now in every county, and they are all different.
But one of the things that ran across all of them was the
multiplicity of programs. And if you had a family at risk, and
you were mentioning 13 or 14 social workers in the same family
to access various programs, and one of the first things they
did was to try to eliminate that and have one person that would
be kind of the family consultant that would help refer them out
to where they needed to get help.
The other thing that we had to do was to take and, quite
frankly, were not sure whether it was legal, but we got various
agencies to take a portion of their budget and put it into one
agency. So that when a family came in, they would be able to
administer all of the needs of that family.
When Congress passed Welfare Reform, and we went to the
TANF program, and that is one thing that Congress really ought
to look into is the flexibility that came about with the use of
that money has just been fantastic because it was much easier
to find wrap-around programs for families, and you had a lot
more flexibility to deal with it and to cut some of the red
tape that was associated with the former program. But a lot of
this stuff starts in Washington, and then when it hits the
local level, they have to figure out ways how they can get out
from under it or around it, and that ought not to be the way it
is.
I would be interested in your opinion on how do you best
approach the agencies--as a member of Congress, how would this
Subcommittee, for example, best approach the agencies to get
them to fulfill what Congress originally anticipated in the
Results Act, in terms of their coordinating their efforts to
achieve mutual goals and to maximize their programs and the
dollars that we are providing for them? How do you do that? How
do we get that done?
Ms. Shaul. Well, one way, Mr. Chairman, is, under the
Results Act, there is supposed to be a consultative process
that, when agencies are developing their performance plans,
they are supposed to come in and talk with the Congress, as
well as other stakeholders, to discuss their goals, and
strategies and their performance measures. The agencies are
also, from the OMB perspective, supposed to be looking over
each other's shoulders at each other's plans to identify the
ways in which they share some common goals and some programs
that may be very similar.
I do not know the extent to which either one of those
processes have been used. We have issued one report that said
that the consultative process has had some benefits, but it has
not been used, perhaps, as extensively because the whole
Results Act process is fairly new, and perhaps more
conversations, as the plans are being developed, between the
Congress and the agencies would be very helpful, particularly
where there are several agencies that may be, for example,
working on early childhood issues.
Senator Voinovich. In terms of your report, is there enough
specificity in the report so they understand your criticisms in
terms of lack of coordination and mutual goal setting?
Ms. Shaul. I believe that GAO has said several things; one,
that across agencies the cross-cutting issues have not been as
well developed as the other within-agency performance goals and
indicators, and we have acknowledged that the agencies are
fairly early into doing the Results Act process. This is only
their second plan, and we are expecting that they will get
better and better at doing their plans and that the cross-
cutting issues will become better addressed year-by-year. But
this is the second time around, and I am sure that, both from a
Governmentwide perspective and on an individual Agency
perspective, we will be giving feedback to the agencies that
cross-cutting issues need to be better defined in their plans.
Senator Voinovich. I would like to welcome Senator Edwards
from North Carolina. Senator, we are glad to have you here. He
is a member of the Committee and not a member of this
Subcommittee, but he is interested enough in children that he
was interested in stopping by this morning to find out a little
bit about what we are doing with this.
Senator Edwards. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Would you like me
to proceed? I do not want to interrupt what you all are doing.
Senator Voinovich. We are at the questioning stage right
now. But if you have some comments that you would like to make,
we are happy to have you here with us.
Senator Edwards. Thank you very much. Only what you have
already said, which this is an area of great interest to me,
and I think the efficient use of our Federal education dollars
is critical, as you all have already discussed.
I might add I have heard some of the discussion about early
childhood programs, particularly Head Start. In our State, in
North Carolina, we have a program which you are probably
familiar with called Smart Start, which has been started by our
governor, Governor Hunt. It has been extraordinarily
successful, and the success continues to climb, as time goes
on. I think it is interesting to watch, as I have been watching
over the course of the last few years. Head Start and Smart
Start complement one another. I am just interested in
continuing to learn about this subject, Mr. Chairman. I do not
have any questions at this point, but I appreciate you allowing
me to attend.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you. Senator Durbin.
Senator Durbin. Let me go into a specific area that relates
to this, and I do not know that much about Smart Start. But in
Illinois we have had a pre-kindergarten program, and it has
been run by the State government through the school system.
I can recall several years ago when someone proposed that
the Head Start program move into the school system, the public
school system of America. Some Head Start programs are in
public schools. But in its creation 35 years ago, I think,
intentionally, Congress did not put Head Start into the school
system, and the reason I think--and I am just guessing at
this--was concerns in that era about whether poor and minority
children would receive a fair shake if they went into the
public school system, and so they said we will do this
separately. And back in the ``Great Society'' era, they created
a mechanism for Head Start where it really is, by its nature,
separate.
And yet I think it gets to the heart of this discussion
today and your investigation as to what is the most efficient
way to deal with this. Certainly, you would want Head Start and
the school system to have complementary programs. You would
want to know that if a child had a learning disability,
discovered at an early age, that you were addressing it with
the best professionals. So that by the time the child arrived
in kindergarten, they would be ready to learn.
Can you address this, in terms of your perspective, as you
have looked at the Head Start program, and this whole question
of whether or not integrating that into the school system is
really putting a clash between two cultures that have been
created over the last 3 decades.
Ms. Shaul. Dr. Ganson.
Ms. Ganson. In terms of looking at the Head Start program,
first, I think one way that Head Start is now reaching out to
get involved with school systems, as well as other
organizations, child care programs, is through the
collaboration grants. And in that way, they are meeting the
needs of the community by hooking up with child care programs,
getting wraparound care, perhaps some of that in the schools so
that the preschool would be in the morning and in the afternoon
they would be in the school for child care. So they are doing
that through collaboration grants.
In terms of whether it should be in the schools or not, the
philosophy of Head Start has always been that the grantee would
do a community assessment, community needs and that they are
different, and within their community they would take whatever
course of action would make sense, be that in a school or
through hooking up with other organizations. But I think you
are right in terms of there is a trend now to go more toward
pre-K programs. I think New York has one now. So you are seeing
more of them.
Senator Durbin. There is another interesting aspect of
this, I believe, and that is, if you take a look at where you
are going to put the pre-K child, that pre-K child, in a baby-
sitting situation may be under the supervision of a person
being paid $2 an hour, in a day care center, a person being
paid $5.50 an hour. I am not sure what the average wage is at
Head Start. My guess is it is a little better than $5.50 an
hour. If the child were in a kindergarten in a public school
system, the teacher in charge is probably making a fairly
decent income, at least in comparison to the other two or
three. So there is a real disparity in income of the adult
supervision that we are providing for these kids, depending on
the setting that they end up in.
Ms. Ganson. Well, I think the other part of it is that,
when we think of the school system, we think of the educational
system, and I believe what Head Start would say is that the
Head Start program is a comprehensive child-development
program. And in that sense, it provides health services,
nutrition services. It involves parents in ways that school
systems would not. So, in that sense, it is different. It also
provides educational services.
Senator Voinovich. It is interesting that you want to
improve the quality of the staff and the teachers. At the same
time, you do not want to rule out the participation that we
have had over the years in the Head Start program because so
often a lot of people are not aware of this, that you cannot
participate in Head Start unless the parents are involved, and
it is not 100 percent, but it is pretty good. And it is amazing
the transformation that occurs when the parents get involved
with their children.
I know, 2 years ago--every year I give out Governor's
Awards, and I gave one out to a former Head Start mom, who
started out there, got her undergraduate degree, went on and
got her Ph.D. But it started out as a Head Start mom, and she
got into it, and the Head Start program also connects up those
families with other social services that exist there. One of
the things in this legislation that I am contemplating
introducing here one of these days is an expenditure, a modest
expenditure, to pay for satellite dishes that we have in Ohio
that are bringing in education to child care and Head Start
Centers to improve the education of those individuals that are
working in those centers and also to educate the parents on how
they can better develop their children when they leave their
child care for Head Start sitting at home.
So it is a real challenge to improve it, but I think if you
just move them into the regular system, I think you might lose
a lot of that. And, quite frankly, it would cost a great deal I
think more money if that occurred.
I would like to just ask one other question, and then I
will send it back to Senator Durbin. If you were sitting in our
seats right now, and you wanted to guarantee that the agencies
that are involved in early childhood are doing what the Results
Act wants them to do; that is, to coordinate and to try to see
how they can maximize their resources to make the biggest
impact, how would you go about getting them to do that?
Ms. Shaul. I think if I were in your shoes, I think this
hearing is a very good start, as folks are on notice that you
are interested in this question, and you are specifically
interested in how agencies are going to coordinate, and that is
not going to go unnoticed.
I think that letting the departments know about your
concern about having the cross-cutting issue of early childhood
addressed would be good. You certainly could have people from
the departments come in and talk with you about their
performance plans and how they are addressing this issue, the
cross-cutting aspect of it in their plans. That would be, I
think, a good set of first steps.
Senator Voinovich. I would like to ask Senator Durbin,
because I am new to the Senate, and I am not sure just what we
can or cannot do because of the separation between the
legislative and the executive branches of Government. But if we
asked the departments to review that portion of the GAO report
that dealt with early childhood, and then said to them we would
like them to sit down with other departments and to discuss
that, and then to come back and report to this Subcommittee
about what their response is to the GAO report, and then what
they are planning on doing in order to remedy that situation
and work together, is that a legitimate request that we can
make or do we not get into that kind of thing?
Senator Durbin. Well, as a seasoned veteran of 24 months in
the Senate---- [Laughter.]
Senator Durbin. I think it is a great idea, and I think we
ought to just move forward on it. I like that because it really
puts some substance to the suggestions from the GAO and their
observations and lets the agencies come back and report to us
in terms of what they have done and what they will do about it.
I like it.
Senator Voinovich. Eleanor?
Ms. Johnson. I think a series of hearings also provides a
forum, just as you said you had seen the value of drawing all
of the agencies in the State around a table and talking. Using
this forum would also allow the agencies to more clearly
communicate to you what coordination they are doing.
I do not want you to leave here thinking that HHS and
Education never talk to teach other. They certainly do, and
they have joint projects and regularly talk about specific
programs. For example, they have been working out mutual
indicators for Head Start and Even Start. Head Start is run by
HHS and Even Start is run by Education.
So there are a lot of coordination activities going on.
However, part of the difficulty that we have had in answering
your questions has been that all of these things do not appear
in the plans. Just the fact that you have singled out an area
or a small handful of areas that are really of critical
importance to you from a policy standpoint and alerts the
agencies that you are interested in really understanding how
they are working together on these issues will start all kinds
of things happening.
Senator Voinovich. Senator Edwards.
Senator Edwards. I was just curious. I know from talking to
some of our folks here in North Carolina, that the perception
existed that the reason that we needed to do Smart Start, which
is the State government program, was that Head Start was not
being as effective as we might hope. Have any of you done any
sort of look or study at the distinctions between Head Start
and Smart Start in North Carolina, any familiarity with that
subject?
Ms. Shaul. No.
Ms. Ganson. I do not.
Ms. Shaul. No, we have not. But I guess what I might add is
that GAO has done some work looking at the research about Head
Start. Although that is an enormously popular program that has
served millions of children, the research that is available
about that program is not clear, in terms of what effect the
Head Start program has on the developmental experience of
children versus how children just naturally grow up. So getting
good information on the effect of programs on final outcomes
for small children is a very difficult and sometimes expensive
research task.
Senator Voinovich. Well, I think that the Smart Start came
in--our program in Ohio is called Early Start. What it
recognizes is that, if you can immediately identify a youngster
in a family that is at risk or the family is at risk, that you
have a much better opportunity to make a difference than if you
wait until that child is ready for the Head Start program,
which is usually when they are 3 or 4 years old.
One of the things that we are doing, and I know that Jim
Hunt is--by the way, Jim and I are, in fact, we are like little
competitors. He stole ideas, and I----
Senator Edwards. But he takes credit for all of them. You
know that, do you not? [Laughter.]
Senator Voinovich. But that is OK. He is just terrific.
Senator Edwards. He is. He is wonderful.
Senator Voinovich. He is just one of the most enthusiastic
people I have ever met in my life. But the fact is that we are
using TANF money for our Early Start program. I think we are
spending about $45 million on it right now.
And the concept of it is that if you--and some of these
families, by the way, are not Welfare eligible. They are
working poor. They are poor families, but they are not on
Welfare yet. So that money is being used for the Early Start
program. And one of our problems is, even if they are Welfare
eligible, does that trigger the 5-year period that families are
eligible or ineligible for Welfare? But those are the kinds of
things that it would be interesting to see where Health and
Human Services has the TANF program, the money is there. I
mean, the States have the money. Is there a way of utilizing
that money and folding it in with something that maybe the
Department of Education is doing.
Senator Edwards. If I could ask one question. I would be
also interested in knowing, I know we are talking here about
the coordination between Federal agencies, I would be
interested in knowing whether we could look at or should look
at the coordination with State programs, which are similar,
which are complementary, which do, as George says, and he is
exactly right, as the Senator says, I think that is exactly
what we are trying to do in North Carolina is to identify kids
who are at risk as early as possible and get them on the right
track developmentally and educationally. At least in the
counties we have been able to fully implement it, it has been
very successful.
And so I would just be interested in knowing whether--and,
Senator Durbin, maybe you can help me the this, too--is that
the sort of, are we asking too much or is that something we
should be doing or maybe it is already being done?
Ms. Shaul. We actually have a study underway right now for
a committee in the House, where we have been asked to look at
what is the array of very early childhood programs serving low-
income children, zero to 5, looking at the array of programs,
trying to get an assessment from folks at the State and local
level about where the need is the most. Is it for infants? Is
it for toddlers? Is it for the 4 to 5 year olds? And then also
trying to identify what are the barriers that might be faced in
coordinating the various early childhood programs. That study
is going on right now. We are doing at least three surveys of
State and local folks, as well as some site visits. That report
will be ready in November.
Senator Edwards. It seems like there is tremendous
potential for overlap and, as a result, tremendous potential
for inefficiency if we do not do something, a study, and
determine what those overlaps and inefficiencies are.
Ms. Shaul. Dr. Ganson is reminding me that we went to North
Carolina as one of our States.
Senator Edwards. Good. I am glad to hear that.
Ms. Ganson. And Ohio is one.
Ms. Shaul. Coincidentally. [Laughter.]
Ms. Mascia. If I might elaborate on that point, too. You
bring up some good points about the two programs you talked
about in North Carolina and Ohio. I mean, one of the reasons
those were started up is we need to understand that the Welfare
Reform law is also driving now the requirements of the very
families we are trying to reach with Head Start. As you pointed
out, one, it increases their income because they are now
working and, therefore, may not be eligible, in some cases, for
Head Start, as well as increase the need for younger children
getting care and more full-time care.
So the Welfare Reform requirements really intersect now
with what is going on with Head Start and just, I think,
underscores, as you all point out, the need that these all be
very coordinated at all levels of Government.
Ms. Ganson. Again, about the Head Start program, I think
recently there has been more of an emphasis on infants and
toddlers, as evidenced by the Early Head Start program, which I
think now is being evaluated. And the other thing is the recent
expansion has moved from expanding just the number of children
in Head Start to giving existing programs more money to allow
for the full-day option. So I think there is more of a
recognition of what are the needs of the families that we are
trying to serve.
Senator Durbin. If I could just comment on that for a
minute. I have been a big fan of Head Start, having visited
programs all up and down my State. But I thought that my
support of it is more intuitive than scientific, intuitive
because, as a parent, my wife and I raised three kids, and we
felt, whether it was our home or some other place, it was the
best for those kids to be in a safe, positive learning
environment, even before they went to the first classroom.
I have always been curious, because when you ask the Head
Start people about performance standards, they start talking
about the Ypsilanti Study which, if I am not mistaken, was in
the sixties. I have been curious as to whether or not we have
had any real updates. Because if we are going to start talking
about performance standards, we have to be honest about what we
are looking for.
I think that the three things I mentioned, a safe, positive
learning environment for young people, is a great alternative
to what other kids might face; sitting in front of a ``boob
tube'' all day with some baby sitter or in a home where a
parent has no education, to speak of, and no parental skills
and, frankly, is not going to do much for that child unless
they get some guidance.
But I guess it gets down to the bottom line, we are more
and more focused on outcomes and performance standards. I am
not an educator by training. I do not know what it is we really
should be looking for. We all agree that there is such a thing
as early childhood development. We all believe that we can help
children if we get to them early and get them on the right
track. I do not know how much we will be able to test. I do not
know if we have to look way down the line to see the results of
this, as to whether or not the kids turn out to be good
students or whether or not we are trying to establish some
measurable standards in an area where it may be tough to do. I
do not know if you have run into that.
Senator Voinovich. They have done some longitudinal studies
on things, and I think that the general criticism of the Head
Start program is that, once the kids get in the third and
fourth grade, it falls off, and they perform just like any
other third or fourth grader, and the debate is they are going
into schools that are not stimulating them, and as a result of
that, they fall. So it is not enough to have a good Head Start
program, but you have got to have good all-day kindergarten,
and you have got to have those first 3 years in school. In our
State, for example, now, we have reduced the class size to no
more than 15, and understand that you have got to have a good
place for the children to come into.
I think you should know that we are, because we are so into
Head Start, we started a longitudinal study a couple of years
ago. So we are going to really have an opportunity to see just
how well these youngsters are going to do and have a better
idea to evaluate the program. And the fact of the matter is, is
that the programs are all over the lot. In some places they are
spectacular and others we have had to close them down because
they just have not been run the way they are supposed to.
I think, I have said to our Head Start, because I meet with
them every year, I said the big light is shining on you, and we
are investing a lot of money in you, and we are expecting you
to show a return on the investment that we are making.
So I think that more and more people are understanding they
are going to be measured in terms of what they are doing, and I
think that is another reason why those agencies that are on a
Federal level ought to understand that some of these programs
are going to be measured, and if they do not get involved with
the people that they are working with on the State and local
levels, the programs are not doing what they are supposed to be
doing, then they may wake up 1 day and find out that those
programs are no longer going to be funded.
And that is part of this multiplicity of--I cannot believe
that out of all of these education programs that we have got up
here, there are not some of them that ought to be closed down
or, in the alternative, the money that is being spent could be
better allocated into something that is going to provide a
better return in terms of our investment, and my cause would be
to say take some of that money and put it into zero to 3, where
we know that it could really make more of a difference than,
say, in some other area.
Ms. Shaul. If I might just add one thing that the Results
Act requires. Early next year, in March, the agencies are going
to be required to have an annual progress plan that looks at
their fiscal year 1999 performance. It is the first time they
are going to be actually talking about their progress toward
their goals, their measurements of progress which is meant to
be a way to let people see differences in success rates between
different approaches, and it is meant to have agencies look at
how to improve what they are doing. So that will be another
piece of information that will be available in about a year.
Ms. Mascia. If I may also elaborate on your point earlier
about reaching younger children. Again, I think it is very
relevant to Head Start. As the research shows, we are beginning
now to understand that children, from the time they are born to
well before they even had a Head Start Center, let alone a
classroom, need a stimulating environment.
And I would just point out that many children are in
environments that are not centers, are not Head Start Centers,
and the challenge, I guess, as you know in your programs
probably in North Carolina, to address that challenge is how do
we reach the more informal providers out there who are caring
for our very youngest children because, in most cases, that is
where our infants and toddlers are. How do we craft programs
that help them, and support them and provide care?
Senator Voinovich. Well, I will tell you one of the things
we are doing, again, in Ohio, is kind of a pilot project for
Public Broadcasting. And we know there is a lot of mom-and-pop
child care centers. In fact, I think one of the Senators
yesterday was talking about child care money. In Ohio, we are
finding that child care money is going wanting. In fact, we
have increased the eligibility or we have relaxed the
eligibility to try and let people with higher incomes take
advantage of it because a lot of Welfare people are not taking
advantage of the program. So they are somewhere, with a
grandmother or grandfather.
What PBS is doing is they have put together a curriculum,
and they are meeting particularly with at-risk families in
libraries. And they give this material to them, and they go
home, and it is coordinated with their programming. And so
that, before the program goes on, they can read to the child,
and then afterwards they have a curriculum to reinforce it.
As part of this bill that I am putting together, it would
increase the amount of money to Public Broadcasting, so that
they could put that program on a Web site and make it available
to everybody in the country, no matter what their socioeconomic
status is, if they have a computer and a printer.
So that, in my case, my son, his wife decided to stay home,
and so she can get this stuff off the Internet, plug it into
the programming of the television, spend the time with the
youngster, reinforce it. And most of our child care centers in
Ohio are Head Start. They have got a computer, they have got a
printer, and they can do the same thing there; in other words,
we can multiply this thing.
And it is really, through technology, a reasonable way to
reach a lot of families that do not have any ready-made program
for them and, in some instances, cannot afford a real fine
child care center and decides I would rather have my child with
grandma or somebody else.
We need to find ways that we can work on this matter and do
more with less and reach out. And I think we also have to
understand, I think, that all kids need this; in other words,
it should cut right across the whole socioeconomic study.
On this, you were talking about Early Start. Two years ago,
when I did my State of the State, I brought in people who had
benefitted from State programs. And this may sound elementary,
but we had an Early Start woman from one of our rural areas,
and I asked her, ``Well, what has the program done for you?''
And she said, ``Well,'' she said, ``you know, when I
brought my baby home, the baby was in the crib, and I watched
TV. And because of the Early Start program, someone from the
Welfare agency came out and spent some time with me and
explained to me that I ought to read to my baby, and that I
ought to hug my baby, and that I ought to rub my baby, and went
through a lot of these things. She, frankly, taught me how to
take and make materials using these Ziploc bags, making a book
out of a Ziploc bag, where you staple them together and then
you can stick pictures from magazines.''
It is kind of simple stuff, but without that, she might
have continued to have the baby in the crib, and she is
watching TV, and that child would have lost all of that
opportunity to be stimulated during that period that is so
important for the development of that child.
Does anybody else have some questions?
Senator Edwards. Just very briefly. I wanted to follow up
on something that was mentioned earlier.
You mentioned a study that is being done in the House. Are
folks actually going to States like Ohio, and North Carolina,
and Illinois and looking at, for example, in my State, Smart
Start programs, where they are, where they are located,
comparing them with where Head Start programs are located, the
services provided by the two, the extent to which there is
overlap between the two? Because I have to tell you I have been
all over North Carolina, and I have been in a bunch of Head
Start Centers, and I have been in a lot of Smart Start Centers,
and I had this visceral reaction that there is very little
coordination. They say there does seem to be overlap, there
seems to be huge gaps, which is actually of at least as much
concern to me.
Can you tell me a little more about whether those specific
issues are being addressed in that study.
Ms. Shaul. I would like to ask Dr. Ganson to address this
because----
Senator Edwards. I see her nodding. So she must have----
Ms. Shaul. That is because she is leading this study.
Ms. Ganson. We are looking at coordination. I think what we
found is that there is a lot of variability in terms of
coordination at the State and local level. In terms of Head
Start, I think it is more recent that they have collaborated
more, but I think in some areas it is more than others. I do
not know, off the top of my head, what the collaboration grants
in North Carolina, if there are grantees that have them and
what those would involve, but usually they involve hooking up
with other preschool centers, as well as other service
providers.
In our study, what we are doing is we are talking to all of
the different players who are involved in early childhood, and
we are talking about what does your community do to coordinate
these activities, what barriers are you finding to having this
coordinated, help provide and form an efficient use of
resources, and how is this all coming together?
So that is basically the focus of this study. The three
questionnaires are going to give us more of a national
perspective on facilitators and barriers as well as what kinds
of needs are easier or more difficult to get; for example,
preschool, part day, full day, infant, toddler, mildly ill
children. So we are asking about also services provided. But a
key part is coordination, and the case studies are going to
sort of give us some of the meat to fill out the story that we
are getting on a national level.
Senator Edwards. On an emotional level and a rational
level, I think the folks in North Carolina truly believe in
these programs. I mean, they do. They just do not want their
money spent inefficiently. I think they want to see these
things work, and they want to see their tax dollar being spent
the way it ought to be spent.
I just want to say one other thing, Mr. Chairman, and there
certainly have been problems in Head Start. We all know that.
But it can be an incredibly inspirational thing because I have
personally experienced it. To go into a Head Start Center, see
a good Head Start Center, see it working. And you ask what is
the best example of how well this center is working, and they
point out the four or five men or women working in that center
who started in a Head Start Center who are now 20 years old or
22 years old. It is a moving thing to hear those men and women
talk about what effect it had on their lives and why they are
so devoted to the program.
So I have to tell you that it can be, while there are
certainly problems, there is no doubt about that, and we need
to do everything we can to eliminate those problems and be
efficient and particularly to coordinate between agencies and,
in my opinion, between Federal and State programs, it is a
critically important thing, and I just wish more people could
go into some of these centers and see what good they are doing.
Senator Voinovich. Well, I would just like to say one other
thing. You are talking about local collaboration. Progress
cannot be made unless you have the indigenous leadership in the
local community working together to try to coordinate the use
of the resources in the community, and I think that is one
thing that we need to stimulate more on the national level and
reward communities for creating local collaboratives, where
they do get together to try and figure out how they can best
serve the needs of the people and their respective communities.
We did that in the State level, but there ought to be more
thought given to it, I think, on the Federal level that says,
if you get together on the local level and create these
collaboratives, we will be able to make some more resources
available, as kind of an incentive to do that. It is not easy
to make that happen because, in so many instances, there are
such turf wars that go on in communities where, even if you
find a hole, you know, that it is not there, that you cannot
get anybody because it is a question of, well, is that mine or
is that yours, and neither one of them are doing anything about
it.
Back when I was a county commissioner, we did this great
survey of all the social services. We had the School of Social
Work at Case Western Reserve, one of the finest in the country,
do the thing, and they came back, all of these agencies
overlapped. And before the study, they were all excited about
it. Well, after it was over with, and there was a lot of
duplication, and it meant that maybe a public institution could
be closed down and a private institution could be done better
or vice versa, it just blew up, and that was the end of it.
So some of this is very difficult to get done. I think what
has happened in years since then, and that was back in
seventies, is that because of the scarcity of resources, and
perhaps a deeper appreciation of how important it is, the need
is there, that these agencies seem, today, to be more willing
to work together than they did maybe 20 years ago.
Are there any other questions that anyone would like to
ask?
[No response.]
Senator Voinovich. If there are not, we appreciate your
being here today, and we are going to follow up on what you had
to say and see if we can get those agencies in here.
One last request I have, and that would be if you could
give us the best information that you have available of the
agencies across the board that are dealing with zero to 3, I
would be grateful because it would then give us a good idea of
just what is out there on the smorgasbord.
And maybe once we get through it, these main two agencies,
we could see if we could bring in some of these other folks
that are doing things. For example, I think the Department of
Agriculture is involved in this in a big way.
Thank you very much.
Ms. Shaul. You are welcome.
Senator Voinovich. This hearing is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:14 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
MULTIPLE PROGRAM COORDINATION IN
EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION:
THE AGENCY PERSPECTIVE
----------
TUESDAY, MAY 11, 1999
U.S. Senate,
Oversight of Government Management, Restructuring,
and the District of Columbia Subcommittee
of the Committee on Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:35 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. George V.
Voinovich, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senator Voinovich.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH
Senator Voinovich. Good morning. The Subcommittee hearing
will come to order. I would like to share with you, first of
all, what this Subcommittee is all about in terms of education.
At our first hearing, we talked about the fact that we had
a multiplicity of education programs. According to a House
study that was done last year, there were some 760 programs in
various Federal agencies dealing with education. The Senate
Finance Committee had a study done by the Government Accounting
Office and they came back and said there were 540 education
programs in some 31 different agencies.
What I thought would be fruitful for this Subcommittee is
to look at those education programs to determine what they are
doing, are they needed, and could the money be better spent in
other programs, could they be better coordinated, and perhaps
some of the money reallocated into areas where recent studies
show that money could be better spent.
The area that I thought we would begin with would be the
area of early childhood. According to the GAO, the Federal
Government administers approximately 90 early childhood
programs through 11 agencies and 20 offices. The programs
identified--GAO has identified 34 of them as key--that is,
education and child care were key to the mission of the
programs out of those 34. The early childhood programs consume
most of the Federal dollars and account for approximately 83
percent of all early childhood program dollars, so a big share
of the dollars that are being spent are being spent in
education or child care.
I began the effort to look at these programs in the
prenatal-to-3 area because I think there is a large lack of
attention to these programs in this country today. I recognized
that early on as Governor of the State of Ohio, and I tried to
recognize that as Chairman of the National Governors'
Association, where we made prenatal-to-3--in fact, Bob Miller,
the Governor of Nevada and I, teamed up and said we are going
to do a 2-year goal of the NGA to get people involved in early
childhood and prenatal-to-3 programs.
It is interesting that when I first met Rob Reiner a couple
of years ago, and he has been a real big booster of prenatal-
to-3, and it is interesting, he is commenting now about all of
the response to the Littleton situation. He is going back and
saying, hey, this is where it is at. I will never forget, when
I first met him, he looked at me and he said, ``The most
important thing that you did in your life as Governor is to
draw a line in the sand and say, this is the last generation of
Ohio's children that are going to jail, going on drugs,
becoming pregnant while they are teenagers.''
In other words, we decided that we would make a difference
with that group of people, and as you know, I am very proud of
the fact that our State is the first State in the country that
has a slot for every child who is eligible in Head Start or
public school preschool, where the parents want them to be in
the program.
I think that there is no question that all the research
work that is out there indicates that prenatal-to-3 is a
crucial time in a child's life. There are some learned
researchers, educators, and juvenile justice people who say
that if we really want to do something about juvenile crime and
perhaps avoid the kind of thing we did experience in Littleton,
that we need to focus in this area.
It is interesting, a couple of years ago, I had started
reading John DiGilio's work at Princeton about the coming
predator generation and I got really nervous about it. So we
had a juvenile crime summit in 1997. I think a lot of people
that came were expecting tough love and, frankly, some of the
stuff that is being talked about today with the juvenile crime
bill on the floor of the Senate were the things that needed to
be done in order to make a difference.
I was a bit surprised when they came back and said, that is
not what is needed. What is needed is this prenatal-to-3. It is
making a difference in children's lives very early on. If you
put your resources in that and your attention there, you would
do a whole lot more to deal with the juvenile crime problem
than probably anything else that you can do.
So I want to draw the line in the sand at the Federal
level, and the way to do that, I think, first, is to look at
the programs that the Federal Government is already involved in
that support prenatal-to-3 and support those programs, and
where appropriate, increase funding for them.
Second, to coordinate the dollars that are being spent to
make sure that those dollars really do make a difference in the
lives of our families and children.
And third, I think you both know that I am working on some
legislation, prenatal-to-3, that I have been working with the
National Head Start Association and the Children's Defense Fund
that is a modest effort to really encourage collaboration on
the local level by providing incentive funding to them and
flexibility so that they can do more for families and children.
So we are here today, and the thought that I wanted to deal
with the second part of this, the coordination and making sure
the dollars we are spending are appropriately used. I was not
familiar with this before, but I am now, and that is the
Results Act. It is a valuable tool for the Subcommittee in
evaluating overlap and duplication and also the Act requires
agencies to set outcome-based goals, measure their performance,
and report their accomplishment. I do not know what anybody
else is going to do, but I would like to share with you that I
am going to pay attention to the Results Act. We are looking at
it in several other areas, but this is an area that I am going
to look at and see how we are doing in terms of what it is that
agencies say that they are going to be doing.
Specifically, the Act requires agencies to develop
strategic plans, including mission statements, outcome-based
goals, and an explanation of how goals will be achieved and how
progress will be measured. The plans were completed in 1997 and
the second annual performance plans are now ready for
Congressional and for GAO review, so we are going to be
watching the progress.
On March 25, which I am sure you are both aware of, we held
a hearing where GAO looked at the Departments of Health and
Human Services' and Education's 5-year strategic plans and
fiscal year 1999 and 2000 annual performance plans and
testified on the Departments' coordination efforts. They
testified, GAO, that although the annual performance plans
addressed the issues of coordination, the plans provide little
detail about their intentions to implement such efforts.
According to GAO, the plans do not address the challenge of
coordinating programs that serve similar populations while
having different key objectives.
On April 1, I wrote to Secretary Shalala and Secretary
Riley and I asked that they look at that GAO testimony and
comment on several items that addressed the issue of overlap
and duplication and I asked three questions. Do you agree or
disagree with GAO's assessment of your efforts to coordinate
with other departments and agencies? If you do agree that your
plan could be better, how do you intend to improve your efforts
to coordinate with the Departments of Health and Human
Services, Education, and other critical agencies?
That is another thing. There are a whole host of other
agencies that are really not at the table here, and my thought
would be that since your two departments spend most of the
money and are more involved, that it would be kind of
interesting to see how those other Federal agencies, including
the Departments of Agriculture and Labor, could kind of
piggyback on what you are doing so that there is an effort made
to have a total plan of the agencies that are out there and how
we can have a full-court press of the agencies and dollars to
really make a difference in the prenatal-to-3 area.
And last but not least, the Department of Education names
all children enter school ready to learn as a key objective,
but this is not an objective of Health and Human Services. How
do you approach program coordination when the programs do not
share a similar overall objective? From reading the letters of
the Departments and your testimony, obviously, maybe HHS does
not mention that, but it is there. Even though it is not
written down, it is a goal.
This morning's hearing is to give you an opportunity to
comment on GAO's testimony on March 25, and to share your
thoughts on ways that you can better coordinate. I am very
pleased that we have two outstanding witnesses here with us
this morning. I am pleased you are here, because you really
work with these programs, and I would have liked to have both
of your secretaries, but it is nice to have people that are
closer to the street. In all probability, you would have
prepared their testimony anyhow.
Our two witnesses are Olivia Golden of the Department of
Health and Human Services, and Judith Johnson of the Department
of Education. I hope that you can assist the Subcommittee in
our pursuit of a system where Federal education programs yield
measurable maximum benefits for our families and children.
We are expecting Senator Durbin, and when he does come in,
if you do not mind, I will introduce him and maybe give him a
chance to share with you his thoughts, and then we will
continue with the testimony.
Our first and only panel represents the Departments of
Health and Human Services and Education, Olivia Golden,
Assistant Secretary for the Administration for Children and
Families, ACF, right, the Administration for Children and
Families of the Department of Health and Human Services, and
Judith Johnson, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Office of
Elementary and Secondary Education at the Department of
Education.
Your full statements, of course, will be entered into the
record and we would hope that you would kind of summarize those
for us this morning. I would like to call on Ms. Golden first
for her testimony. Again, thank you for being here.
TESTIMONY OF OLIVIA A. GOLDEN,\1\ ASSISTANT SECRETARY,
ADMINISTRATION FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Ms. Golden. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to
discuss the coordination of early childhood programs. I know
that early childhood education has been a top priority of
yours. I have had a chance to visit Ohio and see some of what
you have accomplished, so I particularly welcome the chance to
discuss these important issues today.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Golden appears in the Appendix on
page 51.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In partnership with the Congress, the administration has
provided leadership in early childhood programs in several
different and complementary ways. First, in response to the
tremendous need, we have expanded public investment to help
low-income families with child care expenses and to provide
high-quality, comprehensive early childhood programs to help
children enter school ready to learn.
President Clinton has placed a high priority on steady
increases in early childhood funding, leading to doubling the
level of funding for child care, expansion of Head Start to
serve 1 million children annually by 2002, and establishing the
early Head Start program for children under the age of 3. The
President has continued this commitment in his fiscal year 2000
budget proposal by requesting an historic increase for Head
Start expansion and quality improvements, as well as critically
important investments in child care, including a new early
learning fund.
The second component of our leadership efforts is improved
program quality and accountability for results, described more
fully in my written testimony.
Third, and of special interest to this Subcommittee, is the
development of outcome standards and measures for Head Start
and child care programs. The Government Performance and Results
Act set in motion the first national effort to identify
specific outcomes for federally-funded early childhood programs
and a system to measure and track progress on these performance
measures.
Drawing on the work of the National Education Goals Panel,
in consultation with early childhood experts, we created a
cutting-edge system of 24 outcome measures to track progress
towards improving the healthy development and learning
readiness of young children. We set up the Family and Child
Experiences Survey, or FACES, to assess performance on these
measures in a nationally representative sample of local Head
Start agencies. Initial findings from the FACES survey already
are being used to pinpoint strengths and areas for needed
improvement in local Head Start programs.
I would like to turn now to key areas where we are working
to improve coordination so that the full spectrum of early
childhood programs work together for children.
First, we are working to ensure that funding strategies
provide incentives for collaboration. For the past 3 years, the
Head Start Bureau placed a priority on partnerships in awarding
more than $340 million in program expansion funding. This
policy led to providing full-day, full-year services to more
than 50,000 additional children in partnership arrangements
with child care and pre-kindergarten agencies and resources.
Second, we are working to ensure that Federal policies
support collaboration and to identify and remove obstacles to
collaboration that are based on misinterpretation of Federal
regulations. For instance, the Child Care Bureau provided
guidance to prevent unwarranted problems in auditing agencies
that use funding from different Federal programs and issued a
memorandum clarifying the flexibility available to States in
defining eligibility across child care and early education
programs.
Third, we are providing technical assistance to remove
barriers to collaboration and to share successful models and
strategies. For example, we are supporting training and
technical assistance to help child care and Head Start agencies
collaborate with Department of Education programs such as the
Even Start family literacy effort and programs for infants,
toddlers, and children with disabilities.
Finally, we are bringing together early childhood and child
care leaders and other partners to solve common problems and
plan for the future. For example, the Head Start collaboration
initiative links Head Start with State programs in child care,
education, and other key services for young children and their
families. The Healthy Child Care America campaign supports
collaborative efforts of health professionals, child care
providers, and families to improve the health and safety of
children in child care settings. And Head Start, Child Care
Bureau, and other HHS staff are active members of the
Department of Education's Federal Interagency Coordinating
Council to coordinate programs that serve young children with
disabilities.
Community, State, and Federal efforts pay off in
partnerships that truly make a difference for children. My
written statement describes a project in Philadelphia that was
able to combine Federal housing, child care, Head Start, and
job training funds to assist a mother and her 5 children in
turning their lives around.
Recognizing the positive impact of coordinated early
childhood programs, ACF seeks to build on and expand our
existing efforts. We will support collaboration and the use of
outcome measurement for early childhood programs through the
early learning fund, which is part of the President's fiscal
year 2000 budget. This is flexible results-focused funding
which will assist States and communities in maximizing existing
early childhood resources, strengthening partnerships, and
improving quality.
In addition, ACF and the Department of Education will co-
convene administrators of child care and pre-kindergarten
programs and Head Start leaders to explore collaborative
approaches to program funding, monitoring, performance
outcomes, professional development, and technical assistance,
and we will begin a new effort with the Department of Education
to review opportunities for further coordination in the areas
of performance indicators, funding, service strategies, and
research.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to summarize my
written testimony, and I would be delighted to answer any
questions.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you very much.
We would now like to hear from the Hon. Judith Johnson.
TESTIMONY OF JUDITH JOHNSON,\1\ ACTING ASSISTANT SECRETARY,
OFFICE OF ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION, U.S. DEPARTMENT
OF EDUCATION
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much, and thank you for the
opportunity to testify before your Subcommittee with Assistant
Secretary Golden on this very important topic of early
childhood education.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson appears in the Appendix
on page 54.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
As you have noted, I have submitted written testimony and
would like to take this opportunity to highlight the major
themes in that document.
Recent studies in child development have vastly increased
our knowledge about learning development between birth and age
3, and we know what factors enhance early learning experiences.
Over the years, the Department has worked in close
collaboration with the Department of Health and Human Services
to help States and local communities provide high-quality early
childhood education, and we are fortunate, Senator, to count
you as a committed leader in this field.
As you know, the Education Department's work is framed by
eight national goals, the first of which is every child in
America will enter school ready to learn. Secretary Riley has
identified the early years of childhood as the period in which
we have the most potential to make the greatest gains.
School districts and States across the country are
beginning to offer opportunities to participate in early
childhood education programs to children from poor families,
and as a seasoned educator, I know firsthand that these
children face enormous challenges during their first years in
school.
As an example, one district that responded to this
challenge using Title I funds is the Charlotte-Mecklenberg
School District in North Carolina. They use 85 percent of their
Title I funding to provide early childhood education for poor
3- and 4-year-olds. Children participating in this program
enter kindergarten better prepared than similarly economically-
disadvantaged children who do not participate in the program.
I spent 2 days visiting this program and left with a
wonderful sense that children were provided with a caring, safe
environment, and that their teachers believed all children
could become successful students. The school's mission was
developed based on this belief.
The Department, in partnership with other Federal agencies,
such as HHS, must act as a catalyst to support innovative State
and local district programs aimed at increasing opportunities
for students to experience high-quality education. The
Department's strategic plan includes a school readiness
objective as well as strategies to improve services to our
young children before they enter formal schooling.
Our 2000 annual plan specifically lays out performance
measures and strategies for interagency coordination in the
area of early childhood, as recognized by GAO in its assessment
of our plan. Our performance indicators are used as monitoring
devices.
However, the GAO testimony commented on the need for
Education to provide a more complete picture of intended
performance. So, in response to that concern, allow me to offer
several highlights. I will focus on coordination activities in
three areas: Coordinating research, coordinating services, and
coordinating performance measurement. They are more fully
described in my written testimony.
Coordinating research--the Department has created the Early
Childhood Research Working Group. It is coordinated by the
Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), the
National Institute on Early Childhood Development and Education
(NICHD), known as the Early Childhood Institute, or in our
office, ECI. It links with other offices in the Department and
approximately eight other Federal departments to support
research, data collection, and services for young children and
their families. The group's recent meeting was focused on the
Children's Research Initiative. This group discussed child care
studies and a research competition focusing on improving how
young children are taught mathematics and reading.
The Department's Office of Special Education, ECI, and
NICHD and Health and Human Services jointly sponsored the
``Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children'' report
produced by the National Research Council. This is another fine
example of interagency collaboration, and it is a document used
across the country.
The study synthesizes the most effective current research
on the teaching and learning of reading. A significant section
of this report explores how literacy can be fostered at birth,
and from birth through kindergarten and the primary grades. It
also includes recommendations on effective professional
development and instruction for young children.
The National Research Council also produced a customer-
friendly guide for parents, teachers, and child care providers
entitled ``Starting Out Right.'' It describes how to promote
children's reading success and prevent reading difficulties.
Now, I will discuss coordinating services across agencies.
We understand the importance of ensuring that early childhood
education is coordinated across Federal agencies and with State
and local entities responsible for providing services. As I
said to you just prior to the opening of this hearing, our
customers need to see it as a seamless set of services.
The 1994 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)
requires that local districts using Title I funding provide
early childhood development services that comply with the Head
Start performance standards. This requirement provides for a
more careful alignment of performance goals among early
childhood programs in the Department of Education and at HHS.
The Even Start family literacy program administered by the
Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) is based on
interagency coordination. Even Start draws on existing service
providers to integrate early childhood education, adult
education, and parenting education into a unified program.
Rather than duplicating preschool services, the collaboration
between the Department and HHS works toward improving the
quality of services provided to our most vulnerable children.
The recently authorized Reading Excellence Act included
several amendments to the Even Start program that further
emphasize collaboration. One of these amendments provides $10
million annually for State-wide family literacy coordination to
help States coordinate and integrate literacy services. Ohio is
one of the eight States that already receive grants under this
program.
As to coordinating performance measurements, as seen in
these examples, the Department has made progress in the area of
interagency coordination, but we know the Department needs to
do even more. We are developing a joint coordination plan with
HHS, which we will submit to Congress by the end of this year.
Areas of coordination that we will address include performance
indicators, service strategies for early childhood, and
research.
Coordination of indicators among early childhood programs
was included in our annual plan and was also a recommendation
of the Department's recently released report to Congress on
evaluation of Federal education legislation enacted in 1994. In
this report, we point out the lack of consistent expectations
for school readiness, which makes it difficult to assess a
program's effectiveness in supporting the learning and
development that young children need for school success.
In addition, our Early Childhood Institute and the Office
of Special Education Programs are sponsoring a study of early
childhood pedagogy with the National Academy of Sciences. The
study, which will be completed in early 2000, will tell us what
young children need to experience and learn if they are to be
successful in kindergarten and what measures will best assess
what young children have learned.
In conclusion, across all of the agencies you mentioned or
counted, we are all committed to ensuring that goal one,
children entering school ready to learn, is achievable,
measurable, and a reality for all of our children. We
understand that early childhood experiences are critical to the
future success of our Nation.
Thank you for providing me with this opportunity to
testify, and I, too, would be very happy to answer any
questions you may have.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you very much.
One of the things that probably argues against coordination
to a degree with prenatal-to-3 or prenatal-to-4 or 5 years is
that the education community for many years, at least in our
State, looked at kindergarten to 12 as education and did not
really consider prior to that as part of their responsibility.
What we did--I chaired the Readiness Task Force for the
National Governors' Association when John Ashcroft was actually
Chairman. It was obvious that not only is education important
in the early years, but also all of the other things that
provide that wonderful setting so that children can develop
properly, which includes the social services, child care, good
health care, maternal care, and the rest of it, and that those
types of things are just as important as the education
challenges that you give a child at that stage, because if you
do not have those, it is very difficult for them to take
advantage of it.
You have talked about Even Start, and I think the
Department is working on Early Start. Is there an Early Start
program?
Ms. Golden. The Early Head Start program serves infants and
children, ages 0 to 3, before they enter preschool.
Senator Voinovich. Right, that brings them in earlier.
Ms. Golden. That is right.
Senator Voinovich. What is Even Start, then?
Ms. Johnson. Even Start is a program that focuses on both
the family and the child, and there are three goals in Even
Start. One, adult literacy, and that is providing parents with
the opportunity to improve their literacy skills; two, giving
them opportunities to develop and fine-tune their parenting
skills; and, three, at the same time providing for early
childhood education. And the early childhood education part
could be a Head Start provider--in fact, in many of our Even
Start programs, they are Head Start providers. What we are
looking at in this program is strengthening the family unit at
the same time that we are providing early childhood experience
for children.
The Even Start program has received very good recognition
and very positive evaluations. What we have learned is that
children who have gone through the Even Start program continued
to demonstrate success when they enter school, and their
parents are more involved in their schooling once they enter
formal schooling.
Senator Voinovich. It is interesting that you say that,
because one of the reasons why we made the commitment that we
made to Head Start and which a lot of people do not understand
is that it is a program that insists that the parents become
involved. So often, the social worker that is working with them
identify problems at home and begin the parents to take
advantage of improving their educational situation, pursuing a
GED. Several years ago, I gave out the Governor's Award to a
woman who started out as a Head Start mom and received her
Ph.D. and her kids have all gone.
So it seems to me that both of these are falling in the
same category. Are you really looking at Head Start as the
place where you would place these dollars, or doing it
differently, and if you do the Even Start program, do you start
at the school or where do you initially make the contact?
Ms. Johnson. The school community can usually identify the
children, because they are not school-age yet, where their
families are eligible for services. The identification of who
benefits from the program is really done at the local level.
But I want to emphasize the fact that this is in collaboration,
in almost every instance, with a Head Start provider. They
provide the early childhood experience. What we are trying to
do is encourage the communities to bring all the providers to
the table to provide a comprehensive set of services that will
benefit both the adults in the family and the child.
I just want to comment on your observations about the
importance of providing these early childhood experiences. I
have only been with the Department 2 years, having spent 30
years in New York State as a veteran educator, and the last two
positions I held were at the district level, as a district
administrator.
We discovered around 1985 that more and more of our
children were coming to kindergarten totally unprepared, as
defined by the kindergarten teachers. So we had to make some
big decisions, bring in health and human services people from
the local community, sit around the table and try to decide
what we could do for these young children. At that point, we
began to expand the Head Start services in one community and
the State pre-kindergarten program in the second district that
I worked at, and the difference was amazing.
What we were finding with the children who did not have
these early childhood experiences, they simply did not have
school-readiness skills as a teacher traditionally finds; they
were unable to sit for long periods of time. Many of the
children did not know what a crayon was, and we would have
thought that was something that most teachers would have
expected. Well, that is very easy to remedy. The dilemma is, if
you do not help these children develop the school-readiness
skills, they are sometimes mislabeled when they get to a
regular school. That mislabeling does not need to occur if you
have a solid early childhood program in place and the parents
are involved from the very beginning.
Senator Voinovich. The thing is, you say the school
district reached out, and we have some public preschools. The
real issue is, how do you get these dollars that are all
dealing with the same customer, but there are streams coming in
from different departments, and how do you, again, maximize
that, then?
I am glad to hear that the Even Start money is going into
that, but you have a lot of States, like Ohio, and in this
legislation that I am going to be introducing in the next
couple of weeks, we are going to allow TANF money to be used
for a program that we refer to as Early Start, which really
identifies during pregnancy families that could use the benefit
of counseling and help when the baby is born, that you are
right there and you have somebody working with them and sharing
with them what they need to do. It is money coming out of your
pot.
Ms. Golden. And you know that under the regulations we have
published, TANF funds are now available to States to use for
needy families for child care and early childhood services. I
think it is really important that you are highlighting that for
States, because some are choosing to use that option, but not
all of them.
Senator Voinovich. I want to compliment you, too, because
we were really worried about your regulations coming out and I
think you really listened to the customers and, for the most
part, the reaction I am getting is that what we originally
thought were going to be pretty restrictive and not very
flexible have been--they have done a good job on it.
Ms. Golden. Thank you.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you very much.
Ms. Golden. Thank you very much.
Senator Voinovich. But you move to Ed-Flex. It is very
interesting. You were saying that they are using Title I public
preschool money for 3- and 4-year-olds. Now, that is not
traditionally a Title I population. I just wonder, in order to
do that, were they a State that had Ed-Flex waivers?
Ms. Johnson. No. Actually, that is a provision as a result
of the most recent legislation. It is just that in many places,
historically, the Title I money has been placed in the
elementary schools, and to make that major shift to providing
pre-kindergarten or early childhood experiences means that the
district must secure monies from some other source to support
the elementary program. So it has been a difficult decision for
many districts to make. But where they have made the decision
and moved the money into the early childhood experiences, the
benefits are enormous as the youngsters enter school because
the need for support services is somewhat diminished and the
children are better prepared for school.
Senator Voinovich. The thing that hits me, and that is what
this hearing is about, is that you now have TANF money going
into Early Start, you have Even Start, and then we have Title I
money coming in for 3- and 4-year-olds, which is a Head Start
population, though I am sure that some of the kids may not be
eligible for Head Start that are taking----
Ms. Johnson. Actually, in the one place that I mentioned,
they were able to combine the Title I funds and the Head Start
funds to create a full-day program, an enriched full-day
program for students. That is a real savvy use of funds.
You know, with all of the funds that you have identified
and the programs that you have mentioned, we have not yet
reached every 3- or 4-year-old in this country who could
benefit from these services. So we still have a ways to go to
ensure that there is a place for every 3- and 4-year-old to go
to receive an early childhood experience, particularly those
whose families could not afford to pay for the private
experience. And until we reach that, I would say we need to
continue to look at the funds that are available and the
programs that are providing services and make sure that they
are coordinated.
Senator Voinovich. I think that is the key----
Ms. Golden. Right.
Senator Voinovich [continuing]. Because you have two
departments, that there needs to be that kind of coordination
in the communities. I mean, you have your Head Start
collaboration, which has been something that we have really
emphasized. In fact, one of our people went to Washington and
spent some time there----
Ms. Golden. She was wonderful. It was really wonderful that
she came to work with us.
Senator Voinovich. Yes, to kind of get an idea of how it
is. But it would seem to me that in any plan that you are
putting together that there be some aspect of it that has a
mechanism so that you can sit down with the superintendent of
education in Cleveland, for example, and say, you have your
Title I monies. You do have an opportunity to utilize those
dollars for 3- and 4-year-olds. You do have your Head Start
program. What is the status of that? Could you piggyback on
that without creating a new mechanism in the community, and
then talk about the other money that is available for child
care.
One of the things that is the real challenge that we have
had, and the Department has encouraged this, is the issue of
having child care and Head Start located at the same place so
you do not duplicate the physical facilities. One of the
biggest problems we had in expanding Head Start in Ohio was we
just did not have the physical facilities to do that. Then we
started to open our eyes to some of the child care facilities
and said, ``Gee, why do we not start doing that? ''
But it is this effort, this coordinated effort of these
programs, that are so doggone important. From an administrative
point of view, I do not how you get that done, whether it is
through the Head Start collaboration or not, but it just seems
that, from my observation, that too often, you get one group
going off over here doing their thing and another group going
off over here, and you do not get that kind of--and then there
are the difficult things. We have family social service centers
now that we are putting into our schools where the teacher that
has a problem has it right there in the school and they can
deal with this as an elementary, and actually in middle and
upper secondary, so that the coordination has got to be much
better than it is.
You have to almost ask yourself, if you are going to have
all of this money going from prenatal to, say 5 years, does it
make sense that you have got all of these streams of money
coming in from two departments, and maybe even three or four,
and would you be better off if you had one agency administer
those programs rather than having two of them do it?
Ms. Golden. Could I speak a little bit to both examples of
where collaboration has worked and to your question about how
to make collaboration work better in the future? I think they
are related.
When you were talking about both the struggles and the
successes in Ohio, I was thinking about the chance I had to
visit a child care program in Cincinnati, Ohio which had come
together with Head Start. I think that this effort was sparked
both by your commitment to early childhood education and by our
use of Head Start expansion funding, to encourage collaboration
by putting dollar incentives behind it. And so in Cincinnati,
child care programs that were willing to take on the Head Start
performance standards and live up to them could then become
Head Start programs and get that funding, if they were willing
to do the quality of care that would lead to school readiness.
I visited a program and I asked the child care director--it
was wonderful--what she had found most important, and she said
that it was partly the training for the staff, but the most
important thing for her about becoming a Head Start program was
having access to the disability coordinator and the speech
therapist and the different people who could come through and
help her with the kids' needs. This is really just what you
were saying about putting together the resources to address
educational needs and other intensive needs. So that was one
example where we were able to put all the pieces together at
the local level.
But the point you are making, I think, is that having
success is putting all the pieces together in one place does
not guarantee that you can do it everywhere. So how do you make
that possible?
I think that for me, a key element of that is being clear
on the outcomes and the measures, because if you can be clear
on the goals, then you really can pull people together. I
mentioned in my written testimony the work that we have done,
with a lot of expertise from the Department of Education and
outside educators, on the FACES survey, to develop indicators
for school readiness and Head Start. We are going to be using
some of those indicators in the Department of Education's early
childhood longitudinal study-kindergarten cohort (for which we
are also providing some funding) so that some of those measures
will be used in a lot of different settings.
In my experience, one of the ways you can help get people
to really focus on using their dollars together, is if they
understand what the results will be. I do not know if that fits
with your experience, but I have found that if you are paying
attention to the results so people are sharing that mission,
that is often a way of getting the pieces together.
Senator Voinovich. That is another thing in the testimony,
that you are doing this longitudinal study. That longitudinal
study, that is coming out of your shop, out of Education?
Ms. Johnson. Yes.
Ms. Golden. There are two things going on, the ECLS and
then the FACES study, and we are linking them by using some
common measures in both places.
Senator Voinovich. But that will be looking at your Head
Start preschool programs, that study, or what is it
specifically looking at?
Ms. Golden. The study that we are doing is a national
survey of Head Start that will follow children from the time
they enter Head Start through their completion of the program
and entry into kindergarten and first grade. We are already
learning some important things in Head Start children about
school readiness, about the change from fall to spring, about a
range of measures, and about the quality of the program.
At the same time, the Education Department is doing a
major, very large national survey that is a sample of all
kindergarten children. What we have done is take some of the
indicators that we all developed together for Head Start
children and we are using the same set of indicators in the
Department of Education's national study, so that we will be
able to look at comparisons across different groups of
children. So it is a really exciting example of our two
departments trying to put two pieces together so that we can
learn more than we could from either study alone.
Senator Voinovich. I do not know whether it is the Carnegie
Foundation is doing it or not, maybe you know, but we really do
need to have a longitudinal study made of Head Start and
preschool programs to really follow them up, because when you
finally get out to defend some of these programs, a lot of it
is anecdotal, yes, they do better, and so forth, and then you
have people that are really--I ran into it in Ohio--well, they
fall down, they lose it after they get to the fourth or fifth
grade. Of course, part of the problem there is they go into
learning experiences in school where they are not be challenged
at all, and so, like everyone else, you can fall back.
That is why, for instance, in our State, we have now in
almost all of our urban districts, not in all of them, we have
reduced the class size to less than 15 because we realize that
for the first 3 years, how important they are to continue the
stuff that the kids get.
But I really think that there ought to be collaboration
between your two agencies and really start to do this and do it
as scientifically as you can, unless there is some private
outfit out there that is doing it, so we will have that
information. We are going to be putting a lot more money into
this, and ultimately, you have to justify why are you putting
this money in, and in some instances, people would like to
spend it on something else and you have got to say, this is
really worthwhile. It is a wonderful investment to do that.
The 24 performance measures, are these being used, then,
across the board for all of the programs that are being funded,
public school, preschool, Title I?
Ms. Johnson. You are talking about----
Ms. Golden. They are not to that point yet. One of the
things we have committed to you in the letter is that we are
going to talk about how all the pieces fit together. The 24
performance measures are ones that were developed specifically
for Head Start, drawing on the works of the education world,
the early childhood world, the national goals panel. We
developed those measures so that we could look at exactly the
kind of questions you are asking, such as what happens from
fall to spring? What happens to children's ability to read, to
their social skills, all those things? What we have already
found out, based even on pilot results, is that as we would all
expect, the quality of the program is related to the
achievement of positive outcomes for the child. So, while the
quality of Head Start programs is generally good, we need to
make sure that we have even more that are truly excellent.
In terms of what we need to do next, we are working with
the Department of Education and working with some States that
are interested in using the performance measures we have
developed more broadly. One of the things that prompted our
shared interest in moving ahead with those next steps, in
response to your letters, was that we realized that there was
lots going on on the research front where we were working
together, but where we needed to pull together even more.
Ms. Johnson. Let me comment on that, too. We are
recognizing more and more the importance of data collection,
data analysis, and that is not just at the early childhood
level but at the elementary and secondary level as we continue
to provide Federal funding for programs. It is collecting data
over time to look at how students are performing that we think
is really very important, and in addition to that, we are
launching a major initiative to try to learn more about how
children learn in the early childhood years and how data can be
used; that data can be used to inform practice when they enter
kindergarten.
We mentioned briefly in the testimony that we are planning
to organize a joint coordination team, and we are still in the
very early stages of that, but we do plan to have the concept
well developed and people assigned to this Subcommittee before
the end of the year, and we will get that information back to
your office.
Senator Voinovich. One of the things, if you look around to
the communities that are perhaps getting the job done, it is
where you have collaboratives, and part of this legislation
that we are going to be introducing encourages the
collaboration of public and private agencies. In Ohio, we call
them our Children and Family First councils, where you get
everybody at the table and, frankly, have the ability, and we
were talking about earlier how do you figure out how you can
get all your resources and bring them to bear, and that is one
of the ways that has been very, very successful for us, is that
people come to the table and figure out, how can we take
advantage of it.
It should be done--you guys should be doing it on the
Federal level to the best of your ability, to figure out how
you can work together so that when it gets to the local level,
that they can access it in the most effective way. But it also
helps if there is a level of sophistication on the local level
of the programs to be able to take advantage of that, and I
think the more that you can do that, for example, the
Departments of Education and Health and Human Services, get the
people who are in the social service agencies and the educators
at the table.
I remember in Cincinnati several years ago, the
superintendent of public schools showed up at this Children and
Family First. I mean, they just do not show up at these things,
that this is not our area. But it was something to celebrate
because it was a recognition by the superintendent of public
schools in Cincinnati that this work being done was very
important to the future of the education system. So the more
that that can happen, I think, the better off we are.
I think part of your strategy ought to be to figure out,
how do we encourage this kind of thing to happen on the local
level, where people are encouraged to come together and to
perhaps put aside their turf issues, which you run into
everywhere.
Ms. Johnson. Let me comment on that a bit. To be eligible
for Even Start funds, you must come to the table as a team. You
must identify all the service providers and bring them to the
table and submit a common application. So one is simply by
competition. If you want to be eligible for funds, you need to
think about who you bring to the table.
The State-wide family literacy initiative in Ohio has
received one of those. It also requires that all the service
providers come to the table at the State level, and that is a
very good way to model for local districts, the conversations,
the actions, and the plans that come out of that work.
Now, as a former deputy superintendent, I will tell you
that it is really important to be at the table with social
service providers around the city because that is the only way
you can really ensure that everyone is pulling together to
improve upon the quality of education for schools. So you are
going to find us at the table all of the time. That is just an
essential part of the job.
Ms. Golden. I also share the view that both of you have
expressed that it is incredibly important. I thought about
collaboration as an academic before I came to this job and was
always struck by how, in addition to having the shared mission,
the personal relationships really matter in order to get past
the turf bottles and the other obstacles. People need to know
each other and be able to pick up the phone to talk to each
other.
One of the things I have tried to do when I travel is to
sit down with that array of people, so I can tell you that in
Cincinnati, they are still coming to the table together, at
least as of when I was last there.
I think that in terms of what we do at the Federal level,
it is partly about modeling, as you have highlighted. It is
partly about trying to ``run interference'' on the funding. It
is about providing financial incentives for collaboration, as
we did, which is now a theme that you are focusing on, too. It
is also about overcoming myths and misinterpretations. I am
sure this happened when you were governor, too, but I hear
people tell me all kinds of things that they have been told are
obstacles--there is a rule, you cannot do that. Then I go and
try to track down the rule and discover it is not a rule. It is
somebody who was telling them something was more rigid than it
was.
So we have been trying to do a lot of work in terms of
accurately laying out the flexibility that exists by putting it
down on paper. Even when we think something is obvious, we have
learned that people sometimes need to see it in writing, so
that their auditors or whoever cannot tell them that ``there is
a rule.''
The third thing that can be a challenge when the Head
Start, early education community, and child care communities
try to get together is that the child care community is so
short on some of the resources that are needed to produce
quality and the Head Start and early childhood programs often
are part-day, so they may not be in a position to meet the
full-day needs. I'd be eager to see how your proposal deals
with this issue.
Getting the resources out there to upgrade child care
programs so they can really do school readiness, I think, helps
the collaboration process. The Early Learning Fund that the
President has proposed as part of the child care initiative
would aim to get flexible dollars through States to communities
for that 0-to-3 population particularly, but also for
preschool, if they needed it, with the idea that it would be
flexible. In one community, all the child care for babies may
be in family homes and what you really need to do is train,
support, dramatically improve what is going on in those homes.
Somewhere else care may be mostly center-based so you could do
some work strengthening the quality of care in childcare
centers in a flexible way. So I guess I think that that is one
piece of the puzzle, because that is an obstacle I have run
into sometimes in trying to put those pieces together.
Ms. Johnson. I know you are puzzled by that, but we have
historically lived in traditionally categorical programs and
thought in categorical ways at the local level, and it was not
always common for service providers in TANF, in health, and in
early childhood and child care providers and schools. It was
not a common occurrence to bring people together to the table.
But as we began to recognize the growing crisis in
providing adequate early childhood educational experiences for
children who were being held to much higher standards at the
elementary level than they had ever been held to before, and as
we modeled it at the Federal level, at the State level, and
then put out applications that required that they come to the
table, you began to see more and more people recognizing the
importance of bringing everyone to the table.
I can recall some of the early meetings I had in my most
recent position where there was a lot of discomfort initially.
People were feeling they were going to lose their identity and
might even lose their funding, until we recognized that only by
bringing all of the streams of funding into the room and
identifying how together they represented a comprehensive set
of services that could only benefit the community as well as
the school and the child did people begin to relax and talk
about how they could share.
So it is going to come more and more with dissemination of
really good practices, with more and more modeling. We are
putting out publications that we are developing jointly with
HHS, with Justice, and with the Department of Agriculture, all
intended to help communities think more deeply and more
thoughtfully about how you bring resources together around the
table for one common goal: Ensuring that all of our children
are entering schools ready to learn.
Senator Voinovich. I think that that would be a wonderful
area of coordination between your two departments, because part
of the incentive package--I know when I got started with this
whole concept of how do we bring everyone together, I had seven
of my State agencies that spent a year and a half developing
our Children and Family First cabinet council. We worked with
the National Governors' Association, and I will never forget,
they were out in Colorado and they were all together and they
came back and they were all fired up and they were going to
impose these councils on all of our 88 counties. I said to
them, ``No, I could not do that.'' I am an old county
commissioner and mayor, and I said, ``I do not like to have
somebody mandate something.''
So what we did is we put a request for proposal together
and made money available and said, if communities will come in
with a joint effort, getting together the various social
service agencies, they will become pilot projects, and I think
we had maybe 54 applications and we awarded about nine of them.
Of course, the ones that did not get it were very disappointed
and they wanted to know whether or not they could show up for
the State-wide quarterly meetings and what was going on.
To make a long story short, today, we have 88 of them in
the State, not actually 88 because several counties have gone
together, two or three more rural counties. But the fact is,
they are all different and they have different leadership and
it is not a cookie cutter approach. This legislation I am
talking about does allow that, encourages people to do that.
Again, as I say, if you could think about programs and how
do we have incentives out there among the ones that you have to
get them to get it, that this is the way to really help our
community is to come together at the table, I think we
certainly would be a whole lot better off.
The other thing that I would be interested in, and I am
sure you have done it, but I would like if you could share this
with me, would be to put on a piece of paper the various
programs that you have and how they deal with the same
population, and I am sure that you have it, but I would like to
see it and how you are thinking about how you have all these
programs and how they best could be coordinated among your
agencies. I would just like to see them.
Ms. Golden. And I would be glad to do that. The overview I
would give on the early childhood side of the world is that we,
essentially, have two big programs. We have the Head Start
program and we have the child care and development block grant.
As you know, one of the things that the administration and
Congress did in the welfare reform legislation was pull
together the child care side. It had been four separate
programs and they got pulled together. So that, I think, was a
big accomplishment.
So now we have on the child care side a single funding
stream, essentially, for States, and then Head Start. A lot of
our work, as you saw in the testimony, is about how to work
with both communities and States in building partnerships
across those two pieces. If it would be useful to you, we would
be delighted to follow up with further information.
In terms of the President's proposal on child care, that
proposal includes both additional dollars that would go as
subsidies to parents in the major child care funding stream. It
also includes this early learning fund with a special focus on
flexible dollars that could be tied to results for very young
children. So we would be glad to provide more information, if
that is useful.
Ms. Johnson. Let me describe some of the programs that we
have, because I am hoping this will help clarify what to the
outside world seems like so many programs and so few people.
I mentioned Title I and the use of those monies. We also
have in the Department of Education a significant allocation in
our Office of Special Education Services for pre-K and early
childhood and toddler education. And if you think about a day
in the life of any normal hospital in a large city, you think
about 20 youngsters born in one particular day, and they come
to life with a variety of experiences already as prenatal
babies. Some come from poor, working poor, some may come from a
family where English is not spoken at home, some may come from
mothers who are addicted to drugs or alcohol, and some come
from relatively healthy families.
When you think about these 20 youngsters born in a day and
you recognize you have to have in place an array of community
services to ensure that they all are at the same playing field
when they enter the first grade. So the trick in the school
district community is to figure out how you look at this
combination of students who were born on this particular day
and ensure that as they move through those early years, or
infancy years, we have hooked or linked their families with the
appropriate services. At the same time that we are doing that
in terms of social services, we are ensuring they receive the
appropriate early childhood education experience.
To the degree that we become more proficient in describing
this, more creative in helping people to understand the
importance of this, to the degree that we are able to help them
understand that these 20 children born on this one particular
day have very diverse needs--and you are right, no one cookie
cutter approach will meet the needs of those 20 children,
either--you begin to help people understand why you need an
array of services to ensure that when they enter that first
grade, they have received the support they need to be
successful.
Senator Voinovich. I think that is why we are taking our
TANF money and putting it into Early Start. The Governor of
Vermont--who is the Governor of Vermont?
Ms. Golden. Howard Dean.
Senator Voinovich. Yes. Howard Dean, several years ago, put
a program in place where each family is visited, and now Ohio
is doing that with, ``at-risk families and also with first
born, anybody, no matter what their socio-economic is, the
first-born child.'' First of all, I think that maybe you
identify that early on during the prenatal period, but
certainly when that child is born, to have that mechanism there
to make the identification, and once it is made, to be able to
have the programs that are available to help that family.
Again, what are those programs? I suspect you can use Early
Start and TANF money. It is one of the things that governors
liked about TANF, is the flexibility that you got with those
dollars, that you can deal with problems. The same way with
problems of multi-handicapped families.
We had examples where they had 14 different social workers
for them to access programs, and through our Family and
Children First groups, they came back and recommended. So what
we did in those counties was get a lot of agencies to put money
in one pot, and again, I think we probably violated Federal
guidelines, but that family then could come to one place and
access those resources and we could help them without forcing
them to shop around. In addition to that, we had one person
that was kind of their family helper to deal with that.
I think we need to just redouble our efforts to try and
make sure that this is all coordinated. I know that you are
interested in making sure the money is well spent on the local
level. But I can tell you that the more flexibility and the
more you partner up with the people who are closest to the
customer, I think the better off everyone is going to be,
because I think they really know more about how to deliver
those services than we do here in Washington.
I think we also have to recognize that there is a variety
of urban districts and there is a whole vast different set of
circumstances there that vary, say, from a poor Appalachian
area. We have 29 counties in Ohio that are Appalachian, and it
is a whole different ball game, the same problems, but a
different way of how to go about solving them.
Would either of you want to make any other comments?
Ms. Golden. I guess I would just add that I have enormous
respect both for what you accomplished in Ohio and for this
agenda and would be glad to talk with you and then provide any
additional information that would be useful.
My sense of our role at the Federal level is first, as you
have described, we need to make the funding support the goals.
We need, I think, to provide technical assistance to help
people who figure out how to collaborate effectively share with
others who are trying to figure it out, so everybody is not
starting from scratch. We need to continue to do research. And
we need to convene people and make sure that those connections
happen. Finally, I very much would want to hear about concerns
or problems that you would want me to know about. I would also
be pleased to provide any additional information. I care about
this issue very much and I really would like to be available to
work with you. So thank you for the chance to talk about it.
Senator Voinovich. I think if you can do that, and the
other thing is to figure out ways that are reasonable to deal
with this. In this legislation, one of the things that we are
suggesting to do is to fund public broadcasting so that they
can replicate a program we have in Ohio and, I think, one other
State, where you make available to particularly at-risk parents
a curriculum--I do not know whether the Department of Education
would be interested and would like to get your reaction to it--
in coordination with public broadcasting, ``Mr. Rogers'' and
the other programming they have, so that a stay-at-home mom can
sit down and spend time with their baby and watch the program
and afterwards reinforce it with questions and their
suggestions of things that they do. The materials are very
impressive. But to replicate that program, and it is very
reasonable and it also is the kind of thing that could be used
by a lot of these mom-and-pop child care centers.
I would be interested in getting an answer to this, is that
we have found that a lot of our TANF-eligible moms are not
taking advantage of our child care. We do not know why. Chris
Dodd was trying to put more money for child care--and I went
over and said to him that we are not using the money that we
have. In fact, we have increased the amount of money an
individual can make so that they can take advantage of child
care. I think we are at 185 percent of poverty or something
like that because we are finding the money is not being used.
So you have a lot of these youngsters who are somewhere, to
try and perhaps make that available to them, and a website that
if you have a computer and a printer, you can just print out
the stuff. Every month, you get your stuff. But it is easy
things that people can use to help them at home or in these
mom-and-pop facilities.
The other thing, again, it deals with quality of care. You
have your performance standards, but a lot of that has got to
do with the quality of the people who are at the Head Start
facilities, and how do you upgrade their skills in a reasonable
way, and we have this RISE program that we have where we have
bought these satellites and where the teachers, child care and
Head Start, are able to access information on how to improve
their skills. There is even a little part of this where the
parents can come in and we help encourage them to do some
things at home.
It does not cost a lot of money, but there are some
practical things that I think we can do that help get the job
done. We also have in our State a video. In fact, it is Rob
Reiner's video that Johnson put out. I think it is, ``I Am Your
Child.'' We got the hospitals to pay for it so that when mom is
there--and, by the way, mom is not in the hospital long enough,
as far as I am concerned--but the little, short period they are
there, they get a chance to see the videotape and then they are
given the videotape to take home with them. Of course, some do
not have the equipment at home, but a lot of them do, and it is
like a 30-minute how to take care of your child, what you
should do, reading and mobiles that you can make. I mean, it is
kind of elementary stuff, but it is, again, getting information
to people as early as possible so they can do more for
themselves. It sounds like simple things, but people----
Ms. Johnson. Yes, but it is so reassuring to hear your
commitment and your understanding of what needs to be done.
Senator Voinovich. It is a lot of stuff, but anyhow, if you
could take the report that GAO did and look at that, I would
love for you to come back, and maybe you do not even have to
come back, maybe you could just in the next couple of months do
some brainstorming and come back with maybe some changes that
you could make that might reflect some of the things that have
been brought up today in your plan. I would be just thrilled to
see you do it.
Ms. Johnson. I think what we would like to see is the final
product that we are talking about, called a joint coordination
plan, and we will make sure that when that is completed and it
has been reviewed by lots of people, that you have a copy of
it.
Senator Voinovich. And it would be good, because if we are
going to have this results performance issue, which I think
really was started by the Vice President, was it not? I think
that was his baby. If we are going to have it, it would be very
good that what you are doing there is contained in that report
so we have one thing that we can look at, because, again, there
are so many reports. It would be nice to have one place that
you can look at, how are we doing, and then go back and review
it to see whether or not we are accomplishing what we want to.
It is good for us in Congress in oversight, but, frankly, it is
more important to the people that are really getting the job
done, like yourselves.
Ms. Golden. It sounds as though you would also like
specific reactions to a couple of proposals that you just
mentioned, right, so we should get copies of those and be able
to react?
Senator Voinovich. Yes. There are some areas we have talked
about today, and you have already mentioned them in yours, but
I think it would be good to take that GAO report and look at
what you produced and say, we can do better than this.
For example, one of the things that we discovered, the
staff was mentioning that you were doing some coordination that
is not in those reports. I mean, it should be there. We are
doing this. There may be some other areas where, after you
really look at them real carefully together, you can enhance
those things.
Ms. Johnson. Let me offer some closing comments. Let me try
to reassure you----
Senator Voinovich. I was corrected. The father of the
Results Act is Senator Roth, who at the time was the senior GOP
member of this Committee.
Ms. Johnson. I thought it was Vice President Gore, also.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you.
Ms. Johnson. Let me reassure you that we are going to
continue our efforts to learn what works best, that we are not
resting on the laurels. We know that, as stewards of public
funds, we need to constantly ask ourselves, ``Are the monies
being used wisely? Are they being used to meet the intent and
purpose of the law? '' That question fuels the research studies
that we put in place as well as helps us to think about whether
or not the programs that we are proposing are the best possible
programs for our clients and our customers.
We have had a history of working together. We will continue
with that history, and we will get back to you with a plan that
outlines, maybe in much more specific ways, how our efforts are
coordinated to meet the needs of children in this country and
how many children are still not being served despite the fact
that there are a number of educational programs out and about
in this country.
Senator Voinovich. That would be great, if you could, and I
am going to send a letter out to Secretary Riley and to
Secretary Shalala. You made reference to some of the
interdepartment coordinating----
Ms. Golden. On disabilities.
Senator Voinovich. Yes. In the letter, they have already
got it, but I will send it anyhow because GAO did the study.
They show these 90 programs dealing with prenatal-to-3 and it
would be great if you look a little bit more carefully, look at
your coordination. I am going to suggest to them that maybe
they look at some of these other areas to see how they could be
folded into this effort that you are making in terms of the
overall effort to reach this population, because there are some
other programs out there that are really important, and the
issue is, are they just out there doing their thing without
really being aware of what it is that you are doing?
Ms. Golden. I think my testimony speaks particularly about
the linkages to health, because, obviously, for the youngest
kids--it is true for all kids, but especially when you are
talking about babies and toddlers and the prenatal years--
health care is incredibly important. We have done a lot of work
in that area as a particularly important additional piece of
collaboration.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you very much for being here.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you.
Ms. Golden. Thank you.
Senator Voinovich. This is hard for me to get accustomed
to, hearings and there is only one person here, and I voted
today in proxy on some other committee. Thank you very much.
The meeting is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:48 a.m., the Subcommittee adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
PREPARED STATEMENT OF MARNIE S. SHAUL
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: We are pleased to be
here today to begin a series of discussions on how the Congress can use
the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (Results Act) to
oversee the work of Federal agencies and, in particular, how the
performance plans required under the act can address the issue of
multiple early childhood programs.
Almost $14 billion dollars in Federal funds was available to
support early childhood activities in fiscal year 1997, yet the large
number of programs through which such funds are made available creates
the potential for inefficient service as well as difficulty for those
trying to access the most appropriate services and funding sources.\1\
In fiscal years 1992 and 1993, 11 Federal agencies administered more
than 90 programs that could fund early childhood services, and we
determined that education or child care was key to the mission of 34 of
the programs.\2\ A disadvantaged child could potentially have been
eligible for as many as 13 programs, although many programs reported
serving only a portion of their target populations and maintaining long
waiting lists. We have reported that programs sometimes overlap in the
services they provide, regardless of how their primary mission is
described. For example, child care programs designed primarily to meet
the needs of parents so that they can work or be trained for work may
also have an educational component. At the same time, programs like
Head Start that operate as part-day programs to serve the developmental
needs of children also allow parents to work during the hours in which
children are in the program.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Child Care: Federal Funding for Fiscal Year 1997 (GAO/HEHS-98-
70R, Jan. 23, 1998).
\2\ Early Childhood Programs: Multiple Programs and Overlapping
Target Groups (GAO/HEHS-95-4FS, Oct. 31, 1994).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Results Act is intended to improve the management of Federal
programs by shifting the focus of accountability for Federal programs
from a preoccupation with staffing and activity levels to outcomes. It
can provide a new and structured framework for addressing multiple and
overlapping programs. This should lead to new information on multiple
programs, including those that cut across agency lines but share common
goals.
My testimony today will focus on two main topics: (1) how the
Results Act can assist in management and congressional oversight,
especially in areas where there are multiple programs, and (2) how the
Departments of Education and Health and Human Services (HHS)--which
together administer more than half of the Federal early childhood
program funds--addressed early childhood programs in their strategic
and fiscal year 1999 and 2000 performance plans and the extent to which
recent plans show progress in coordinating early childhood programs.
In summary, the Congress can use the Results Act to improve its
oversight of crosscutting issues because the act requires agencies to
develop strategic and annual performance plans that clearly specify
goals, objectives, and measures for their programs. The Office of
Management and Budget (OMB) has issued guidance saying that for
crosscutting issues, agencies should describe efforts to coordinate so
that goals are consistent and program efforts are mutually reinforcing.
When we looked at the plans of Education and HHS, we found that the
plans are not, however, living up to their potential as expected from
the Results Act. More specifically, while the fiscal year 1999 and 2000
plans to some extent addressed coordination, the departments have not
yet described in detail how they will coordinate or consolidate their
efforts. Therefore, the potential for addressing fragmentation and
duplication has not been realized, and we cannot assess whether the
agencies are effectively working together on crosscutting issues.
BACKGROUND
Early childhood is a key period of development in a child's life
and an emphasized age group for which services are likely to have long-
term benefits. Recent research has underscored the need to focus on
this period to improve children's intellectual development, language
development, and school readiness.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ ``Brain Research Has Implications for Education'' in the
Education Commission of the States' State Education Leader, Vol. 15,
No. 1 (Winter 1997).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Early childhood programs serve children from infancy through age
5.\4\ The range of services includes education and child development,
child care, referral for health care or social services, and speech or
hearing assessment as well as many other kinds of services or
activities.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ At least half of the child care for infants and toddlers of
working mothers is done through providers caring for children other
than their own rather than through organized facilities such as a child
care center. When we talk about early childhood programs, we are
discussing only these organized facilities.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Education and HHS's Administration for Children and Families (ACF)
administer about 60 percent of the Federal early childhood program
funds. The biggest early childhood programs in fiscal year 1997 for
these departments were Head Start (approximately $4 billion),
administered by HHS, and Special Education programs (approximately $1
billion), administered by Education. Head Start provides education and
developmental services to young children, and the Special Education-
Preschool Grants and Infants and Families program provides preschool
education and services to young children with disabilities. Although
these programs target different populations, use different eligibility
criteria, and provide a different mix of services to children and
families, there are many similarities in the services they provide.
Figure 1 illustrates the Federal agencies responsible for Federal early
childhood funding.
Figure 1: Early Childhood Funding Streams by Federal Agency, 1997
Health and Human Services: 52% ($7,231,572,500)
Treasury: 26% ($3,535,000,000)
Agriculture: 11% ($1,530,000,000)
Education: 9% ($1,201,357,864)
Military: 2% ($302,062,000)
Labor: less than 1% ($1,691,000)
Appalachian Regional Commission: less than 1%
($380,102)
Note: The Treasury Department's portion consists of the Child
and Dependent Care Tax Credit and the Exclusion of Employer
Provided Child Care. These represent estimates of revenue loss
prepared by the Department of the Treasury based upon tax law
enacted as of December 31, 1996. The Department of Agriculture
portion is the Child and Adult Food Care Program.
Early childhood programs were included in the list of more than 30
programs our governmentwide performance and accountability report cited
to illustrate the problem of fragmentation and program overlap.\5\
Virtually all the results that the government strives to achieve
require the concerted and coordinated efforts of two or more agencies.
However, mission fragmentation and program overlap are widespread, and
programs are not always well coordinated. This wastes scarce funds,
frustrates taxpayers, and limits overall program effectiveness.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Government Management: Addressing High Risks and Improving
Performance and Accountability (GAO/T-OCG-99-23, Feb. 10, 1999).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE RESULTS ACT HELPS THE CONGRESS AND AGENCIES OVERSEE PROGRAMS AND
ADDRESS CROSSCUTTING ISSUES
The Results Act is intended to improve the management of Federal
programs by shifting the focus of decision-making and accountability
from activities such as giving some number of grants to the results of
Federal programs. The act requires executive agencies, in consultation
with the Congress and other stakeholders, to prepare strategic plans
that include mission statements and goals. Each strategic plan covers a
period of at least 5 years forward from the fiscal year in which the
plan is submitted. It must include the following six key elements:
La comprehensive mission statement covering the major
functions and operations of the agency,
La description of general goals and objectives for the
major functions and operations of the agency,
La discussion of how these goals and objectives will
be achieved and the resources that will be needed,
La description of the relationship between performance
goals in the annual performance plan and general goals and
objectives in the strategic plan,
La discussion of key factors external to the agency
that could affect significantly the achievement of the general
goals and objectives, and
La description of program evaluations used to develop
the plan and a schedule for future evaluations.
Agencies must also prepare annual performance plans that establish
the connections between the long-term strategic goals outlined in the
strategic plans and the day-to-day activities of program managers and
staff. While the Results Act does not require a specific format for the
annual performance plans, it requires a plan to,
Lidentify annual goals and measures covering each of
its program activities,
Ldiscuss the strategies and resources needed to
achieve annual goals, and
Ldescribe the means the agency will use to verify and
validate its performance data.
The act also requires that each agency report annually on the
extent to which it is meeting its annual performance goals and the
actions needed to achieve or modify goals that have not been met. The
first report, due by March 31, 2000, will describe the agencies' fiscal
year 1999 performance.
The Results Act provides a valuable tool to address mission
fragmentation and program overlap. The act's emphasis on results
implies that Federal programs contributing to the same or similar
outcomes are expected to be closely coordinated, consolidated, or
streamlined, as appropriate, to ensure that goals are consistent and
that program efforts are mutually reinforcing.\6\ As noted in OMB
guidance and in our recent reports on the act, agencies should identify
multiple programs within or outside the agency that contribute to the
same or similar goals and describe their efforts to coordinate. Just as
importantly, the Results Act's requirement that agencies define their
mission and desired outcomes, measure performance, and use performance
information provides multiple opportunities for the Congress to
intervene in ways that could address mission fragmentation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Managing for Results: Using the Results Act to Address Mission
Fragmentation and Program Overlap (GAO/AIMD-97-146, Aug. 29, 1997).
LAs missions and desired outcomes are determined,
instances of fragmentation and overlap can be identified and
appropriate responses can be defined. For example, by
emphasizing the intended outcomes of related Federal programs,
the plans might allow identification of legislative changes
needed to clarify congressional intent and expectations or to
address changing conditions.
LAs performance measures are developed, the extent to
which agency goals are complementary and the need for common
performance measures to allow for crossagency evaluations can
be considered. For example, common measures of outcomes from
job training programs could permit comparisons of programs'
results and the tools used to achieve those results.
LAs continued budget pressures prompt decisionmakers
to weigh trade-offs inherent in resource allocation and
restructuring decisions, the Results Act can provide the
framework to integrate and compare the performance of related
programs to better inform choices among competing budgetary
claims.
The outcome of using the Results Act in these ways might be
consolidation that would reduce the number of multiple programs, but it
might also be a streamlining of program delivery or improved
coordination among existing programs. Where multiple programs remain,
coordination and streamlining would be especially important. Multiple
programs might be appropriate because a certain amount of redundancy in
providing services and targeting recipients is understandable and can
be beneficial if it occurs by design as part of a management strategy.
Such a strategy might be chosen, for example, because it fosters
competition, provides better service delivery to customer groups, or
provides emergency backup.
TWO AGENCIES' PLANS ADDRESS EARLY CHILDHOOD PROGRAMS BUT LACK IMPORTANT
DETAIL ON COORDINATION
Education and HHS's ACF--the two agencies that are responsible for
the majority of early childhood program funds--addressed early
childhood programs in their strategic and 1999 performance plans.
Although both agencies' plans generally addressed the required elements
for strategic and performance plans, Education's plans provided more
detailed information about performance measures and coordination
strategies. The agencies in their 2000 plans similarly addressed the
required elements for performance plans. However, strategies and
activities that relate to coordination were not well defined. Although
agencies state that some coordination occurs, they have not yet fully
described how they will coordinate their efforts. The Education plan
provided a more detailed description of coordination strategies and
activities for early childhood programs than the ACF plan, including
some performance measures that may cut across programs. The ACF plan
described in general terms the agency's plans to coordinate with
external and internal programs dealing with early childhood goals. Yet
the information presented in the plans did not provide the level of
detail, definition, and identification of complementary measures that
would facilitate comparisons of early childhood programs.
Department of Education's Plans
Education's strategic plan for 1998-2002 highlighted early
childhood programs as a major area of departmental concern. In
establishing the importance of early childhood education, the strategic
plan said that
Lthe extent of early learning opportunities for
children has consequences for long-term success;
Lresearch on early brain development reveals that if
some learning experiences are not introduced to children at an
early age, the children will find learning more difficult
later;
Lchildren who enter school ready to learn are more
likely to achieve high standards than children who are
inadequately prepared; and
Lhigh-quality preschool and child care are integral in
preparing children adequately for school.
Early childhood issues were discussed in the plan's goal to ``Build
a solid foundation for learning for all children'' and in one objective
and two performance indicators (see table 1).
Table 1: Department of Education's Strategic Plan Framework for Early Childhood Programs
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Goal Objective and performance indicators
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Build a solid foundation for learning All children enter school ready to learn.
for all children. The disparity in preschool participation rates between
children of high-income families and children of low-income families
will become increasingly smaller.
The percentage of 3- to 5-year-olds whose parents read to
them or tell them stories regularly will continuously increase.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The 1999 performance plan, Education's first performance plan,
followed from the strategic plan. It clearly identified programs
contributing to Education's early childhood objective and set
individual performance goals for each of its programs. Paralleling the
strategic plan, the performance plan specified the core strategies
Education intended to use to achieve its early childhood goal and
objective. Among these were interagency coordination, particularly with
HHS's Head Start program. According to Education's strategic plan, this
coordination was intended to ensure that children's needs are met and
that the burden on families and schools working with multiple providers
is reduced. The performance plan also said that Education would work
with HHS and other organizations to incorporate some common indicators
of young children's school readiness into their programs. It would also
work with HHS more closely to align indicators of progress and quality
between HHS's Head Start program and its Even Start Family Literacy
program--which has as part of its goal the integration of early
childhood education, adult literacy or adult basic education, and
parenting education.
In our examination of Education's 1999 performance plan, we
reported that one of the plan's strengths was its recognition that
coordination with other Federal agencies enables it to better serve
program participants and reduce inefficiencies in service delivery.\7\
We said that although this first plan included a great deal of valuable
information, it did not provide sufficient details, such as
\7\ The Results Act: Observations on the Department of Education's
Fiscal Year 1999 Annual Performance Plan (GAO/HEHS-98-172R, June 8,
1998).(1) a more complete picture of intended performance across the
department, (2) a fuller portrayal of how its strategies and resources
would help achieve the plan's performance goals, and(3) better
identification of significant data limitations and their implications
for assessing the achievement of performance goals.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
These observations apply to the early childhood programs as well.
Without this additional detail, policymakers are limited in their
ability to make decisions about programs and resource allocation within
the department and across agencies.Education's 2000 performance plan
continues to demonstrate the department's commitment to the
coordination of its early childhood programs. Like the 1999 performance
plan, the sections on early childhood programs clearly identified
programs contributing to its childhood program objectives. It also
contained new material highlighting the importance of the coordination
of early childhood programs as a crosscutting issue, particularly with
HHS. To facilitate collaboration, the department added a strategy to
work with the states to encourage interagency agreements at the state
level. It also added using the Federal Interagency Coordinating Council
to coordinate strategies for children with disabilities and their
families.\8\ At the same time, the department still needs to better
define its objectives and performance measures for crosscutting issues.
Unless the purpose of coordination activities is clearly defined and
results in measurable outcomes, it will be difficult to make progress
in the coordination of programs across agencies.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ ACF has its own performance plan, which is referred to in the
HHS performance plan.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ACF's Plan
In its 1999 performance plan, ACF recognized the importance of
investment in sound growth and development for children, particularly
those in low-income families. It said that programs such as Early Head
Start, Head Start, and quality child care programs are essential to
good health, early development, and school readiness. The ACF plan
reflected early childhood programs in 2 strategic goals--increase
economic independence and productivity for families, and improve
healthy development, safety, and well-being of children and youth--and
3 objectives (see table 2).
Table 2: ACF Framework for Early Childhood Programs
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Goal Objectives and selected performance indicators
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Increase economic independence and Increase affordable child care.
productivity for families. Increase the number of children receiving subsidized child
care from the 1997 baseline average of 1.25 million served per month.
Improve healthy development, safety, Increase the quality of child care to promote childhood development.
and well-being of children and Children demonstrate emergent literacy, numeracy, and language
youth. skills.
Children demonstrate improved general cognitive skills.
Children demonstrate improved gross and fine motor skills.
Improve the health status of children.
Increase from 75% to 81% the percentage of Head Start children
who receive necessary treatment for emotional or behavioral problems
after being identified as needing such treatment.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The ACF plan, however, did not always give a clear picture of
intended performance of its programs and often failed to identify the
strategies the agency would use to achieve its performance goals. ACF
programs that contribute to each early childhood objective were
identified, and several of these programs had individual performance
goals. However, without a clear picture of intended program goals and
performance measures for crosscutting early childhood programs, it will
be difficult to compare programs across agencies and assess the Federal
Government's overall efficacy in fostering early childhood development.
In our preliminary review of ACF's plan for fiscal year 2000, we
found some mention of the need to encourage collaboration in addressing
ACF's crosscutting program goals. It also acknowledged and discussed
the key roles of states and localities in administering ACF's programs
and achieving performance goals. However, internal and external
coordination issues as they relate to early childhood programs were not
fully addressed. For example, external coordination was discussed, but
ACF's discussion of coordination, consultation, and partnerships
primarily remained a general description of what has happened in the
past. For example, the plan stated as one of its strategic objectives
to ``increase the quality of childcare to promote childhood
development.'' To support this objective, ACF identified the need to
coordinate with the Department of Education concerning the Head Start
program along with other internal and external stakeholders in this
area. However, it did not define how this coordination will be
accomplished or the means by which the crosscutting results will be
measured.
Agency officials are able to describe numerous activities that
demonstrate collaboration within the agency and with Education. The
absence of that discussion in the plan, however, limits the value the
Results Act could have to both improving agency management and
assisting the Congress in its oversight role.
Progress in coordinating crosscutting programs is still in its
infancy, although agencies are recognizing its importance. Agency
performance plans provide the building blocks for recognizing
crosscutting efforts. Because of the iterative nature of performance-
based management, however, more than one cycle of performance plans
will probably be required in the difficult process of resolving program
fragmentation and overlap.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. We would be
happy to answer any questions that you or Members of the Subcommittee
may have.
Related GAO Products
Government Management: Addressing High Risks and Improving
Performance and Accountability (GAO/T-OCG-99-23, Feb. 10, 1999).
The Results Act: An Evaluator's Guide to Assessing Agency Annual
Performance Plans (GAO/GGD-10.1.20, Apr. 1, 1998).
Managing for Results: Observations on Agencies' Strategic Plans
(GAO/T-GGD-98-66, Feb. 12, 1998).
Child Care: Federal Funding for Fiscal Year 1997 (GAO/HEHS-98-70R,
Jan. 23, 1998).
Federal Education Funding: Multiple Programs and Lack of Data Raise
Efficiency and Effectiveness Concerns (GAO/HEHS-98-77R, Jan. 21, 1998).
Federal Education Funding: Multiple Programs and Lack of Data Raise
Efficiency and Effectiveness Concerns (GAO/T-HEHS-98-46, Nov. 6, 1997).
At-Risk and Delinquent Youth: Multiple Programs Lack Coordinated
Federal Effort (GAO/T-HEHS-98-38, Nov. 5, 1997).
Head Start: Challenges Faced in Demonstrating Program Results and
Responding to Societal Changes (GAO/T-HEHS-98-183, June 9, 1998).
The Results Act: Observations on the Department of Education's
Fiscal Year 1999 Annual Performance Plan (GAO/HEHS-98-172R, June 8,
1998).
Managing for Results: Agencies' Annual Performance Plans Can Help
Address Strategic Planning Challenges (GAO/GGD-98-44, Jan. 30, 1998).
Managing for Results: Using the Results Act to Address Mission
Fragmentation and Program Overlap (GAO/AIMD-97-146, Aug. 29, 1997).
The Results Act: Observations on the Department of Education's June
1997 Draft Strategic Plan (GAO/HEHS-97-176R, July 18, 1997).
The Government Performance and Results Act: 1997 Governmentwide
Implementation Will Be Uneven (GAO/GGD-97-109, June 2, 1997).
Early Childhood Programs: Multiple Programs and Overlapping Target
Groups (GAO/HEHS-95-4FS, Oct. 31, 1994).
__________
PREPARED STATEMENT OF OLIVIA A. GOLDEN
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: Thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the coordination of
early childhood programs. Mr. Chairman, I know that early childhood
education has been a top priority of yours for many years, and I
particularly welcome the chance to discuss these important issues with
you because of my deep respect for your accomplishments on behalf of
young children during your tenure as Governor of Ohio.
As you know, early childhood education has also been a high
priority for the administration. In partnership with the Congress, the
administration has provided leadership in three different and
complementary ways: By expanding public investment to serve more needy
children and families, by stronger efforts to improve program quality
and accountability, and by creative work to support partnerships across
different early childhood programs.
There is a tremendous need for public investment to help low income
families with child care expenses and to provide high quality,
comprehensive early childhood programs to help children enter school
ready to learn. Data from 1997 showed that less than 15 percent of the
10 million children who qualify for the Child Care and Development
Block Grant were obtaining a subsidy and Head Start still serves less
than 50 percent of low-income preschool children. Accordingly,
President Clinton has placed a high priority on steady increases in
early childhood funding, leading to doubling the level of funding for
child care, expansion of Head Start to serve 1 million children
annually by 2002, and establishing the Early Head Start program which
has grown to more than 500 community-based programs for children under
the age of three. The President has continued this commitment to early
childhood programs in his FY 2000 budget proposal by requesting an
historic increase of $607 million for Head Start expansion and quality
improvements, as well as $19.3 billion over 5 years for critically
important investments in child care, including a new Early Learning
Fund to provide States and communities additional resources to enhance
the quality of early care and education services for our youngest and
most vulnerable children.
We are encouraged to see similar efforts by States and local
communities to invest in these same priorities. Since 1987, State
funding for pre-kindergarten programs has increased from $180 million
to more than $1.5 billion and State funding to expand Head Start
services has increased from less than $14 million to more than $154
million. State funding of child care has also grown significantly. In
order to draw down the full amount of funds available under the Child
Care and Development Block Grant, States in FY 1998 appropriated $1.6
billion in maintenance of effort and matching funds, and a number of
States report additional appropriations of State resources. Recent
initiatives such as the commitment of $40 million over 3 years to
expand and improve early childhood and health programs in Cuyahoga
County, Ohio are further exciting evidence of continuing public
commitment to support working families with young children and help all
children enter school ready to learn.
The second component of Federal leadership in early childhood
programs is to improve program quality and hold programs accountable
for results. Working hand in hand with the Congress, we have developed
new performance standards and program monitoring procedures for Head
Start and adopted a tougher stance in enforcing these standards,
leading to replacement of more than 125 local programs. At the same
time, we have made investments to improve Head Start staff training and
compensation and to support other local quality improvement efforts. We
are also pleased that last year the Congress made a down payment
towards the President's child care initiative by providing an increase
of $183 million for much-needed quality improvements, research and
evaluation efforts.
Another critically important aspect of our leadership to enhance
early childhood quality is the development of outcome standards and
measures for Head Start and child care programs. The Government
Performance and Results Act (GPRA) set in motion the first national
effort to identify specific outcomes for federally-funded early
childhood programs, and a system to measure and track progress on these
performance measures. For example, we have made rapid progress in
implementing performance measures for Head Start programs, drawing on
the work of the National Education Goals Panel and extensive
consultation with early childhood experts, including the Department of
Education. We created a comprehensive, cutting-edge system of 24
outcome measures to track progress towards our overall goal of
improving the healthy development and learning readiness of young
children.
Next, we set up our Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) to
assess performance on these measures in a nationally-representative
sample of local Head Start agencies. Initial findings from the FACES
survey are already being used to pinpoint strengths and areas for
needed improvements in Head Start, giving us a powerful new tool to
continue to improve the effectiveness of more than 1,400 local
programs. For example, we can document that the quality of teaching in
Head Start is good, that children are making progress in key learning
areas such as vocabulary growth, and that parents are heavily involved
in and highly satisfied with Head Start. FACES also allows us to track
specific indicators such as the fact that two-thirds of Head Start
parents read to their children at least three times per week, and the
finding that Head Start programs could be doing more to increase the
proportions of parents that read to their children every day. We are
convinced that our success in implementing GPRA will form the
foundation for continued progress in improving program quality and
outcomes, as well as serve as a model for State and local efforts to
upgrade all forms of early childhood programs.
In addition to these achievements in expanding and improving child
care and Head Start programs, I am pleased to have the opportunity to
highlight for the Subcommittee the many things that we are doing to
improve coordination so that the full spectrum of early childhood
programs work together for children. As we work to administer each
program authorized by Congress, we seek to work with State, local, and
community partners to make it easier for them to bring programs
together and to use resources from different Federal and State agencies
to serve children and their parents with high quality, safe, affordable
early care and education.
I will highlight four key areas:
LEnsuring that funding strategies provide incentives
for collaboration;
LEnsuring that Federal policy supports collaboration
and correcting misinterpretations of Federal rules or
regulations that may be barriers to partnerships;
LProviding technical assistance and sharing successful
models of coordination; and
LConvening Federal, State and local partners to
facilitate collaboration.
Ensuring that Funding Strategies Provide Incentives for Collaboration
For the past 3 years, the Head Start Bureau placed a priority on
partnership strategies in awarding more than $340 million in program
expansion funding. This policy led to providing full-day/full-year
services to more than 50,000 additional children in partnership
arrangements with child care and pre-kindergarten agencies and
resources. The Head Start and Child Care Bureaus are working together
to help States and communities find effective ways to combine Head
Start, child care and pre-kindergarten program funds to provide high
quality, full-day/full-year early childhood programs.
For instance, Child Focus, Inc. in Clermont County, Ohio uses
resources from State and Federal Head Start, child care, Even Start,
mental health, alcohol and substance abuse to offer families a wide
array of coordinated services, including early childhood education,
family literacy, health care, substance abuse and violence prevention
in a single center. The agency also provides on-site training for Head
Start and child care staff via a partnership with the University of
Cincinnati and collaborates with local child care centers and family
child care homes to serve additional children and families.
Supporting Collaboration Through Federal Policies
Our second key strategy is working to ensure that Federal policies
support collaboration and to identify and remove obstacles to
collaboration that are based on misinterpretations of Federal rules and
regulations. For instance, the Child Care Bureau provided guidance to
prevent unwarranted problems in auditing agencies that use funding from
different Federal programs, and issued a memorandum clarifying the
flexibility available to States in addressing issues of defining
eligibility across early childhood programs, including subsidized child
care. In a similar manner, the Head Start Bureau has issued
clarifications of policies on collecting fees, sharing equipment and
supplies, and recruiting and enrolling children on a year-around basis
to make it easier to partner with child care and pre-kindergarten
providers.
We are also working in close partnerships with the 13 States that
provide funding to Head Start programs. In States such as Ohio,
Minnesota, and Oregon, Federal and State officials are working together
in funding, monitoring and providing training and technical assistance
to local programs. These leadership efforts support new emerging
partnerships such as the City of Chicago's innovative strategy to link
more than 150 family child care providers with Head Start resources to
provide full-day, full-year Head Start and to enhance the quality of
services in family child care homes across the city.
Providing Technical Assistance to Remove Barriers to Collaboration and
Sharing Successful Models and Strategies
Another indicator of our sustained commitment to promoting early
childhood collaboration is a new initiative by the Head Start and Child
Care Bureaus to jointly fund and manage a national training and
technical assistance project called ``Quality in Linking Together:
Early Education Partnerships'' (QUILT). The QUILT will work to engage
States, communities and Indian tribes in developing a strategic
approach to fostering early education partnerships to maximize Federal,
State and local early childhood resources. The QUILT will disseminate
information on successful partnership models, and provide on-site
technical assistance for child care, Head Start, pre-kindergarten, and
other early education providers. The QUILT will draw on the examples
and lessons of a wide array of emerging collaborative models including
a new effort in Denver, Colorado where Head Start and child care
providers have joined with the United Way and a number of public
agencies to launch the Ready to Succeed Partnership. This initiative is
working to improve the quality of care through toy and resource lending
libraries, parent outreach workers, teacher scholarships, professional
development opportunities, and linkages to health care providers.
We are also supporting additional partnership efforts in training
and technical assistance to assist Head Start and child care agencies
in collaborating with Department of Education programs such as the Even
Start family literacy effort and programs for infants, toddlers, and
young children with disabilities. For example, in a public-private
partnership with the Conrad Hilton Foundation, we are contributing to a
$15 million initiative to train teams of Early Head Start, early
intervention program providers, parents, and other community agencies
to improve the capacity of Early Head Start programs to serve infants
and toddlers with disabilities. In addition, the Head Start Bureau is
launching a new $15 million technical assistance project targeted to
enhancing family literacy services and partnerships between Even Start,
Head Start and other early childhood programs.
ACF early childhood programs are also working together at the State
and local levels to share training resources and develop more effective
and inclusive career development systems for teachers of young
children. States such as Kansas and Ohio have created innovative
distance learning and interactive television systems to offer training
to child care, public school and Head Start teachers. Local agencies
such as the Macon Program for Progress Head Start in North Carolina
have developed regional training sites to offer model demonstration
classrooms, on-site college courses, training for the Child Development
Associate credential and a variety of other services to staff from all
community programs, using funding from a variety of State, Federal, and
higher education institutions.
Convening Federal, State and Local Partners to Facilitate Collaboration
Our fourth key strategy in building early childhood collaboration
is to sponsor forums and initiatives to bring together early childhood
and child care leaders and other partners to solve common problems and
plan for the future. Our Head Start State Collaboration Office
initiative links Head Start with State programs in child care,
education, welfare, disabilities, homeless services, community service,
family literacy and health. Maine's Collaboration Office took the lead
in creating a unified State proposal to use Head Start expansion
funding in partnership with child care centers. In addition, it
convened a coalition of Head Start and child care organizations in the
Alliance for Children's Care, Education and Supportive Services
(ACCESS). With funding from the Head Start Bureau, ACCESS created 11
regional early childhood planning groups to document community needs
and the current capacity of early childhood and child care programs and
agencies across the State. This effort led to a comprehensive, State-
wide data base with enrollment, eligibility, and waiting list
information for all child care, family child care, Head Start and
preschool programs and the numbers of children who are eligible but
unserved in each region of the State. This data base and the convening
process has led to a series of legislative proposals to expand funding
for early childhood services in Maine.
In both Head Start and Child Care, collaboration efforts extend to
linking with other key services for young children and their families,
such as medical, dental and mental health care, nutrition, services to
children with disabilities, child support, adult and family literacy,
and employment training. These comprehensive services are crucial in
helping families progress towards self-sufficiency and in helping
parents provide a better future for their young children. For instance,
the Healthy Child Care America Campaign, a partnership with the
Maternal and Child Health Bureau, supports collaborative efforts of
health professionals, child care providers, and families to improve the
health and safety of children in child care settings. In Pennsylvania,
the Healthy Child Care project works with child care and Head Start
programs to establish linkages with health professionals, and provide
telephone advice to staff members about health and safety issues.
Head Start, Child Care Bureau and other HHS staff are also active
members of the Department of Education's Federal Interagency
Coordinating Council to coordinate programs to serve young children
with disabilities. These efforts reflect the long history and
considerable current efforts to use community-based Head Start and
child care programs as inclusive environments for young children with
special needs. ACF is also actively involved with ED in joint funding
of new national data bases on early childhood experiences and programs,
and coordinating efforts to use common outcome measures in studies
sponsored by a variety of Federal agencies. For example, ACF is
supplementing funding for the National Center for Education Statistics'
Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Birth Cohort to supplement the
study's ability to support analyses of Head Start enrollees and
eligible children who are not enrolled.
Community, State and Federal efforts are paying off in partnerships
that truly make a difference for children and families. The story of
one family served by the Drueding Center/Project Rainbow in
Philadelphia demonstrates the power of collaboration. Thelma, a
recovering drug-addicted mother of five children, was separated from
her family and became homeless. Two of her children were physically and
cognitively delayed. Through the Drueding Center, a collaborative
program receiving Federal and private funding, Thelma received
temporary housing with the use of HUD funds, a child care subsidy
through the Child Care and Development Block Grant, as well as job
training to help her become employed. One of her children enrolled in a
residential treatment center, and another participates in the Project
Rainbow Head Start/child care collaborative program. With this array of
support from Drueding and her own hard work, Thelma is now reunited
with her children. She is a full-time student enrolled in Temple
University, and is now supporting the Drueding Center as a member of
it's Board of Directors and in fund-raising activities for its many
programs.
Future Directions
Recognizing the positive impact that coordinated early childhood
programs have on States, communities, and most importantly, children
and families, ACF seeks to build on and expand our existing
coordination efforts in three ways. First, we will support
collaboration and the use of outcome measurement around early childhood
programs through the Early Learning Fund, which is part of the
President's Fiscal Year 2000 budget. The Early Learning Fund will, for
the first time, specifically devote funding to communities to enhance
the quality of care for children, with a focus on promoting school
readiness for children through age five. The dollars will be
distributed through States and the services under the Fund will be
delivered at the local level to enable communities and parents to take
action based on their assessment of what is needed and what will work
best. We believe that this flexible, results-focused funding will
assist States and communities in maximizing existing early childhood
resources, strengthening partnerships and improving quality. Second,
ACF will be convening State administrators of child care and pre-
kindergarten programs and Head Start leaders this fall to explore
collaborative approaches to program funding, monitoring, performance
outcomes, professional development and technical assistance. Third, we
will begin a new effort with the Department of Education to review
opportunities for further coordination in the areas of performance
indicators, funding, service strategies and research.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the Subcommittee
today. I would be pleased to answer any questions you may have.
__________
PREPARED STATEMENT OF JUDITH JOHNSON
Good morning, Mr. Chairman. My name is Judith Johnson, and I am
currently serving as Acting Assistant Secretary for Elementary and
Secondary Education. Until 2 years ago, I was a career educator in New
York State, where I worked in urban and suburban school districts as a
teacher, guidance counselor, principal, and district administrator.
It is an honor to have the opportunity to testify before this
Subcommittee with Assistant Secretary Golden. Over the years, the
Department has worked in close collaboration with the Department of
Health and Human Services (HHS) to help States and local communities
provide high-quality early childhood education.
In his State of Education Address this February in California,
Secretary Riley identified the early years of childhood as the period
in which ``we have the most potential to make the greatest gains.'' The
latest research clearly demonstrates that children's success in school
is highly dependent on the quality of the learning environment they
experience in childhood. According to a study conducted by the National
Institute for Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) in 1998, the
quality of the language and literacy environments in early childhood
programs and the development of specific linguistic skills predict
later language development, reading success, and other academic
outcomes for children.
School districts across the country are beginning to offer children
from poor families early childhood education before they enter
kindergarten. For example, the Charlotte-Mecklenberg school district in
North Carolina is using approximately 85 percent of its Title I funding
to provide early childhood education for at-risk 3- and 4-year old
children within the public schools and in center-based programs. Many
of these classrooms operate in collaboration with Head Start.
Preliminary evaluation data on this program, known as ``Bright
Beginnings,'' are promising. Children participating in this Charlotte-
Mecklenberg early childhood education program enter kindergarten better
prepared than their at-risk peers who do not participate in the
program.
Many States have effectively pooled Federal, State, and local
dollars to help ensure that all children enter school ready to learn.
Illinois has been providing State funding since 1985 for 3-, 4- and 5-
year olds who are at risk for school failure. School districts are
responsible for determining if a student is at risk, while the Illinois
State Board of Education is responsible for administering the program.
In fiscal year 1998, this program served over 50,000 children. In 1990,
the Ohio legislature enacted a landmark early childhood education
program. This legislation provides many 3- and 4-year olds from low-
income families in Ohio with access to a high-quality preschool
education in either a public preschool, a Head Start class, or a child
care program. A recent survey of State-funded pre-school initiatives,
conducted by Yale University, found that Ohio, along with Georgia,
Iowa, Kentucky, Oregon and Washington, is one of six States doing an
outstanding job providing preschool education.
The Department, in partnership with other Federal agencies such as
HHS, must act as a catalyst to support innovative State programs aimed
at increasing opportunity for students to experience high-quality early
childhood education. The Department's 6-year strategic plan and fiscal
year 2000 Annual Plan both recognize the important role that the early
childhood experience plays in future school and life success. Our plan
contains coordination strategies to maximize Federal services and also
identifies the goal of ensuring that ``all children enter school ready
to learn.'' We recognize that interagency coordination is vital in
providing high-quality early childhood services that complement, rather
than duplicate, each other.
The Department shows its commitment to the education of young
children in its strategic plan, which includes a school readiness
objective, as well as strategies to improve our services to young
children before they enter school. Our 2000 Annual Plan specifically
lays out performance measures and strategies for interagency
coordination in the area of early childhood, as recognized by the
General Accounting Office in its assessment of our plan. In order to
help States and local communities better provide early childhood
education, improved coordination is needed at the Federal level across
agencies.
Although more can be done with our Federal partners, the Department
has made some initial progress in the area of coordination. I would
like to describe some of our accomplishments to date. I will discuss
coordination activities in three general areas: (1) coordinating
research; (2) coordinating services; and (3) coordinating performance
measurement.
Coordinating Research
The Department has created the Early Childhood Research Working
Group (ECRWG), coordinated by the Office of Educational Research and
Improvement's (OERI) National Institute on Early Childhood Development
and Education, known as the Early Childhood Institute (ECI). The
Working Group links ECI with other offices in the Department and
approximately eight other Federal departments that support research,
data collection, or services for young children and their families. The
chairperson of the Working Group is a staff member from the Office of
the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) in HHS,
while the day-to-day activities of the Working Group are conducted by
staff in the Early Childhood Institute. The purposes of the Working
Group are to allow agency representatives to share information, receive
professional development, and begin discussions about a collaborative
early childhood research agenda.
The Working Group consists of approximately 100 members
representing 30 Federal agencies and meets at least twice a calendar
year. The Working Group agenda is developed jointly by the Department
and HHS. Frequently, the Departments of Defense, Agriculture, and
Justice take part in the planning. The topic of the group's July 1998
meeting was ``the Children's Research Initiative.'' Duane Alexander,
M.D., Director of NICHD at HHS, presented the administration's plan for
research related to young children's health, safety, learning, and
development. The group discussed child care studies, research related
to the role of fathers in young children's development, and a research
competition focusing on improving how young children are taught
mathematics and reading.
Meetings of the Working Group have fostered information sharing and
started discussions leading to interagency agreements for research.
These kinds of agreements bring together the interdisciplinary
expertise needed to design effective, comprehensive strategies that
will improve young children's chances for success. For example, two HHS
offices, NICHD and ASPE, collaborated with ECI on a soon-to-be-released
report, ``Young Children's Education, Health, and Development: The
Profile and Synthesis Project.'' This report focuses on selected,
current, large-scale, federally and privately funded initiatives
devoted to improving young children's education, health, and
development, as well as their parents' ability to support their growth.
This study will give us information about program efficacy and
implications of the findings for practice.
Another agreement that evolved from discussions begun at Working
Group meetings is between ECI and the HHS Substance and Mental Health
Services Administration. This activity is a joint investigation of
intensive, comprehensive mental health interventions and whether or not
they improve the school readiness of young children whose parents have
chronic substance abuse or mental health problems.
A second interagency committee, the Federal Interagency
Coordinating Council (FICC), was established in 1991 by Congress to
coordinate and mobilize all available resources to ensure the effective
coordination of Federal early intervention and preschool programs and
policies for children with disabilities and their families. Comprised
of representatives from 19 Federal offices in the Department, HHS,
Agriculture, Interior, Defense, and the Social Security Administration,
as well as parents and professionals from State agencies and other
related organizations, the FICC meets quarterly and has five active
standing committees and various task forces and working groups.
The IDEA Amendments of 1997 broadened the functions of the FICC to
include advising and assisting the Secretaries of the agencies
mentioned above (in addition to the Secretary of Education) in the
performance of their responsibilities related to serving children with
disabilities from birth through age five. The first report in this area
is presently being prepared, listing the accomplishments and activities
of the FICC and laying out recommendations for the future. The FICC has
a strategic plan that guides its work and is in the process of
implementing a new interagency agreement to replace a memorandum of
understanding signed in 1992. The Assistant Secretary for Special
Education and Rehabilitative Services chairs the FICC and provides
staff support; however, all agencies are asked to contribute resources
and expertise to its work.
The Department's Office of Special Education Programs, ECI, and
NICHD in HHS jointly sponsored the Preventing Reading Difficulties in
Young Children report of the National Research Council (NRC). This
report was the culmination of a 2-year effort by a committee of
nationally recognized experts in reading, child development,
linguistics, and psychology. The study synthesizes the most effective,
current research on the learning and teaching of reading. A significant
section of this report explores how literacy can be fostered from birth
through kindergarten and the primary grades, with recommendations on
effective professional development and instruction for young children.
The NRC also produced a customer-friendly guide for parents, teachers,
and child care providers, entitled Starting Out Right, that describes
how to promote children's reading success and prevent reading
difficulties.
Another example of a major collaborative effort is the Interagency
Education Research Initiative (IERI), co-sponsored by OERI, NICHD, and
the National Science Foundation. The IERI is a 5-year collaborative
research effort that supports large-scale studies on the best
approaches to raising student achievement. The purposes of the program
are: (1) to foster creative research on basic learning, teaching, and
organizational mechanisms; and (2) to identify classroom teaching
practices that can be replicated widely and produce positive outcomes
that last beyond the third grade. It has a strong focus on school
readiness for children when they enter school. When the grants are
awarded later this fiscal year, all three agencies will share
monitoring responsibilities. The President's Budget proposes $50
million in fiscal year 2000 to continue and expand IERI.
Coordinating Services Across Agencies
Early childhood education needs to be coordinated across Federal
agencies and with State and local entities responsible for providing
services. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), as
reauthorized in 1994, requires that local educational agencies that use
Title I, Part A funds to provide early childhood development services
must comply with the Head Start performance standards. This requirement
provides for a more careful alignment of performance goals among early
childhood programs in the Department and HHS. The Department has worked
in partnership with HHS in determining how the performance standards
should apply to Title I schools. In a memo to then White House Chief of
Staff, Leon Panetta, the Office of Management and Budget cited this
agreement as a ``classic example of agencies working together
effectively.'' The Department issued guidance on this provision in
April of 1996.
``Safe Schools/Healthy Students'' is a new initiative by the
Department, HHS, and Justice to support coordinated local efforts to
provide communities with enhanced comprehensive educational, mental
health, social service, law enforcement, and, as appropriate, juvenile
justice services to promote healthy childhood development and prevent
violence and alcohol and other drug abuse. Early childhood psychosocial
and emotional development programs are among the strategies that
grantees will address, using an integrated, community-wide approach. As
part of this effort, the three agencies are collaborating to conduct an
evaluation of the initiative, which will include the development and
monitoring of a core set of indicators.
The Even Start Family Literacy program, administered by the Office
of Elementary and Secondary Education, is based on interagency
coordination. Even Start draws on existing service providers to
integrate early childhood education, adult education, and parenting
education into a unified program. According to the second national
evaluation of Even Start, projects are successful at arranging
collaborative relationships. Even Start projects collaborate with a
variety of agencies and organizations, which either act as the primary
provider of services or supplement the services already provided by
Even Start. For example, 25 percent of projects reported that Head
Start was the primary provider of early childhood services, and 51
percent reported Head Start to be a secondary provider. Rather than
duplicating preschool services, the collaboration between the
Department and HHS works towards improving the quality of services
provided to our most vulnerable children. The recently authorized
Reading Excellence Act included several amendments to the Even Start
program that further emphasize collaboration. One of these amendments
provides $10 million annually for Statewide Family Literacy
coordination to help States coordinate and integrate literacy
resources, such as those funded under the Department's Adult Education
and Family Literacy Act, Title I, and HHS' Head Start Act.
The Department's Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative
Services (OSERS) funds services to young children with disabilities.
Because children with disabilities often require a range of services
from a variety of agencies, collaboration and coordination are
imperative. The annual plan's performance indicators for Part C of the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the Grants for
Infants and Families program, include a number of performance measures
that require cross-program coordination. For example, one of the
program's performance indicators is, ``The number of States accessing
all appropriate sources of funding (i.e. Medicaid, Maternal and Child
Health Block Grant, State general revenues) will increase.'' OSERS will
be conducting a study in 2002 of State and local implementation of Part
C that should provide baseline data on the level of coordination.
Coordinating Performance Measurement
As seen in these examples, the Department has made progress in the
area of interagency coordination. But we know that the Department needs
to do even more. The recent reauthorization of the Head Start program,
with its focus on educational performance measures and literacy,
provides an excellent opportunity for this collaboration. The HHS plan
includes several indicators of educational progress that are consistent
with the goal of ensuring that all children enter kindergarten ready to
learn. For example, HHS indicators include ``Children demonstrate
emergent literacy, numeracy, and language skills'' and ``Children
demonstrate improved general cognitive skills.'' The Head Start Family
and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) is explicitly measuring and
reporting measures of Head Start children's school readiness. Early
findings from this study were released last year.
The Department intends to build on these activities underway
between our agency and HHS by creating a joint coordination plan, which
we will submit to Congress by the end of this year. Areas of
coordination that we will address include performance indicators,
service strategies for early childhood, and research. Coordination of
indicators among early childhood programs was included in our annual
plan and was also a recommendation of the Department's recently
released report on evaluation, Federal Education Legislation Enacted in
1994. In this report, we point out the lack of consistent expectations
for school readiness. This makes it difficult to assess a program's
effectiveness in supporting the learning and development that young
children need for school success. In addition, the ECI and the Office
of Special Education Programs are sponsoring a Study of Early Childhood
Pedagogy at the National Academy of Sciences. The study, which will be
completed in early 2000, will tell us what young children need to
experience and learn if they are to be successful in kindergarten and
what measures will best assess what young people have learned.
In conclusion, we agree that early childhood experiences are
critical to the future success of the Nation's children. We also
believe that the plans developed under the Government Performance and
Results Act can and should facilitate coordination among agencies
serving similar populations or that have similar goals. We look forward
to a continued dialogue about early childhood issues and coordination.
In addition to better coordination of services, the Department also
hopes to strengthen the quality of early childhood education nationwide
through the elements in our proposal for reauthorization of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).
Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to testify. I would
be happy to answer any questions you may have.