Preschool benefits, needs

Head Start works

Regarding “Opinion: Subsidies would worsen child care crisis,” (Dec. 26): What these authors call “onerous burdens” (requiring degrees of lead pre-K teachers, matching salaries to those of unionized teachers, requiring specific student-teacher ratios) are actually considered best practices in the education world.

Another “onerous burden” is filing paperwork by at-home child care workers and their employers. These authors contend that it is too hard for people to complete required forms because they already “face barriers.” The authors do not specify what barriers. The implication is that people, especially marginalized people, do not have the intellectual capacity to fill out necessary paperwork.

Finally, the authors trashed the Head Start program, stating, “Randomized controlled trials of Head Start find no evidence of academic improvement later in life.” This program has been studied a great deal. I refer the authors to “The Long-term Impact of the Head Start Program” by the Brookings Institution. The study compared siblings who did and did not attend Head Start. The findings present a clear advantage to the siblings who attended the program.

Bellwether Education Partners has described how Head Start can improve upon the outcomes already achieved.

Head Start has done great things, but can achieve even more with the changes described in Build Back Better. These authors of The Heritage Foundation malign a program for children that has been a shining light in the darkness of poverty. Can it be improved and refined? Of course.

Ilona Thomson, Houston

John Schoof and Teresa Schuster use all the tropes to attack the child care subsidy programs found in the Build Back Better legislation package, from the old attack on Head Start to the fiction that employers will provide quality child care at scale for working mothers and two-earner families, and the standard conservative code word “overregulation.”

My grandson went to a well-qualified program. It started at a cost over $1,000 a month. It would be impossible for a family earning the median income for a family of four in America to afford that. Our collective family has been blessed in the lottery of life to be able to afford such a program. Many, many, many families are not so fortunate.

Walt Lind, Houston

By our actions, if not our words, all of us recognize the need for government to compensate for private sector inadequacies in the provision of necessities such as affordable, quality child care. So when I began reading this article, I was prepared to take exception to the usual complaint

about too much government in the economy. However, burdening what is nominally a great idea, helping families obtain affordable child care, with unnecessary regulations such as an effort to have 4year-olds instructed by college graduates hurts the credibility of the bill’s supporters.

Michael Douglas Gilbert, Houston