Sacrificing Head Start?

A federal study demonstrates that by the end of 3rd, students who had been enrolled in Head Start, have little to no advantage over students never enrolled: "Yasmina Vinci, the executive director of the National Head Start Association, called the vanishing impacts of Head Start in the early grades "troubling," but noted that Head Start does its core job well by preparing disadvantaged children for kindergarten. "Our work with students ends when children graduate from Head Start, but it is clear that for many, their circumstances continue to hinder their success; circumstances including, but not limited to, the quality of their primary and secondary education," she said in a prepared statement."

There are those will use this report to call for Head Start to be defunded, at the federal level.  A thought experiment.  Suppose they win this call, based on this study.  As a result, Head Start is completely defunded, on the argument that the $8b spent on these kids has no residual effect.

That would mean that Congress accepts the idea that the long-term effects of education may not and perhaps can not be known until several years afterward.  In other words, would using this evidence to impeach the impacts of the Head Start program be the same thing as claiming that standardized tests should not be used to evaluate a teacher and the school because the effects of that teacher can not be determined for several years?

Yes, Head Start would need be sacrificed, at least in the short term.  The statistics given in the new report express success in the students while they were enrolled (as Ms. Vinci notes).  Proponents of the program would not doubt point to those real effects in an effort not to shuttle the program.  However, the longitudinal advantage of having (mostly) Conservative education reforms accepting the irrelevance of real-time testing is humongous.

If progressive-minded educators and politicos have already hatched this plan, forgive me for spoiling the secret.