Poverty: What We Learned - Federal Programs

There are many federally funded programs that are available for families/children in poverty. Some of the most popular ones are reviewed below.

•Project Head Start – Initiated in 1965, this program was designed to provide low income students an opportunity to catch up with their middle class peers. This program, which serves children 3 to 5, is a national school readiness program that provides comprehensive education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services to low-income children and their families. Through this increased exposure to things such as academic language and early academic skills, children are better prepared to enter school. The program also addresses social emotional needs that are specific to children from impoverished homes and communities. Parents participation and education is also a component of the program.

oResearch in 2010, has shown that children and families receiving Head Start were positively impacted on every measure of children’s preschool experiences. These measures were: cognitive outcomes, social-emotional outcomes, health outcomes, and parenting outcomes.
oFor more findings on Head Start Impact Study: Final Report of January 2010, review document below) http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/46/87/2e.pdf

•Project Early Head Start – Initiated in 1995, this program is a community-based program for low-income families with infants and toddlers and pregnant women. The mission of the program is to:1. Promote prenatal outcomes for pregnant women 2. Enhance the development of very young children (0-3yrs old). 3. To promote healthy family functioning. This program includes intensive services that begin before the child is born and concentrates on enhancing the child's development and supporting the family during the critical first three years of the child's life. There are four cornerstones or areas of intended outcomes for Early Head Start (Administration for Children & Families; Office of Planning, Research, Evaluation, 2010):

oChildren's development (including health, resiliency, social competence, and cognitive and language development);
oFamily development (including parenting and relationships with children, the home environment and family functioning, family health, parent involvement, and economic self-sufficiency);
oStaff development (including professional development and relationships with parents);
oCommunity development (including enhanced child care quality, community collaboration, and integration of services to support families with young children).

Research in 2006, demonstrated that there was broad pattern of effects for children and families who were in Early Head Start. Findings indicated that children’s cognitive, language, and social-emotional development were all enhanced by Early Head Start. Furthermore, parents who were in Early Head Start were found to be more supportive of children’s emotional, cognitive, and language development. The research also noted that there was an impact on parents’ reading to their children and improvement in self-sufficiency activities.

Title I, a program that aims to ensure all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high- quality education and reach, at a minimal, proficiency on challenging State academic achievement standards and State academic assessments. This program focuses on high-quality research based assessments and interventions that promote closing the achievement gap of minority and non-minority and low-income vs non-low-income students.

oSuch programs that are funded by Title I are: Early Reading First, Reading First, Even Start, Improving Literacy through School Libraries, Education of Migratory Children, Prevention & Intervention programs who youth who are neglected, delinquent, or at risk.
oA meta-analysis indicates that Title I has not fulfilled its expectations of closing the achievement gap; however, the results from this suggests that without the program it is likely that children severed over the last three decades would have fallen further behind academically (Borman & D’Agostino, 1995).

For more information:

http://www.ilheadstart.org/

http://www.nhsa.org/

http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ohs/

http://www.ehsnrc.org/AboutUs/index.htm

http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/pg1.html