Partnerships that work. Results that matter.

CT's Community Action Agencies (CAAs) are the federally-designated network of anti-poverty agencies in Connecticut. CT CAAs are foundational partners in CT’s Human Services infrastructure (HSI) and form a Results-based statewide service delivery system. With services benefiting more than 266,000 people annually, CT CAAs achieve positive results that change lives and strengthen communities.

Invest in Comprehensive Early Childhood Education for Low-Income Families

• Expand proven programs and models (such as Head Start and Early Head Start) rather than spend precious state resources on new systems and bureaucracies. Research has shown that a holistic, family development approach to preschool education, parenting education and family literacy creates the best possible outcomes for low-income children. We need a comprehensive compensatory early education system that can truly close the achievement gap for poor children.

1. Expand state Head Start and Early Head Start funding to serve more children over two years. Our proposed increase of $10 million over two years will allow us to provide needed teacher raises, create more full-day classrooms, serve children on the waiting list and expand Early Head Start services;
2. Expanding Head Start is a cost-effective investment because the programs have comprehensive services and proven strategies already in place. Head Start provides education, developmental assessments, and strengthen parenting though home visits, parenting education, and individualized family partnership agreements that set goals for families and ensure access to other needed services and community resources; and

• Focus new funds on enrolling children from families below 125% of FPL. Partner with Head Start providers to ensure that all available Head Start openings are filled so that low-income children and families can gain the benefits of Head Start. In order to close the achievement gap, these children and families need to be prioritized for high-quality, comprehensive programs like Head Start.

1. Head Start also has a results-based system of accountability, with the necessary data systems already installed and reports outcome data through its national reporting system.

• Provide adequate and equitable funding to ensure full-day high-quality programs for low wage working parents. Equitable and adequate funding for all of the state’s publicly funded preschool programs (DSS Child Development Centers, School Readiness and state Head Start), is needed to provide full day programs that properly prepare children for school success.

• Equalize the rates between Head Start, DSS Child Development Centers and School Readiness Programs. These programs have unequal reimbursement rates, yet both must meet the same high standards. This disparity creates program deficits, prevents increased teacher salaries, causes teacher vacancies, and is causing a crisis in CT’s ECE centers.
• Increase reimbursement rates and full-day/full-year programs. Provide adequate and equitable funding to ensure high quality teachers and full-day/full-year programs for low-income working parents, which research documents is what works to close the achievement gap.

Why Head Start and Early Head Start Works

The success of Head Start and Early Head Start is explained by the vast amount of research conducted on both programs. Head Start and Early Head Start are both two-generation programs that serve children and parents. Head Start and Early Head Start seek to promote positive development in children by providing services to the children, supporting parents in their parenting, and promoting the family’s self-sufficiency and healthy functioning by providing access to education and job-training activities and health services.

The 2005 Head Start Impact Study found:

·Statistically significant positive impacts for 3- and 4-year-old children enrolled in Head Start on pre-reading, pre-writing, vocabulary, and parent reports of children’s literacy skills.

·A higher proportion of Head Start parents read to their children more frequently than those parents of children who were not enrolled in Head Start.

• Head Start centers were rated as having a higher level of classroom quality than other center-based Pre-K classrooms, state-funded Pre-K classrooms and private Pre-K classrooms, as measured by their ECERS-R scores.
• Despite these very positive results, federal Head Start funding was recently cut by 1%, and with level funding for the previous 6 years, it actually represents a reduction of about 11%.
• State Head Start funding has been reduced by 19% from 2003 to 2008 when adjusted for inflation.
• These cuts have had a serious negative impact on our programs. For example one program had to cut the length of the day from 9 hours down to 6, one program went from a 5 day week to a 4 day week, another program had to close classrooms, and almost all programs have had to eliminate transportation, further reducing access to the program.
• All CT Head Start programs have long waiting lists. Currently, CAAs that operate these programs have about 365 children on the waiting list and about 310 infants and toddlers on the waiting list for Early Head Start.

·Head Start, for the most part, offers a more comprehensive set of higher quality services than most state Pre-K programs have.

Funding Cuts to Head Start lead to reduced services, long waiting lists

Additional funds would go to serve the families on waiting lists and open enrollment to additional families in cities and towns with high poverty rates.  This would enable us to address the causes and effects of poverty and provide the educational, health and socializing opportunities these families so desperately need.

Examples of ECE Outcomes reported in 2006 by CT CAAs:

• 5,750 children attended quality preschool programs that developed school readiness skills.
• 6,845 children obtained appropriate immunizations and medical care.
• 2,972 adults demonstrated improved family functioning as a result of counseling and/or classes and other supportive services.

The Return-on-Investment:

• For every dollar invested, $18.89 was saved annually: CAA programs costing $49.1 million produced 5,750 school readiness outcomes that annually saves approximately $55 million in increased worker productivity, increased wages (parents) and future averted costs for law enforcement, welfare, health care, special education, etc.¹

¹ Rolnick, Art and Rob Grunewald, “Early Childhood Development: Economic Development with a High Public Return,” Fedgazette, March 2003.

For more extensive information, visit our web site (www.cafca.org) for our annual report, Connecticut Community Action: Partnerships that work. Results that matter.