A study was just released by the Health and Human Sevices that shows the 40 year head start program has had no discernible effect on children past the first grade. This federally funded program to help children in poor communities has wasted close to a 100 billion dollars of taxpayer money. Clearly this program needs to be eliminated. Lest you think I don’t care about the education of poor children rest assured I fully support the privatization of education. As Andrew Coulson notes from Cato, in DC, when a voucher program was in place to empower poor families to select their schools the current administration eliminated the program despite the phenomenal academic success of those children compared to public school children.

There are other government education programs whose effects actually grow substantially over time, and that are comparatively economical. Consider the federal DC voucher program. Just a year or two after switching from public to private schools, the effect of the private schooling was not big enough to rise to the level of statistical significance. But by their third year in private schools, the evidence was clear that voucher-receiving students were reading more than two grade levels above a randomized control group that stayed in public schools. This program, as I’ve previously documented, costs 1/4 as much per pupil as DC spends on public education: about $6,600 vs. $28,000.

I support privatizing education simply as a means to help the poor. Even though teachers unions claim to care about the poor at the end of the day their primary concern is taking care of their own. In their best interest they were able to put down a program that was showing great promises in helping the poor. They should be ashamed of themselves. Unfortunately they are likely to advocate for this failed Head Start program provided it continues to provides ways to line the pockets of the union.

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