Report finds state behind on Head Start, points to poor quality

The State(s) of Head Start report, created by the National Institute of Early Education Research at Rutgers University, makes it clear that many states are struggling with limited Head Start resources, said Steve Barnett, director of the institute, in an interview Wednesday. The study also found wide disparities in programs from state to state. But in New Mexico, he said, there is a “big problem with quality.”

“New Mexico programs serve relatively more kids for fewer hours with lower-paid teachers,” Barnett said. “The quality is relatively low — in fact, too low — in instructional support and the sort of measures related to literacy, science, math and that aspect of future school success.”

Advocates for expanding publicly funded early childhood education programs in New Mexico, which consistently rates at the bottom among states for education measures, point to studies indicating that investments in such initiatives can pay off as much as eightfold by boosting academic achievement and graduation rates. But studies emphasize that preschool programs must be of a high quality to successfully prepare children for kindergarten and help them continue to progress.

It’s unclear how Head Start has affected student achievement in New Mexico. A 2013 report by the state’s Legislative Finance Committee said there was little state oversight or accountability for the program, and it found there was little evidence to show that it was leading to higher proficiency rates.

The state oversees and funds its own prekindergarten program, and it provides oversight of privately run preschool programs that serve low-income students whose costs are subsidized by the state. A legislative report issued earlier this year said children in the state-funded program did better academically than their peers when they reached third grade. That program serves about 9,300 children.

New Mexico received almost $78 million from the federal government for Head Start and Early Head Start programs in 2015, according to the new report, allocating some $7,741 per child for preschool-age children — lower than the national average of about $8,093 per child. About 35 nonprofit organizations around the state offer Head Start programs.

Head Start serves about 7,800 3- and 4-year-olds in New Mexico — fewer than 25 percent who qualify. And just over a quarter of those students attend Head Start programs five days a week, well below the national average of more than 44 percent, the study says.

Early Head Start programs serve about 1,600 younger children in the state. About half of them are enrolled full time.

One problem facing New Mexico, Barnett said, is that the funding formula for Head Start has not been altered since the early 1980s, though the state’s demographics have changed considerably since that time.

Another factor affecting the program in New Mexico, he said, is the high teacher turnover rate and the low pay. Some 30 percent of new teachers leave the profession within three months, he said.

“Having a constant churning of teachers means you are constantly retraining, constantly having to hire new teachers, and we know that teachers working in their first or second year are not nearly as good as teachers with more experience,” Barnett said. “That is a serious problem.”

Baji Rankin, executive director of the New Mexico Association for the Education of Young Children, an Albuquerque-based early childhood education advocacy group, said a high teacher turnover rate is a problem facing all preschool and child care programs around the state.

“That is due to low pay and sometimes working conditions that are not the best,” she said.

Nationwide, the average pay for a Head Start teacher who has at least a bachelor’s degree was about $33,000 in 2015, compared to $57,092 earned by public school elementary teachers, according to the report. The average pay for a New Mexico Head Start teacher with a bachelor’s degree was $31,858. A federal report earlier this year found that the average pay for all preschool teachers in the state was even lower, at $26,670, though the pay varied widely by employer.

Katherine Freeman, CEO of the United Way of Santa Fe County, which runs a tuition-free prekindergarten program partially subsidized by the state Children, Youth and Families Department, said the organization pays its teachers an average of $46,200 per year. Santa Fe Public Schools, which operates some preschool classrooms funded by the state Public Education Department, pays an average of more than $41,000.

Rankin called Head Start “a very good program that serves a lot of children.”

Still, she said, it “doesn’t serve all eligible children because there is not enough funding to do so.”

Burnett said that’s a problem nationwide.

The National Institute of Early Education Research is recommending that Head Start narrow the scope of students it serves — to young children who are homeless, victims of abuse or medically fragile, for example — so that it can provide a higher-quality education to those who are enrolled.

The report also suggests creating an independent, bipartisan committee to study the program’s challenges and partnering Head Start with other early childhood education programs.

“No state, as far we we can tell, gets enough money to serve all of the eligible kids well,” Burnett said. “So program operators make decisions: Do we serve more kids and pay teachers less, or do we serve more kids and have fewer hours, or do we serve more kids and have less infrastructure to support quality?”

The Santa Fe New Mexican is a sister-paper of The Taos News. Contact Robert Nott at 505-986-3021 or rnott@sfnewmexican.com.