The National Pulse: It’s Time for Congress to End These Federal Intrusions into Preschool

That this program [Preschool Development Grants] has not received any funding is very good news, and there are several important reasons that Congress should refuse further funding during budget negotiations. The two most important are the federal interference that is very present, despite Politico’s claim and the flowery language in the bill, and the continued ineffectiveness, academic and emotional harm of preschool programs in general, especially Head Start.

As I wrote at the time ESSA was being drafted:

The grants require alignment to Head Start and the Child Development Block Grants that in turn require [in eleven different places in the current Head Start statute, such as Section 642B(a)(2)(B)(iii)] national preschool standards. These standards are being correlated and aligned to the K-12 Common Core by national organizations and states like California.  They include very controversial and subjective psychosocial standards like gender identity (p. 27), creating a “Baby Common Core.” (See more details on the problematic language HERE.)

This alignment language to Head Start completely negates the “no federal interference” for the grant language in ESSA. These federal standards are in large part social emotional, which makes them even more controversial than the K-12 Common Core standards, which are for the academic subjects of reading and math. Having the federal government require a grant program to align to a federal law that imposes content standards on essentially every pre-k program in the country is the epitome of federal interference. Perpetrating this scheme of such overt federal control of K-12 standards would have created an enormous uproar. It is a complete mystery why constitutional conservatives allowed it during the 2007 reauthorization of Head Start.

Read more HERE.