Helping Our Nation's At-Risk Children Through Early Education

Platts Amendment Would Give Disadvanted Children an Earlier Opportunity for Learning

Representative Platts offered an amendment to a Head Start Bill (H.R. 2123) in the House Education and Workforce Committee on May 18, 2005.  The amendment was adopted by voice vote.  His statement follows:

Mr. Chairman, A priority goal of this Committee is, and should always be, to reach out and assist as many of our nation's at-risk children as possible, in the most effective way possible.  In continuing with this tradition, I am proud to join with my distinguished colleagues from Illinois and Maryland, Representatives Judy Biggert and Chris Van Hollen, in offering a bipartisan amendment meant to reach out and serve at-risk children at an age when brain development is occurring rapidly and is perhaps in its most critical phase.

Let me begin by offering my thanks to Mrs. Biggert and Mr. Van Hollen, as well as to the majority and minority staffs of this Committee for their efforts and cooperation, and to the Fight Crime: Invest in Kids organization for helping to bring this important issue to the forefront-where it belongs.  The Biggert-Platts-Van Hollen amendment would give grantees providing services under both Head Start (ages 3 to 5) and Early Head Start (birth to age 3) the flexibility to use existing, unfilled Head Start slots for infants and toddlers who are eligible for Early Head Start slots.

In the earliest years, infants and toddlers are developing a foundation-not only with respect to language and cognition, but also with respect to emotion, mental health, and social behavior-upon which all subsequent learning is built.  As many as 75% of children enter the Head Start program with vocabulary skills below the average range, and 82% of these children start out with early writing skills below the average range.  These numbers tell us that we need to start reaching out to at-risk children at an even younger age, before they have already fallen far behind their peers.  Yet, Early Head Start currently serves less than 5% of eligible infants and toddlers. 

A major study of the Early Head Start program by Mathematica Policy Research and Columbia University found that 3-year-old Early Head Start children performed significantly better on a range of measures of cognitive, language, and social-emotional development than a control group.  In addition, the parents of these children scored significantly higher than control group parents on many aspects of parenting and the home environment. 

Early education programs clearly have the ability to influence the course of young children's lives in a positive way.  I hope my fellow Committee members will join me in supporting the Biggert-Platts-Van Hollen amendment and provide disadvantaged children an even earlier opportunity for learning in a safe, healthy, and constructive environment.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  I yield back the balance of my time.