House Passes the School Readiness Act, Early Head Start Amendment Included

Congressman Platts gave the following statement on the House floor during consideration of the School Readiness Act (H.R. 2123), which would reauthorize and improve upon the Head Start program:

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the School Readiness Act of 2005. I would like to pay particular attention and highlight a provision of the bill granting greater flexibility to Head Start programs wanting to provide Early Head Start to children ages birth to 3.
    

A priority goal of the Head Start program is to reach out and assist as many of our Nation's at-risk children as possible in the most effective and responsible manner possible. In continuing with this tradition, I was proud to join with my distinguished colleagues, the gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. Judy Biggert) and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Chris Van Hollen), in offering a bipartisan amendment during committee consideration of this measure 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.
    

The Biggert-Van Hollen-Platts amendment, which was adopted unanimously in committee, gives grantees providing services under 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.
  

 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 percent of children enter the Head Start program with vocabulary skills below the average range, and 82 percent 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 behind their peers. Yet early Head Start currently serves less than 5 percent 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 Head Start children performed significantly better on a range of measures of cognitive, language, and social and 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 are clearly important to the future of our Nation and our Nation's children. They have the ability to influence the course of young children's lives in a positive way. I hope my colleagues in this Chamber will join me in supporting final passage of H.R. 2123.