Summary

Head Start, one of the most popular federal early childhood programs, has delivered comprehensive services to about 16 million low-income preschoolers during the past 33 years. Since its inception, Head Start costs have totaled $35 billion, and its annual funding has increased substantially in recent years. The administration recently proposed a significant funding increase for Head Start to expand the program's annual enrollment to one million children by 2002. At the same time, Congress, the executive branch, and taxpayers have become more concerned about ensuring the accountability of federal programs. This report evaluates how the Department of Health and Human Services ensures that Head Start programs are held accountable for complying with laws and regulations and for achieving program results. GAO discusses (1) the extent to which Head Start's mission, goals, and objectives provide an overall framework that emphasizes compliance with applicable laws and regulations and achievement of program results; (2) how well Head Start's processes ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations; and (3) how well Head Start's processes ensure the ability to determine whether the program's purposes have been achieved. GAO summarized this report in testimony before Congress; see: Head Start: Challenges Faced in Demonstrating Program Results and Responding to Societal Changes, by Carlotta C. Joyner, Director of Education and Employment Issues, before the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Youth and Families, House Committee on Education and the Workforce. GAO/T-HEHS-98-183, June 9 (13 pages).

GAO noted that: (1) Head Start's mission, goal, and objectives provide an overall performance assessment framework that emphasizes compliance with applicable laws and regulations and achievement of program results; (2) Head Start developed this framework, which reinforces the program's accountability by linking specific program activities to its overall strategic mission and goal, in response to legislative requirements, as well as Head Start Bureau policies; (3) by specifying measurable program performance objectives, Head Start has the ability to answer questions about its compliance with regulations and whether it is achieving its purposes; (4) although HHS has processes in place to ensure that grantees comply with regulations, the implementation of these processes could be improved, according to GAO's review; (5) both HHS' and GAO's reviews, however, have identified concerns about the consistency of these inspections due to differences in reviewers' assessments of whether grantees are complying with some requirements and due to other factors; (6) in recent years, HHS has substantially strengthened its emphasis on determining whether it has achieved program purposes; (7) its processes provide too little information, however, about how well the program is achieving its intended purposes; (8) HHS has new initiatives that, in the next few years, will provide information not previously available on program outcomes, such as gains made by participating children and their families; (9) in the future HHS will collect such data from all Head Start programs rather than from just a sample of programs, according to agency officials, but it has no established plan or schedule for doing so; (10) moreover, although HHS' survey will allow Head Start to show whether children and their families have progressed in achieving program purposes, HHS' planned analysis of survey results will not allow it to determine with certainty that Head Start participation caused children's or their families' improvements; (11) instead of comparing survey results with those from a group of children and families similar in all respects except for their Head Start participation, HHS will compare results with other groups; (12) this approach will not allow HHS to isolate Head Start participation as a causal factor in children's and families' progress; and (13) therefore, HHS will not be able to determine program impact, that is, whether the program is making a difference in children's and families' lives.