Obama's Budget Proposes Cutting Even Start Program
My colleague Alyson Klein reports over at Politics K-12 that President Obama's budget proposes to slash the $66 million Even Start family-literacy program. During the 11 years I've worked for Education Week, I must admit I've never had the chance to observe this program in action.
I read a research brief recently published by Child Trends and the Center for Social and Demographic Analysis at the University of Albany focusing on low enrollment of Latino youngsters in early-childhood education programs that made the following statement about Even Start:
While the most recent evaluation of the Even Start literacy program did point to gains in literacy outcomes for participants, it did not provide evidence that the gains were greater for those assigned to the program than for those in the control group.
Readers, if you have some insight about what elimination of this program would mean, please fill us in.
