ABSTRACT
In the broadest sense, the politics of resource distribution and it’s connection to programmatic inadequacies in Head Start has long been recognized. For example, while over 16 million children and their families have been enrolled in the program in the past thirty-four years, because of funding constraints only 20 percent of all children eligible for the program have been able to be served in a typical year (Zigler & Styfco, 1993). Since 1985, federal funding levels have increased from $1 billion to $3.9 billion in FY 1997 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1998), thereby allowing enrollment of additional eligible families, but even with the recent expansion in the 1990s, the program still only serves 40 percent of all eligible children (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1994). Furthermore, the 1,440 local grantees and the 16,636 Head Start centers that are the recipient of these monies struggle with the material realities of inadequate facilities, low pay scales, and a chronic lack of staff (U.S. General Accounting Office, 1994). According to this GAO report, in 1994 up to 90 percent of Head Start programs reported having insufficient staff to provide needed services.
