Blogs:

Head Start the early childhood education program was unveiled by our President again completely overruling the Congress. New rules governing this program were listed out by President Obama at the Philadelphia based Head Start center. Here he spoke to a group of educators and teachers about educational initiatives Congress is refusing to act upon.

He said that in spite of the efforts of his administration to build upon changes made to the law by states, Congress fails to overhaul the NCLB or No Child Left Behind legislation. He also said that they had to take things into their own hands after trying hard to work with Congress for moths as the future is at stake here. He said that it was not possible to wait for the Congress any more as our children deserve better action.

Head Start is a program aimed at helping low income children. This program offers grants to them through local organizations. President Obama made strategic changes to this program by issuing a few executive orders. Congress has been vociferously opposing the $447 billion job creation bill and our President’s move is to circumvent this opposition. According to Congress, Obama is striving to jump start our economy which is not realistically possible.

This is the third time President has side stepped Congress and made an education initiative announcement. The federal student loan program saw some sweeping changes being made last month by President Obama which allows for consolidation of debts into one single payment at a lower rate of interest. He also said that interest rate cap on student discretionary income should be no more than twenty percent.

In a bid to completely overhaul of what was passed by the Senate and the House, Mr. Obama and Arne Duncan, our education secretary have called this their Plan B, Plan A being the waiver proposal they unveiled in September to free school districts and states from NCLB mandates.
Another top priority issue focused upon by our administration presently is the pre-kindergarten education.

Many Obama supporters and experts strongly believe that this will ensure there are many higher education programs at lower levels and will also encourage greater accountability.
The quality of program and performance of all the organizations that receive grants will be reviewed by the Department of Health and Human Services over the next three years.

Standards will include school evaluation, on-site reviews, fiscal management issues, readiness goals for children and local and state license update. If any school does not meet any of the above standards, it will not be eligible for grant renewal.

Interestingly, Congressional Republican supports the plan but say that Head Start changes could have been implemented earlier if not for the delay by President himself. According to House Committee chairman on Education and Workforce and Minnesota Republican Rep. John Kline, the plan President Obama announced is already law and it was his fault for not implementing the changes sooner.

He said that the President has done nothing but repackage a bipartisan law already passed four years earlier for political leverage.