In Mary Baca's apartment, preschoolers read books with their mothers. In the kitchen, Baca dishes out oatmeal, filling the air with the warm smell of hot breakfast and home.

Her apartment in the Westwood public housing project in Denver is a small oasis, a break from broken down cars and broke relatives, from the dozens of irritations of poverty that chafe the soul like so much sand inside a shoe.

It is the Kentucky Head Start in Denver. And it is part of Project Head Start — one of the few soldiers of the War on Poverty that still march on.

Vilified by some, glorified by others, America's most prominent preschool program is once again in the public eye this year as Congress re-authorizes the $7 billion a year program that serves 912,000 poor children at 18,865 centers in 50 states, three territories and the District of Columbia.

Like politicians throughout Head Start's history, President Bush is proposing more emphasis on the program's academic side and a bigger role for states.

Critics of this plan include the National Head Start Association, a 30-year-old advocacy group.

Supporters include Head Start Bureau Commissioner Windy Hill, herself a former Head Start student, parent and local director.

And then there is Baca.

She will retire this year. Her timing is evidence of how the program has both persisted and changed. She is leaving because, at age 71, she does not wish to renew her Child Development Associate certificate. Now a minimum requirement for teachers, the certification spurred preschools nationwide to increase teacher standards.

Baca has remained for 36 years because she believes in Head Start's power to transform lives. She knows about that — first hand.

Born in a New Mexico mining camp, she was living in the small town of Trinidad, Colo., when she first enrolled her own children in Head Start. The year was 1967, and Head Start was in its infancy.

It was in 1964 that a14-member panel spent six weeks drawing up a revolutionary blueprint.

Today, Head Start debates focus heavily on how much preschoolers need to know about letters and numbers. But 39 years ago, "improving the child's mental processes and skills" was just one of seven objectives. Improving children's health was the program's primary goal.

There was little time for debate. Within a year, Project Head Start had launched with half a million children.

"I was very tempted on the planning committee to say — this isn't worth doing," said Edward Zigler, a Yale psychologist who served on the planning committee and later directed Head Start under President Richard Nixon. "(Planning committee member) Jule Richmond said, Ed, we'll catch up with quality, we'll get to quality later... .If we had started with some dinky little program, it could have been killed as soon as Nixon came in."

In his 1992 book on Head Start, Zigler recalls that applications piled up in the bathtubs of the fledgling program's makeshift headquarters — a condemned hotel in Washington, D.C. Quality control was minimal.

Zigler recalls the rhythmic stamps of "approved" from the substitute teachers hired to screen applications, assembly line style, by night. Five years later, Zigler would ask then-Head Start chief Dick Orton how many of the original programs had been shut down.

"Well Ed," Zigler recalled Orton replying, "there WAS one program we ALMOST closed down."

"What do you think we're going to learn about this week?" Mary Baca asks her students.

"Bugs!" cry 18 preschoolers.

They buzz around the room examining pretend spiders, ladybugs and bees. It looks a lot like play. But the point of playing with plastic bugs is to make pictures of bugs leap off the page when children read about them in books.

"We have a lot of literacy going on," says Baca. "It's a lot different now."



Head Start began with heady dreams for what was then an eight-week mini-course. Reality soon set in. And reality in Washington is politics.

Bush's proposal to move Head Start is nothing new. The '60s were still going strong when Sen. Peter Dominick, R-Colo., tried and failed to cede more control to the states and move Head Start to what was then the federal Office of Education.

A year later, Westinghouse and Ohio University came out with research that found Head Start "has not provided widespread cognitive and affective gains." Academics later found holes in the research. For example, 70 percent of students studied had participated only in the eight-week summer program, which had already been replaced with today's school-year calendar.

Some subsequent studies have shown Head Start helps children do better in school. Others have not.

But Westinghouse has continued to haunt Head Start.

To this day, no one has completed a valid study that follows Head Start graduates into adulthood, said Craig Ramey, early childhood expert and professor at Georgetown University.

In 1978, then-Pres. Jimmy Carter backed another attempt to move Head Start — this time to the newborn U.S. Department of Education. This, too, failed.

By then, Baca had moved to Denver. The coal miner's daughter had become a Head Start teacher.

"Head Start," said Baca, "changed my life." One third of Head Start staffers are former Head Start parents. They tend to be loyal. Head Start turnover is 10 percent a year versus 30 percent at the average American childcare center.

Yet many of these long timers, including Baca, lack the college degrees that researchers believe are crucial to quality. And with average Head Start teacher salaries today at $21,000 as compared to $41,000 for kindergarten teachers, many staffers never make it out of poverty.

Still, Head Start provided these parents with a hopeful focus that many had not seen before.

Zigler no longer believes, as he once said, that one third of Head Starts should be closed down. Research backs him up. A 1997 government study found that Head Starts were of a higher quality than most American preschools.

Today, one third of Head Starts are reviewed annually. Of 591 rated in 2001, 14 percent were found "deficient." As quality improves, access remains limited. Nationwide, fewer than half of poor children attend preschool. Some say Head Start should step in and fill the gap.

But Head Start head Windy Hill notes that 62,000, or 7 percent, of current Head Start slots go unused annually. She believes this problem could be at least partially solved under the president's plan for better coordination between Head Start and states.

The plan also calls for more emphasis on literacy. Head Start's 1998 reauthorization increased standards for literacy and teacher education. As of this fall, all Head Start children must take a national test. Previously, programs could choose their own tests.

Government-sponsored research published this winter found Head Start children are learning more new letters. However, they still fell short of Congress's goal of recognizing at least 10 letters.

Bush's plan says 1998 standards have yet to be "fully implemented." He wants to strengthen them.

That's okay, says National Head Start Association president Sarah Greene. But, like critics of past plans to move Head Start to the U.S. Department of Education, she worries the transition would weaken non-educational areas like nutrition and health. She also worries standards would decline if states got more control.

Child expert Ramey disagrees.

"In the conversations I've had with people in the White House, in none of those have I heard a proposal to narrow the focus of Head Start," he said. "What I've heard is the desire to increase the focus on school readiness. Some people want to see it differently because they want to have a political battle."

Ramey also favors allowing some states more control over Head Start to better coordinate state and federal preschool funding.

Zigler believes Bush's proposal has a better chance at succeeding than previous plans to cede more control to states and education officials. As he has before, he opposes the move. He suggests this compromise: Leave Head Start where it is — but better align it with local elementary school standards.

The morning over, Baca's children are dismissed. Only one boy resists. Tears run down his face.

Forget for a moment the dearth of academic proof. Set aside the years of political dissent. It is small moments like these that grab Head Start supporters and refuse to let them go. After less than a year of Head Start, the boy loves school so much he does not want to leave.



(Holly Yettick is a reporter for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, CO. Contact her at 303-892-5082 or yettickh@rockymountainnews.com.)