I was a Head Start parent and can attest to all the facts in your story. I had made some poor life choices and raised a daughter alone in poverty (I wish I had known about Head Start then).

My other two children, who did have the benefit of Head Start, are today at ages 15 and 16 a testament to the program's success, as is my own personal and professional growth.

Two years ago, my daughter Ashley tested in the top 4% per cent of Kansas students on the reading tests required by the No Child Left Behind Act. The testing showed her reading at a college level.

As a student in her school’s gifted and talented program, Ashley participated in a debate tournament between her middle school and a nearby Catholic middle school. The topic for the debate was mental health.

I was so proud. Ashley and her partner researched the Head Start prevention/early intervention model, and then took as their position for the debate that the Head Start model should be used in all public schools, using observation by mental health professionals, counselors, and teachers to target emergent behaviors or mental health issues. They went on to argue that Individual Family Service Plans could be written with the help of parents, etc. with the goal of intervening before children ended up in foster care, juvenile facilities, or in boys' and girls' homes. And that all teachers and counselors should have in-service training to make this possible.

As for me, I have been doing Early Head Start and Head Start program reviews for five years.

Everywhere I travel within the continental United States, I see three- and four-year-old Head Start children in book-filled classrooms writing their names, exhibiting basic knowledge and understanding of science and nature. They have had eye exams and dental care. If needed, they are receiving services for learning disabilities right in the classroom.

I see Head Start staff working with parents to involve them in planning nutritious menus both for their home and the Head Start classrooms, and helping parents understand outcomes. Parents also share their knowledge of their children to help staff create individualized educational experiences.

Through the Head Start Fatherhood Initiative, many fathers are, for the first time, getting to know their children. Some are learning and loving the knowledge that a dad is not only a financial provider.

I cry along with Head Start parents who talk about how Head Start has not only improved their children’s school readiness, social skills, and health, but how Head Start has changed their own lives.

Parents are being given the skills to become their child's primary educator in the home, to advocate for their children in the medical and educational community, to provide healthy and nutritious meals and ward off the dangers of obesity. They are being helped to get GED's and even college degrees.

Head Start partnerships with public schools and child care centers, including some faith-based centers, make it possible for children to be transported to and from their Head Start classrooms to child care facilities that charge low-income students and wage earners little or nothing, enabling them to work towards self-sufficiency.

I have seen school districts use the Head Start model for their own state pre-kindergarten classrooms.

And many, many times when I listen to parent stories during family focus group interviews and policy council interviews, I still remember "That was me." With the same fears, the same low self-esteem, the same struggle to raise my children right while living in poverty. That is, until Head Start took the time to ask, "What brought you to this point in life and how can we help you move forward?" That’s something the welfare system never did.

What happens to Head Start should not be about money and the desire of state Departments of Education or public school systems to provide a stripped-down version of Head Start that would primarily focus on education.

Head Start should be about the whole family, just as it is now.

Jerrie DeRose

Jerrie DeRose won the National Head Start Association’s Eugenia Boggus Leadership Award in 1999.