A slow week in education news this past week, but one positive development was the House's approval of a funding bill for the long-standing federal program, Head Start, which provides pre-kindergarten services to three - five year olds in low income families. The program, which was funded at $6.9 billion in 2007, will receive $7.4 billion if the Senate agrees to the proposal and it is signed by the president.

The most contentious issue to come up during the debate on the bill was a measure inserted by GOP representatives to change the current ruling on religious organizations that participate in the program and receive federal funds for their pre-K offerings. Currently, in accordance with Civil Rights and equal employment opportunity provisions, religious organizations that accept federal dollars to provide pre-K via Head Start are not allowed to take the religious beliefs of potential employees into consideration when making employment decisions. An amendment was offered but voted down by Democratic representatives that would have changed that to allow faith based pre-K headstart programs to hire individuals based on their religious views, even if other applicants are equally or more qualified. The argument submitted by the GOP representatives was that faith based organizations were being unduly restricted by the law and therefore prevented from being an asset in increasing pre-K access for low-income children. In contrast, the opponents of the amendment said that the religious pre-K providers were free to use religion as a factor in hiring decisions if they wanted to fund their programs privately, but could not do so with federal dollars, as allowing this would jeopardize precedent and long-standing equal employment practice.

As the Head Start bill makes its way through the legislative process, it's an important time to reflect on the incredibly intertwined way in which the nation's education system works, and the comprehensive nature of the reforms that are needed. While the failures of our schools do not manifest themselves until the very end of the pipeline--in the form of dropout rates, teen drug use and crime rates, poverty rates and unempoyment among young adults--the causes of these symptoms take place all throughout the pipeline. Pre-K is one such source, exacerbated by the fact that by some estimates 97% of eligible 3 year olds do not have a head start slot. But even if this problem were solved, it would not guarantee success for the millions of low-performing American students, since additional risk factors take place in elementary, middle, and certainly high school. In other words, while we have learned that it's important to start early in ensuring quality educational opportunities to young children, we have learned an even more important lesson at the same time: we can't afford to stop early with our supports, either.