Hawaii's Current Quality of Public, Preschool Education

Simply put, the current situation of Hawaii's Public Preschools (a.k.a. Head Start) is not at it's best. It tends to lack in quality education, federal funding, and availability. It does assist many children by giving them a bit of a better foundation for school, and meanwhile acting as a daycare, but it doesn't really seem to have any real impact on the child's education or well-being.

The very ambitious goals of Head Start have decreased since it's proposal in the sixties. Originally, it had seven main goals: ¹
1. to improve the child's physical health
2. to improve the child's mental development and skills
3. to improve the child's emotional and social development
4. to establish the child's expectancy to succeed
5. to boost confidence
6. to improve the child's family relations
7. to establish a feeling of responsibility to society

Now it is simply focused on the general goal of "increasing the social competence of children from low-income families". ¹ Depending on the Head Start program, this goal seems to be more often met than not, yet this doesn't necessarily mean the children are receiving a good-quality education. This could be due to the fact that the teachers aren't qualified or simply because this is not the emphasis of the program. Either way, the quality of real learning seems to be lacking.

The lack of government funding for these programs is also a large setback. A Star Bulletin article says that the Head Start programs "have waiting lists due to lack of adequate federal grants". ² There are a little over three thousand chidren in Hawaii that are currently enrolled in Head Start, ³ yet it is not even an option for everyone. Not only does this show lack of federal funds, but it also contradicts the whole idea of a public program because it is not accessible to all families.

For all of these reasons, the quality of Hawaii's public preschool education is not up to par. While it does have some good qualities and better prepare some children for kindergarten, it doesn't have a very large, or positive, effect overall.

¹ http://www.ilheadstart.org/goals.html
² http://starbulletin.com/2005/11/30/news/story10.html
³ http://www.cwla.org/advocacy/statefactsheets/2006/hawaii.htm