Head Start

Origins of Head Start and Early Head Start

In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson launched the War on Poverty. To help wage this war, federal law-makers enacted the Economic Opportunity Act of1964. This act created the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), and Sargent Shriver was appointed as OEO's first director.

Shriver, a brother-in-law of the late president John F. Kennedy and a former president of the Chicago Board of Education, considered an early intervention program for poor children for two reasons. First, Shriver quickly learned, in his new position, that many poor people were children. Second, he was familiar with research, funded by the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Foundation, which found that the IQs of mentally retarded children can be increased through exposure to positive early interventions and that proper nutrition can have a positive impact on a child's intellectual development. If mentally retarded children could benefit by participating in an early intervention program, Shriver believed that poor children could also benefit from participating in an early intervention program.

A multidisciplinary committee of 14 child development experts, including developmental psychologists, was assembled by Shriver to conceive an early intervention program for poor children. Chaired by Robert E. Cooke, professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and chairman of the Kennedy Foundation's Scientific Advisory Committee, this multidisciplinary committee considered how to create a national early intervention for poor children. In February 1965, this committee recommended the establishment of Project Head Start. This program would provide poor children and their families with a comprehensive range of services, including education, nutrition, physical and mental health services, and social services, and this program would mandate considerable parent involvement.

Substantial parent involvement in the decision making of Head Start programs was influenced by the civil rights movement and the concept of “maximum feasible participation.” Under this concept, policy-makers believed that the effectiveness of federal programs serving poor people would be enhanced if the poor people were involved in the planning and administration of these programs.

From Shriver and the multidisciplinary committee's work, the federal government launched Project Head Start in the summer of 1965 by providing funds to local community programs. According to Valora Washington and Ura Jean Oyemade, local Head Start organizations throughout the United States provided an 8-week summer program of services to 561,000 children. Head Start's federal budget was $96.4 million. Federal funding for Head Start bypassed state governments because many southern governors were segregationalists and opposed the program.

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