The federal Head Start program has provides low-income 3-and 4-old children and their families with comprehensive early education and support services.
All Head Start programs focus on the “whole child” and include:
The purpose of the Head Start State Collaboration Projects is to create significant, Statewide partnerships between Head Start and the states in order to meet the increasingly complex, intertwined and difficult challenges of improving services for economically disadvantaged children and their families.
The goals of the Collaboration Project are to:
In 1965, “Project Head Start” was launched as an 8 week program serving 561,000 children. Since then, the Head Start program has served more than 27 million children and their families and has become one of the leaders in the field of early childhood education. In 1994, federal policymakers authorized the Early Head Start program to address the needs of children under age 3 and pregnant women.
Janet Coscarelli, Director