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and Means Committee, explains:

[Many] intervention programs were conducted under

ideal circumstances: skilled researchers, capable

staffs with lots of training, ample budgets, and

perhaps in the glow of Hawthorne effects.  It

seems unwise to claim that the benefits produced

by such exemplary programs would necessarily be

produced by ordinary preschool programs conducted

in communities across the United States.

Research about Head Start, then, is valuable

because Head Start has all the characteristics of

a large-scale preschool program: It has more than

1,300 preschool projects serving about 457,000

children; it focuses on poor children; and its

quality varies widely across sites.  Thus, infor-

mation about the effects of Head Start can be

offered as a close approximation of what could

be expected from universal preschool education

for poor children.89

Head Start was the child-centered component of the

War on Poverty.  It was designed to improve the poor

child's opportunities and achievements in order to end the

"pattern of poverty."  Its seven major objectives were to

improve the child's physical health, help the child's emo-

tional and social development, improve the child's mental

processes, establish patterns and expectations of success,

increase the child's ability to relate positively to fami-

ly members, develop in the child and his family a respon-

sible attitude toward society, and increase the sense of

dignity and self-worth of the child and his family.90

President Lyndon Johnson enthusiastically announced

Head Start's opening in 1965:

We set out to make certain that poverty's chil-

dren would not be forevermore poverty's captives.

We called our program Project Head Start . . .

[this program] reflects a realistic and a whole-

some awakening in America.  It shows that we are

recognizing that poverty perpetuates itself.

Five- and six-year-old children are inheritors of

poverty's curse and not its creators.  Unless we

act these children will pass it on to the next

generation, like a family birthmark. . . . This

program this year means that 30 million man-

years--the combined lifespan of these young-

sters--will be spent productively and rewarding-

ly, rather than wasted in tax-supported institu-

tions or in welfare-supported lethargy.91