Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act of 2007 - Conference Report

Floor Speech

IMPROVING HEAD START FOR SCHOOL READINESS ACT OF 2007--CONFERENCE REPORT -- (Senate - November 14, 2007)

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the conference report to accompany the Head Start reauthorization bill. For the first time since 1998, Congress will send a bill to the President to reauthorize and strengthen the Head Start program.

A child's education begins well before he or she enters a school building for the first day of kindergarten. The children who succeed in kindergarten are the children whose parents read to them every day, who talk with them, and who engage their minds with games, art, and new experiences. These are the children who enter kindergarten ready to learn.

Unfortunately, many children enter kindergarten well behind their peers. They may have parents whose long hours interfere with the kind of time they spend with their small children. Or they may have parents who don't know how important these early developmental activities are. That is why we created Head Start in 1965, to make sure low-income children are ready to learn when they arrive in kindergarten. Head Start provides preschool-aged, low-income children and their families with school activities, health screening, healthy snacks, and structure to encourage parental involvement.

Each year, over 900,000 children are served by Head Start nationwide; 40,000 of those children live in my home State of Illinois. The legislation that we are considering today will increase authorized funding for Head Start to $7.9 billion in fiscal year 2010, allowing tens of thousands more children to participate in the program.

The legislation will also expand eligibility, allowing Head Start to serve low-income children and families up to 130 percent of Federal poverty, or $26,800 for a family of four. It will also expand the Early Head Start program, so it can reach an additional 8,000 low-income infants and toddlers. The earlier children enroll in Head Start programs, the more likely they are to succeed once they enter kindergarten.

The legislation also sets new minimum qualification standards for Head Start teachers. Within 6 years, all Head Start teachers must have an associate's degree, and half of all teachers must have a bachelor's degree. Forty percent of new funding will be reserved for program quality enhancements, including much-needed salary increases for Head Start staff.

Educational standards will be strengthened in Head Start programs to make sure children are presented with language and literacy, math, science, and other cognitive development material. These new standards will be updated and aligned with the latest research in child development. The legislation we are considering today will improve the transition for children who are leaving Head Start to enter kindergarten, through better coordination between Head Start programs and schools, shared teacher training, and alignment of curriculum.

I am especially pleased that this legislation strengthens Head Start without weakening its long-standing civil rights protections for more than 200,000 Head Start teachers and 1.3 million parent volunteers.

Since 1972, the law has prohibited agencies that receive government funding for Head Start from employment discrimination on the basis of race, creed, color, national origin, sex, political affiliation, or beliefs. These civil rights protections have been reaffirmed all six times that the Head Start program has been reauthorized since then, and I strongly support the seventh reaffirmation today.

Preserving this provision is especially important given this administration's attempts to overturn long-standing principles of nondiscrimination through Executive orders, proposed legislation, and, recently, Department of Justice opinions.

Let me be clear. I support the right of religious organizations to use religious criteria in hiring people to carry out their religious work. This exception--which is the current law--makes sense because it allows people of common faith to work together to further their religion's mission.

However, there is a fundamental difference between religious organizations using their own funds for their religious work and religious organizations using government funds for that purpose. In 1972, Congress established the current, expanded religious exception under title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The same Congress established the nondiscrimination provisions in Head Start that continue with today's legislation. They understood the difference between permitting hiring based on religion for religious functions not funded by the government, and allowing discrimination based on religion in hiring people to carry out activities funded by the Federal Government.

I also want to address a memo released last month by the Department of Justice entitled ``Effect of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act on Faith-Based Applicants for Grants.'' This troubling memo concludes that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act allows faith-based organizations to receive Federal funds even when considering religion in employment. It further asserts that RFRA ``protects this right to prefer co-religionists for employees even if the statute that authorizes the funding program generally forbids consideration of religion in employment decisions by grantees.''

I strongly disagree with these conclusions in general, and especially with respect to the legislation before us today. The law and the history regarding Head Start is clear with respect to nondiscrimination in employment, and this explicit civil rights protection must be followed.

In closing, I want to affirm my strong support for the participation of religious organizations in the Head Start program. These organizations provide critical support for our Nation's children in 5 percent of Head Start centers and greatly improve our pre-schoolers' education. It is not surprising that Head Start is the second-largest source of federal funding for faith-based organizations.

This program truly is a model for how the government can successfully partner with faith-based organizations, while complying with nondiscrimination requirements.

I thank Senators Kennedy and Enzi for their bipartisan work on this important legislation, and I urge my colleagues to support this conference report.

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