Traveling to battleground Pennsylvania, President Obama on Tuesday announced that underperforming Head Start programs would compete for federal dollars rather than automatically receiving the funding for the preschool centers.
“After trying for months to work with Congress on education, we’ve decided to take matters into our own hands,” Obama said in suburban Philadelphia. “Our future is at stake. And we can’t wait for Congress any longer.”
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For the White House, it was the next step in Obama’s national tour to showcase unilateral action amid gridlock on Capitol Hill.
Obama turned to early-childhood education on Tuesday after making executive actions on housing, college loans and veterans in recent days. The president has criticized Congress for not reforming No Child Left Behind and blocking a provision in his jobs bill that would have provided local governments with funding for hiring teachers.
Head Start programs now provide preschool for roughly 900,000 low-income children. By introducing a competitive element to Head Start funding, the White House is banking that Republicans will support the measure.
“We’re not just going to put money into programs that don’t work,” Obama said after touring a Head Start center in Yeadon. “We know that raising the bar isn’t always an easy thing to do, but it’s the right thing to do.”
Like much of his recent rhetoric, the president’s trek to Pennsylvania was as much about lamenting Congress as trumpeting his own proposals.
“If Congress continues only to stand for dysfunction and delay, then I’m going to move ahead without them,” Obama said.
