Head Start Fraud: It’s Worse than You Think

Rachel Sheffield / May 20, 2010

“Fraud,” “deceit,” and “exploitation.”  Those words were used this week at a hearing about the Head Start program–the federal government’s long-standing preschool program for low-income children. An investigation carried out by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), revealed several cases of underreporting of income and the falsification of addresses by Head Start employees in order to “qualify” children for the program. Head Start grantees receive money based on the number of children they serve.

As reported in an Education and Labor committee hearing on May 18, reports of two fraudulent cases lead the GAO to conduct an undercover investigation in which they attempted to enroll 15 fraudulent children. In over half of these cases Head Start employees encouraged families to misrepresent their income, falsify family income on enrollment forms, or make claims that a working parent was instead unemployed.

Representative Kline issued a statement about the GAO report: (more…)