The achievement gap between school districts in high-income neighborhoods and those in low-income ones is already more canyon than crack, and if $1.7 trillion in automatic sequestration cuts are allowed to go into effect on March 1, that gap could grow even wider.

Dozens of education programs would face reduced funding, but three crucial programs — No Child Left Behind, Head Start initiatives, and the Individuals with Disabilities Act — provide the most assistance to low-income students and also face the sharpest cuts if the sequester is allowed to go into effect, as the Center for American Progress’ Juliana Herman and Kaitlin Pennington detailed in a new report:

Altogether, the sequester would cut approximately $725 million from Title I funding, potentially affecting 2,700 schools, impacting 1.2 million students, and placing 9,880 education staff at risk of losing their jobs. [...]

Head Start and Early Head Start—a similar program for infants—both work to ensure that parental income does not determine whether a child will be able to learn during these influential years. But should sequestration happen next week, approximately 70,000 children will be kicked out of Head Start due to inadequate funding. [...]

If sequestration goes through, funding under the Individuals with Disabilities Act could be reduced by as much as $579 million.

In all, the report estimates, the cuts would impact as many as 1.2 million children, 30,000 teachers and 2,700 schools, the overwhelming majority of which will be from low-income communities.

Recent studies have shown the devastating correlation between income and student achievement. Since the late 1980s, the gap in metrics like college completion between students from high-income and low-income households grew by more than 50 percent.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) shot down President Obama’s proposal for universal pre-school education during an appearance on CSPAN’s Washington Journal on Friday, complaining that the plan — first unveiled during last week’s State of the Union address — would force teachers to fill out too much paperwork.

“You know, I had an email from a teacher as [Obama] was giving the speech, someone I’ve known for a long time and it was, ‘Are you kidding me? More paperwork?’” Blackburn said. She went on to argue that education should be handled by state and local governments:

BLACKBURN: And I think so many of our educators when they hear about these programs coming from the federal government, they’re just thinking, uh, that’s another book of paperwork that I’m going to have to do and teachers are so weighed down with that. The teachers I’m talking about, they want state and local control…They would just like the states with control of education.

Watch it:

Obama’s proposal to expand preschool education to all American children will be financed in partnership with the states and is based on successful models in Georgia and Oklahoma. The U.S. Department of Education “will allocate dollars to states based their share of four-year olds from low- and moderate-income families and funds would be distributed to local school districts and other partner providers to implement the program,” a White House fact sheet on the initiative states.

Preschool substantially reduces the likelihood that a child will later drop out of high school, become a teen parent, or be arrested for a violent crime. Studies have determined universal preschool programs generate roughly $7 in savings per child and increases human capital.

North Carolina’s Health and Human Services Department has entrusted the state’s Child Development and Early Education division to Dianna Lightfoot, a staunch opponent to early childhood education. Lightfoot founded the National Physicians Center, an organization primarily devoted to abstinence education. Starting Monday, Lightfoot will oversee the child-care and pre-kindergarten education programs she has denigrated for years.

In an open letter, Lightfoot’s organization attacked institutional pre-school programs, claiming they make children dependent on the government:

“In the case of early childhood education programs, available research suggests they may actually be inferior to early learning opportunities at home. In addition, it appears the demand for out of home childcare is not as prevalent as many advocates claim,” says an open letter signed by Lightfoot on the group’s website.

The letter also warns that “There is great potential for early learning institutions to foster more dependency on the government (i.e. taxpayer) and more of an entitlement mentality.”

“Will institutions focus on character building and teaching strong values? If so, whose values will children be taught?” it asks.

Lightfoot is hardly alone in her idea that pre-school breeds dependency; conservatives as prominent as former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) have called for dismantling early childhood education because it “indoctrinates” children for the government.

Lightfoot’s open letter also quotes a 1997 Glamour poll as evidence that most mothers prefer to keep their children home from pre-school. However, there is far more evidence that pre-kindergarten programs immensely benefit children throughout their lives. As a new Center for American Progress report notes, a child without early education is 25 percent more likely to drop out of school, 40 percent more likely to become a teenage parent, and 70 percent more likely to be arrested for a violent crime.

Lightfoot also scrubbed her Twitter account on Wednesday after a progressive group published her tweet from July 2011 mocking then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as “butch” and praising Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) for maintaining their “femininity.” On her Facebook page, she lashed out at Chick-fil-a for following the “lead of a weak, appeasing president” and toning down its anti-gay activism.