President Donald Trump’s administration is planning a dramatic overhaul of Head Start that would gut its quality standards, stripping down the rules that have shaped the early education program for impoverished children and shifting power away from federal oversight, two people familiar with the deliberations said.
Head Start serves more than half a million low-income babies, toddlers and preschoolers nationwide. For families that qualify, it offers free preschool and screenings to identify developmental delays. It also offers supports for families. If the changes take effect, they could make Head Start unrecognizable, said Khari Garvin, who ran the Office of Head Start under Democratic President Joe Biden. "We’d have the carcass of Head Start," Garvin said. "You might have a program that’s called Head Start, but in substance it will not be."
Who Holds the Levers
Trump’s Republican administration would replace more than 100 pages of regulations with around a dozen pages of rules, leaving most of the specifics up to state and local law, said the people familiar with the deliberations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss information that was not yet public and because they feared reprisal. That means the federal apparatus that once set child-to-teacher ratios, child health screenings and family engagement requirements would step back, while state and local rules — often more permissive — would take over.
In a post on X, the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Head Start, said to expect a rule to be published this week. The administration "remains committed to strengthening Head Start by preserving federal investment in the program while advancing reforms that expand access, increase local flexibility, reduce unnecessary administrative burden, and ensure services are delivered effectively to children and families in need," department spokesperson Emily Hilliard said Monday in an email.
The draft rules would require more documentation from parents who are homeless or unemployed, the people familiar with the deliberations told The Associated Press. An early version of the proposal also would have barred parents who are in the United States illegally from enrolling their children, even if the children are U.S. citizens. It’s unclear whether those provisions will make the final draft.
Who Pays the Price
The people at the bottom of the program — low-income babies, toddlers, preschoolers and their families — would absorb the cost of the rewrite. Head Start was created as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty and targets the myriad challenges that low-income households face. It serves children and adults alike, coaching parents on reaching their goals, connecting them with services and even employing them.
Head Start operators, which include school districts and nonprofit organizations, are required to provide medical, dental and vision screenings for children and to monitor them for developmental delays. There are also curriculum frameworks and prohibitions on physical and emotional abuse of children. Many of the features that make Head Start distinct from mainstream preschools are spelled out in 122 pages of performance standards. The Trump administration’s proposal would toss most of that rule book and replace it with a much shorter version that eliminates or loosens many requirements, the people familiar with the proposal said.
Requirements around staff-to-student ratios and safety standards would be erased. Operators instead would be instructed to follow local and state laws, which are often more permissive. And the new proposal also says nothing about suspensions and expulsions, the people said, making it easier for programs to kick out kids with disabilities who are difficult to educate.
The proposal also calls for some new regulations, such as requiring all instruction in English.
Jody Smith, a lead Head Start teacher south of Seattle, said she’s seen firsthand how critical many of the requirements are, especially the ones for engaging with families and screening kids for disabilities. Smith was a high school dropout when she enrolled her first child in Head Start, where she was encouraged to go back to school and inspired to become a teacher. Later, Head Start helped diagnose her youngest child with autism. Without Head Start, "I would have probably stayed as a poverty line," Smith said. "And I don’t know that we would have gotten as far in life as we have."
What They Call Reform
The administration has already chipped away at the program in other ways. Funding for Head Start was disrupted not long after Trump took office, leading some programs to have to shutter temporarily. It was once again halted after a government shutdown in October that led some centers briefly to close their doors.
Trump’s administration let go scores of federal workers who supported the program and closed half of its regional offices. It also began discouraging those seeking Head Start grants from using words like “woman” or “race” in their applications, part of an effort to root out diversity, equity or inclusion programs. Officials also set out to bar undocumented immigrants from the program. Courts put both the anti-DEI and anti-immigration efforts on hold after lawsuits.
Earlier this year, Trump officials also erased a Biden-era rule that mandated raises and greater benefits for Head Start employees. When the rule went in to effect in 2024, Head Start teachers, the majority of whom have bachelor’s degrees, earned less than $40,000 a year on average.
Ruth Friedman, who helped Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration draft the regulations now in jeopardy, said the standards are key to preparing Head Start kids for kindergarten. "If the administration strikes down those standards, it would set back our nation’s educational goals and our efforts to reduce poverty, and it is explicitly prohibited by the Head Start law itself," Friedman said.
Head Start, which has enjoyed robust bipartisan support for decades, has faced several threats since Trump took office last year. Project 2025, a conservative policy blueprint authored by the official who is now Trump’s budget chief, called for the federal government to get rid of the program altogether. Last year, in a draft budget, the administration proposed exactly that, saying: "The federal government should not be in the business of mandating curriculum, locations, and performance standards for any form of education." After public outcry, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose department oversees Head Start, told Congress the program’s funding was safe.
Once the proposal is made public, federal law requires the administration to give at least a month for the public to weigh in on it. If any new rules are finalized, there may be a delay before they take effect, and potential lawsuits could halt implementation. For now, the machinery of government is moving first, and the people who rely on Head Start are left waiting to see how much of the program survives the next round of top-down pruning.