What proposed changes to Head Start could mean for children and families
Last month the White House proposed major rule changes to Head Start, a federally funded program that provides preschool and other services for low-income children from birth to age 5, as well as support for families and pregnant women.
The proposal would eliminate hundreds of federal requirements from the program and shift some decisions about standards down to state and local governments. Childcare advocates and researchers contend that the changes will gut critical policies and services that have defined the program for decades, while the Administration says the move will save more than $2 billion and increase available slots.
Philip Fisher, a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), directs the Stanford Center on Early Childhood, which works to advance research and strategies to support young children’s learning and development. He also leads the RAPID Survey Project, an ongoing national survey polling parents and caregivers of young children about their experiences and challenges.
Joan Lombardi, an adjunct professor at the GSE, has been a leader in national child and family policy for more than four decades. She has held numerous roles at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, including serving as the first deputy assistant secretary for early childhood, and the first director of the Child Care Bureau (now the U.S. Office of Child Care). She has also been an advisor for national and international organizations including the World Health Organization, UNICEF, UNESCO, and the World Bank Group.
Here, Fisher and Lombardi discuss the Head Start program, the research behind the services it provides, and the implications of the proposed changes, which are open for written public comments until Oct. 6.
GSE Professor Philip Fisher
For people who aren’t familiar with Head Start, what makes it different from other early childhood programs?
Philip Fisher: People tend to think of preschool as a place children attend to learn things, whether that’s early academic skills or social-emotional skills. But Head Start addresses the whole ecology of the child. It’s oriented toward the wide range of children’s developmental needs, including health and nutrition. It’s a comprehensive approach to support what we know children need in order to thrive.
Joan Lombardi: This focus on comprehensive services includes a two-generation approach with support for parents as well as children, meaningful parent involvement, and ongoing supports for families. Programs are deeply embedded in their communities, which makes them a critical asset to the overall well-being of the country. Head Start came out of the War on Poverty in 1965, when Sargent Shriver put together a panel of experts to create a vision for a program that addresses the whole needs of children, and it’s always had strong bipartisan support.
GSE Adjunct Professor Joan Lombardi
What are some of the biggest changes now being proposed?
Lombardi: The proposal raises a number of serious concerns. For example, instead of maintaining current child-staff ratios and group size, it would allow programs to meet state licensing requirements. But program standards designed to support the delivery of quality services are very different from minimum licensing standards.
A requirement for providing teachers with coaching, to give them supervision and feedback, would be dropped, despite evidence showing its impact. The programs would also be required to teach only in English, when we know from research that dual-language learning is beneficial.
The proposal eliminates federal requirements for developmental screening, which often provides early identification of children with special needs. Requirements for programs to do outreach and special accommodations for homeless children would also be removed. These are serious setbacks for serving some of the most vulnerable children in the country.
Many Head Start programs struggle to recruit and retain teachers, and the proposal suggests that loosening federal requirements would help with these workforce issues. Is there evidence to support this approach?
Fisher: The quality and preparation of preschool teachers makes a big difference in the outcomes of these kinds of programs. If you lower standards to increase the size of the workforce – at the expense of teachers understanding how young children learn, and having resources like coaching and professional development – then the program becomes a warehouse for children.
Kids who are eligible for Head Start come from environments with limited economic resources. Whether staff will be attracted to these positions under the conditions that would be created is a question we'll need to study, if the changes are put in place. If the workforce increases, who's leaving, who's entering – those are important questions, and we don’t know the answers.
Another rationale for the proposal is that the changes will save money that would allow more children to participate in the program. Does evidence support that?
Fisher: The idea of cost savings may be true in the short-term, but it’s likely to lead to higher costs in the long run. A lot of kids’ basic needs would not be met – not only for education, but for health and general social well-being – and those kids end up consuming more services in the system in the long run.
Head Start programs are currently allowed to spend 15% on administrative costs, and that would be capped to 5%. Could programs expand when they can’t cover administrative costs, and each state has to set its own regulations? It seems more likely that access to programs will actually diminish.
Are there other approaches you’d advise to move the program forward?
Lombardi: In 1993 there was a top-to-bottom review of Head Start by a bipartisan committee, and one of the recommendations that surfaced was the need to serve children younger than age 3. That led to a requirement to create Early Head Start, an infant/toddler program, which still serves less than 10% of eligible children.
We have tremendous demand for infant/toddler services in this country, and we have a comprehensive program that we know can make a difference for the most vulnerable families. We should be looking to expand that.
Fisher: The idea of program redesign and reform is not a bad idea. We should consider, on a regular basis, what families with young children who are struggling with economic hardship might benefit from in this day and age, where we might be able to save funds and reallocate them to other supports that may be more relevant. But that's not what we’re looking at here. This proposal is a wholesale effort to undercut its viability, not an effort to see what can be improved.
Faculty mentioned in this article: Philip Fisher , Joan Lombardi
