Head Start Gave Me More Than a Head Start. We Should Not Dismantle What Made It Work.

In 1969, when I was four years old and just a year away from kindergarten, my parents enrolled me in Head Start at Annunciation Catholic Church—later known as Good Shepherd—on Detroit’s east side. To us, it was simply Annunciation.

My first cousin Darlene and I were only a few months apart, and we attended together. I can still picture us making that short walk through our neighborhood to Annunciation, sometimes with my mother, sometimes with my Aunt Ann. We were little kids headed off to “school”—singing songs, practicing our ABCs, talking about the other children we would see when we got there.

I remember being proud.

I do not remember the names of all my teachers. I cannot reconstruct the classroom or tell you exactly what was hanging on its walls. But I remember Annunciation itself—a massive, beautiful church that seemed enormous through the eyes of a four-year-old boy. And I remember knowing that inside that building was a place for us.

A place where we were safe.
A place where we were learning.
A place where somebody expected something of us.

Because it was the year before kindergarten, I can see now that Head Start did exactly what its name promised. It prepared me for that next step. It gave me an early appreciation for learning, experience being with other children, and the confidence of knowing that school was somewhere I wanted to be.

But nearly six decades later, I understand something else about those walks to Head Start that I could not possibly have understood then.

My parents were walking back to work.

Head Start meant my mother and father could be gainfully employed knowing that their youngest child was somewhere safe, nurturing, and developmentally appropriate. They were raising four children—my three older siblings and me—and both of their incomes mattered.

Head Start did not simply serve me. It supported my whole family.

Today, I understand that experience not only as the child who lived it, but as someone who has spent much of his professional life working in child welfare and child and family policy, including my current role as President and CEO of the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP). We have spent decades working to improve the policies and public systems that affect children, families, and communities and in that time, our work has reinforced something my parents understood instinctively in 1969: children do not develop apart from their families, and families cannot thrive without the basic supports that allow parents to work, care for their children, and build economically secure lives.

That is what makes the Trump administration’s proposed overhaul of the Head Start Program Performance Standards so consequential.

The Department of Health and Human Services describes its proposal, released earlier this month, as an effort to reduce federal burden and return flexibility to states and local Head Start programs. The proposed rule would rescind more than 1,400 detailed federal regulatory provisions and replace them with a substantially streamlined framework.

There is nothing inherently wrong with examining regulations. Government should not preserve requirements simply because they have always existed. Programs should evolve, and rules that are duplicative or serve no meaningful purpose should be reconsidered.

But we should be very careful about what we call a burden.

• A manageable number of children in a classroom is not a burden to the four-year-old who needs a teacher’s attention.
• A timely developmental screening is not a burden to the parent whose child may need speech therapy or another early intervention.
• An inclusive classroom is not a burden to the child whose disability or behavior makes private child care harder to secure.
• And communication with a family in the language they understand is not a burden to a parent trying to participate fully in their child’s education.

Those are features of quality.

In research published in 2025, CSSP listened directly to more than 75 parents, caregivers, and child care providers in Massachusetts, New Mexico, and North Carolina about their experiences with early learning and care. Twelve of the families we interviewed had children who attended Head Start. Their experiences became the basis of our report, So Much More Than ABCs: Families’ Experiences with Head Start.

What they told us sounded remarkably familiar to me.

They talked about teachers who knew their children, classrooms that helped children develop socially as well as academically, connections to health and community services, strong communication with parents, and places where children with different needs were welcomed.

One Massachusetts mother described Head Start as “a blessing.” Another told us that in her community, it was “the only program that exists, honestly, for young children.”

Brenda, a North Carolina mother who had experienced Head Start both as a parent and as an early childhood professional, told our researchers something even more important. In private child care, she explained, a child whose needs were too extensive could sometimes be denied service. Head Start was different: “we do not turn any children away.”

That distinction is especially important now.

Current Head Start standards require developmental screenings within 45 days of enrollment and have been built around inclusive classrooms for children with disabilities. CSSP’s research found that in some communities Head Start may be the only inclusive early learning option available.

The proposed rule would not eliminate developmental screening altogether—the Head Start Act would continue to require it—but it would eliminate the current detailed federal requirements governing how and when those screenings occur. HHS itself acknowledges that this could create greater variability in when children are screened and assessed.

The proposal would also remove the current federal prohibition on expelling children from Head Start and allow programs to establish discipline policies within state and local requirements.

For children with the greatest needs, those are not small changes.

Neither are the proposed changes to classroom size.

The administration would eliminate Head Start’s federally established child-to-staff ratios and group-size limits and instead allow programs to follow state and local licensing standards. HHS acknowledges that current Head Start ratios are more restrictive than those in nearly every state. It also acknowledges that increasing group sizes could mean children receive less individualized attention.

That should give us pause.

Parents in CSSP’s research repeatedly identified individualized attention as one of the things that made Head Start work. One mother described a teacher who would not let her son simply repeat something he had already mastered; she kept finding the next challenge for him. Another described teachers as deeply invested in making sure her son, who had a speech delay, received the services he needed.

That is what a low ratio looks like in the life of a child.

The proposal would also require nearly all Head Start education to be conducted in English, replacing the current approach that supports both English acquisition and children’s home languages. HHS estimates that approximately one-third of non-Tribal Head Start service locations could be affected by the English-only requirement—nearly 19,000 classrooms.

This too strikes at the comprehensiveness that has distinguished Head Start.

Head Start’s founders did not conceive of it simply as preschool. From its beginning in 1965, it was designed as a response to inequality and discrimination—bringing together education, health, nutrition, social-emotional development, high expectations, and meaningful involvement of parents. CSSP’s research traces that comprehensive vision back to Head Start’s earliest architects.

That comprehensiveness is not incidental to the program. It is the program.

And there is a substantial evidence base showing why it matters.

A 2016 Hamilton Project analysis found that Head Start participation is associated with lasting gains that extend well beyond kindergarten test scores, including greater educational attainment and positive effects on self-control, self-esteem, and parenting practices later in life.

That evidence is important because critics of Head Start have long pointed to the fading of some early test-score gains during elementary school. But measuring a comprehensive child-and-family program solely by whether an early bump in test scores persists misrepresents what Head Start is intended to build.

The effects of early childhood investments can show up years later—in graduation, employment, health, relationships, and parenting.

I know that not only from the extensive research. I know it because I lived it.

The administration argues that its changes could produce substantial efficiencies. Its regulatory analysis estimates approximately $2.2 billion in annual quantified impact under its primary scenario, combining projected expenditure reductions with a major reallocation of administrative spending toward direct services. HHS claims that this figure does not simply represent a $2.2 billion reduction in Head Start funding. However, the Head Start Association argues that reducing regulations and internal funding will lead to fewer teachers and specialized staff who enable the inclusion and quality that are key to Head Start’s success.

These distinctions matter because removing a federal requirement does not remove the underlying need.

Someone must still provide care for children.
Someone must still notice a developmental delay.
Someone must still make sure a classroom is safe.
Someone must still communicate with a parent.
Someone must still provide enough hours of care for a parent to work.

In fact, the administration’s own analysis acknowledges that if programs reduce their hours under the proposed flexibility, families may have to find alternative child care, bear additional costs, or lose work time. It similarly acknowledges that larger groups and higher child-to-staff ratios could reduce individualized attention.

Which brings me back to my parents.

My mother and father did not need an abstract child development program in 1969. They needed a place where their four-year-old son would be safe and learning while they worked. Families still need that today.

In some rural and Tribal communities, Head Start is not simply one affordable option among several. CSSP’s research found communities where it is the only licensed child care available.

When dependable child care disappears or becomes harder to access, parents do not suddenly stop needing to earn a living. They improvise. They change shifts. They rely on grandparents, relatives, neighbors, or older children. They piece together whatever care they can find.

And here my experience working in and around child welfare systems raises another concern.

Our public systems have too often confused economic hardship and inadequate access to basic supports with parental neglect. We should not create policy conditions that make safe caregiving more difficult and then scrutinize families for struggling to solve the problem.

Government should not shift risk onto families and call it flexibility.

Head Start serves hundreds of thousands of children each year. For more than 60 years, it has represented a national commitment to something both ambitious and remarkably practical: if we give young children strong beginnings and give their parents meaningful support, families and communities are stronger for it.

I am one of those children.

I cannot claim that every success in my life began in that Head Start classroom on Detroit’s east side. Human development does not work that neatly. But I know something began there.

An expectation.
A curiosity.
A comfort with learning.
A sense that school was a place I wanted to be.

And while Darlene and I were learning, playing, singing songs and practicing our ABCs, our parents were able to work and provide for their families with the peace of mind that their children were in good hands.

That was not simply child care. That was public policy working as it should.

The administration’s proposal is open for public comment through October 6, 2026. That process should be taken seriously. Families, educators, providers, researchers, and generations of Head Start alumni should tell the Administration what these standards have made possible—and what may be lost if efficiency becomes another word for doing less for children and families.

Fifty-seven years ago, I was a four-year-old boy walking a few blocks through my Detroit neighborhood with my cousin Darlene, headed toward Annunciation.

I did not know someone had made a public policy decision that helped put that classroom there.

But I do know that hardworking families all across the country will feel the negative effect if public policy decisions are made that take that classroom away.

When I was four, I only knew that the door was open. Our responsibility now is to make sure it remains open—and that what awaits the next four-year-old on the other side remains worthy of the name Head Start.