The Trump administration is preparing a major rollback of federal requirements for Head Start, a change that supporters of the child care program fear could gut its longstanding antipoverty mission.
The proposed changes would remove most of Head Start’s 133 pages of requirements for math and literacy curriculums, class sizes, medical screenings, home visits and even a requirement that children brush their teeth after meals, according to three people with knowledge of the plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.
Administration officials say the changes will streamline a heavily regulated program while giving states and cities more control over how it is run.
But Head Start advocates say that erasing regulations serves as a backdoor way to dismantle a program the administration does not like. The White House last year called Head Start “radical” and tried but failed to freeze spending on it.
While Head Start facilities will still be required to comply with state rules, there are almost no comparable state-level programs with similar requirements. And even though the federal rules would not prohibit centers from providing traditional antipoverty services, some fear that the lack of any requirements means that many are likely to stop doing so.
The changes, previously reported by The Nation, are expected to be formally introduced as early as next week and could be finalized by year’s end.
They would remake a program that has served over 30 million children since it was created in 1965 as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. Head Start was intended to be a federally funded and regulated early education and antipoverty program, with hundreds of standards to support that mission, making it far more comprehensive than any other child care programs.
A White House official, who declined to be identified, wrote in an email that the administration is supporting Head Start by keeping its federal funding in place and supporting efforts the official said would reduce administrative burdens.
A spokesman for the Health and Human Services Department’s Administration for Children and Families, which oversees Head Start and drafted the changes, did not respond to a request for comment.
But Ruth Friedman, a child care policy expert who worked as a congressional aide to create a bipartisan 2007 law updating Head Start, called the proposed changes a “massive gutting” of the program.
“Eliminating Head Start’s performance standards guts the science-backed standards that ensure our youngest learners get what they need to arrive at kindergarten ready to succeed,” she said.
The program, which today serves about 700,000 children under 6, has for decades attracted bipartisan support. President Ronald Reagan expanded Head Start’s budget to over $1 billion, and President George W. Bush signed a bipartisan law to update and modernize the program. Even President Trump in his first term increased the program’s budget by $900 million.
That has now changed dramatically.
Project 2025, the policy blueprint by the conservative Heritage Foundation, called for the elimination of Head Start. “The program should function to protect and educate minors,” the document says. “Sadly, it has done exactly the opposite.”
A draft White House budget document reviewed by The New York Times last year proposed zeroing out spending on Head Start, saying that doing so would help end the “radical indoctrination of our children.”
The document said the program is “riddled with social-emotional learning” and diversity, equity and inclusion programming, and gives preference to undocumented immigrants. It singled out the use of a “Sesame Street” webinar on racial justice, and the use of picture books for toddlers that are intended to “create an early childhood setting that is welcoming” for families of different sexual orientations.
The White House’s final budget plan kept the money in.
But at the same time the White House also withheld some Head Start spending that Congress had already appropriated. A congressional watchdog found that it had done so illegally, and the money was eventually released.
Then during last year’s government shutdown, the White House stopped Head Start funding, forcing programs in 17 states to temporarily close.
But some Republican lawmakers — notably Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Susan Collins of Maine and Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi — have remained firm in their support of the program. For now, its annual $12 billion budget remains in place.
So proponents of upending the program tried a new approach. In June, the Heritage Foundation issued a report calling on the administration to “sunset Head Start and deregulate the program until officials end it.”
“Head Start is the most heavily regulated of the child care programs,” said Jonathan Butcher, an author of the report, “but it was not being successful with basic things.”
Mr. Butcher pointed to a 2022 report by the health department’s inspector general that found that one in four Head Start grant recipients had incidents of child abuse, lack of supervision or unauthorized release of children. The report called on the Administration for Children and Families to increase its oversight of the program.
Alex Adams, the head of the Administration for Children and Families, has sought to cut regulations on all child care programs, saying that federal child care rules should “fit on an index card in my back pocket.” In spring, The Times reported that he was starting an overhaul of Head Start, though he has expressed support for the program.
During his Senate confirmation hearing last year, Mr. Adams noted that his wife’s grandmother ran a Head Start program in Blackfoot, Idaho, in the late 1960s. He said that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “wants to make Head Start better and brighter by the end of this term and I share that commitment.”
Among the most significant of the proposed new changes expected to be released next week is the removal of federal limits on Head Start class sizes. Instead, they will now align with a patchwork of state standards.
For example, under current Head Start rules, one teacher is required to supervise four 2-year-olds. But in Idaho, one teacher can supervise nine 2-year-olds. In Ohio, the rule is one teacher per eight 2-year-olds.
Mr. Adams and other conservatives have promoted the change as a way to give more children access to the program, although many early education policy experts say that the larger class sizes will relax standards of care.
The changes would also delete requirements that Head Start employees perform vision and hearing screenings on children, and ensure that children receive medical and dental checkups. That could mean helping parents schedule appointments, fill out Medicaid forms and arrange transportation.
The proposed changes would also remove requirements that staff members visit families at home to help navigate problems like shut-off utilities.
They would eliminate teaching standards for math, literacy, and social and emotional development — such as self-regulating and responding to emotions, making friends and interacting appropriately with adults.
Some requirements providing access for children with disabilities would go away, as well.
And the changes would erase requirements for program duration. Typically, Head Start programs run six hours a day, but could instead run for just three hours a day.
The administration is also adding some new rules, according to the people familiar with the plan: one requiring that student instruction take place only in English, and another requiring at least 30 minutes of physical activity per day.
Leslie Andrews, who has worked as a Head Start teacher in Redmond, Wash., for 25 years, said she worries especially about deleting the requirements to help children get access to health and dental care.
“I think at first some experienced teachers might continue to help connect kids to doctors and dentists, but over time that will fade,” she said. “It won’t be done.”
“No child is going to do well in school if they don’t have this basic care,” she said, adding, “Removing the tooth-brushing requirement — just why?”
Leah Bolden, a mother in Farmingdale, Maine, said that when her 3-year-old son began Head Start last year, the staff noticed he might have A.D.H.D. and arranged for him to see a developmental psychologist.
“The staff was involved in every meeting,” she said. Without the current standards, that might have never happened, she said.
Mr. Butcher, who wrote the Heritage Foundation report, said deleting standards does not forbid teachers to follow them — it just means they don’t have to.
“If you remove a requirement that asks kids to brush their teeth,” he said, “that doesn’t mean you can’t still do it.”
