By Julianne Malveaux
(Trice Edney Wire) – When Head Start was launched in 1965 as part of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, it rested on a profoundly democratic proposition: Children should not be punished for their parents’ poverty, and a child born into a low-income household should have the same opportunity to learn and thrive as one born into privilege.
Head Start’s history is part of my family history. My mother, Proteone Marie Alexandria Malveaux, worked in Head Start in San Francisco’s Bayview–Hunters Point during the 1960s, and she often reminded us how blessed we were to grow up surrounded by books. She knew that the children she served were just as intelligent and eager to learn as we were, although they did not always have the same resources. Poverty must never be confused with a lack of ability.
For more than sixty years, Head Start has provided education, nutrition, health screenings, and family support to more than 40 million children and families, making it one of America’s most enduring and consequential antipoverty programs.
Research is sometimes reduced to whether early test-score gains “fade out,” but test scores are hardly the only measure of a life. Long-term studies associate Head Start with greater educational attainment, earnings, and economic self-sufficiency, as well as reduced poverty and incarceration.
Yet the Trump administration is preparing to take a wrecking ball to the federal standards protecting Head Start children, dressing up the demolition in the bloodless language of efficiency, flexibility, and local control.
On August 7, the Department of Health and Human Services published a proposed rule deceptively titled “Reducing Federal Burden for Head Start Programs.” The proposal would eliminate or rewrite roughly 80 percent of Head Start regulations while shifting responsibility to states and local providers.
The burden is not disappearing; it is being transferred—from Washington to a teacher managing more toddlers, to a mother whose child receives fewer hours of instruction, and ultimately to a child whose future is discounted before she reaches kindergarten.
Consider staffing ratios. Current standards generally require one adult for every four infants or toddlers, one for every eight 3-year-olds, and one for every ten 4-year-olds, but the proposal would substitute widely varying state licensing standards.
Rutgers University researchers found that only twelve states meet Head Start’s 1-to-4 ratio for children ages one and two, while in nine states the number of toddlers permitted per staff member could more than double. One teacher cannot notice every hazard, comfort every frightened child, and encourage every emerging learner when her class doubles or triples. That is not efficiency; it is rationing adult attention to poor children.
These educators are trained professionals, not glorified babysitters. Head Start preschool teachers generally must have at least an associate or bachelor’s degree in early-childhood education, child development, or equivalent coursework, and 71 percent have at least a bachelor’s degree. Yet recent federal data imply an average classroom-teacher salary of roughly $48,000, while assistant teachers earn about $32,000.
A woman with a bachelor’s degree, specialized training, and responsibility for our youngest children may earn less than $50,000—and the administration’s answer is not to pay her fairly, but to give her more children.
The proposal would also eliminate standards intended to move Head Start wages toward those of public preschool teachers and provide healthcare and paid leave. As an economist, I know low wages are not savings when they produce vacancies, turnover, disrupted classrooms, and diminished quality. Government may spend less on the front end, but children and communities absorb the cost on the back end.
The rule would eliminate the current federal requirement that much of Head Start provide at least 1,020 hours of annual instruction, allowing a four-day program to fall as low as three hours a day for 128 days. Programs could maintain their current schedules, but low-income families should not have to depend on local discretion for the educational time and dependable care their children need.
The proposal would also impose English-only instruction except in certain Tribal programs. Research indicates that English-only instruction offers no advantage in learning English and may cause children to lose their home language. Apparently, bilingualism is an asset when affluent children acquire a second language but a problem when poor children arrive with one.
The racial implications are equally disturbing. Programs would no longer be required to ensure staff understand families’ ethnic and cultural backgrounds or provide services intended to reduce racial disparities in maternal and birth outcomes. The administration calls such work racial “preferencing,” but when Black women are far more likely than white women to die from pregnancy-related causes, addressing the disparity is not preferencing; it is valuing Black life.
Some regulations may deserve streamlining, but paperwork can be reduced without reducing quality, and a national antipoverty program requires a national floor beneath which no state may fall. Otherwise, we invite a race to the bottom in which children who begin with the least are deliberately offered even less.
My mother understood that a child’s intellectual capacity is not determined by the number of books in her home, although her opportunities may be shaped by them. Head Start was created to narrow that distance—not by blaming parents, exploiting teachers, or lowering expectations, but by placing books, education, healthcare, nourishment, and encouragement within every child’s reach.
The public has until October 6 to comment, but the debate is about more than regulations: Do we believe every child deserves a fair beginning, or is excellence reserved for children whose parents can purchase it?
The administration calls this burden reduction, but it is pushing the burden onto people with the least money and political power. Our poorest children do not need a cheaper, weaker Head Start. They need—and deserve—our very best start.
Dr. Julianne Malveaux is a DC based economist and author.
