Proposed Head Start Changes Would Affect Children, Families, and Public Schools
Changes may be coming to Head Start, the popular federal early childhood program that provides preschool and other supports to young children from low-income families. A recently proposed federal rule aimed at reducing regulatory requirements would remove or weaken many of the standards that currently govern Head Start, including how programs verify eligibility, how many hours of care programs provide to children, and what language teachers use for instruction.
Together, the proposed changes could make Head Start harder to access and lower quality for some of the more than 700,000 children and families each year whose learning and earnings stand to benefit from the program—with potential ripple effects for public school systems. The proposed rule may also violate federal law, which prohibits reductions in the quality, scope, or type of Head Start services.
Changes That Could Make Head Start Harder to Access
Why might the proposed rule make it harder for families to access Head Start? One proposed change would remove the option for families to self-attest that they are eligible for Head Start. About 8% of Head Start families currently qualify by self-attesting their income and would risk losing access if the rule were adopted. The change is expected to create new enrollment barriers for families experiencing homelessness and, by extension, to potentially undermine access among this chronically underserved group of families. Only 1 in 10 young children experiencing homelessness currently enrolls in early childhood education despite potential benefits for their development and learning.
The rule would also reduce the number of hours that Head Start programs are required to operate, opening the door to more part-day and part-year programs. Yet many families rely on the coverage that full-day services provide. National survey data indicate that families who have a regular care arrangement for their young children use child care more than 30 hours a week on average. When families make these care arrangements for their children, many consider whether the available days and hours of care align with parents’ work and school schedules. When families lack adequate child care to meet their needs, there are economic costs for their households and the broader economy.
Changes That Could Weaken Standards Supporting Program Quality
The proposed rule would also rescind regulations designed to ensure that children's learning environments are enriching and benefit their growth. One concerning change would require Head Start programs to conduct all education in English, even though more than a third of Head Start children are dual language learners. A substantial body of research, summarized in a 2017 consensus report, indicates that supporting children in their home language and English promotes their development in both languages. Fostering children's bilingualism also connects them to family culture and provides cognitive benefits in areas such as executive function. Current Head Start standards are aligned with this evidence base, requiring support for children's home language development in addition to English and ensuring that at least one staff member speaks the language of most children in each class. The proposed rule would instead require English-only education and, according to the federal government's analysis, necessitate training or replacing teachers in more than 18,000 Head Start classrooms.
The proposal would also remove Head Start's maximum child-adult ratio and group size requirements, deferring instead to state child care licensing standards that almost uniformly permit less favorable ratios and larger groups. Small group sizes and better child-adult ratios are understood to facilitate the positive back-and-forth interactions between children and adults that drive learning.
In addition, the proposal would scale back current standards for providing individualized coaching to Head Start staff who are identified for support, a demonstrably effective approach to improving teachers' practice and children's learning. The federal government expects substantial cuts to Head Start's coaching workforce if the rule is adopted. Reducing support for Head Start teachers may make it more difficult than it already is to sustainably staff programs.
Changes That Could Impact Public Schools
Beyond these implications for children, families, and Head Start programs, public school systems may also be impacted if the proposal becomes policy. Research has found that Head Start prepares young children for school and, over time, increases educational attainment. If Head Start becomes less accessible or lower quality, schools may see a growing need for learning supports, even as U.S. schools already carry more responsibility than schools in peer countries for ensuring students have the supports they need to learn.
More immediately, some Head Start standards—including those covering teaching practices, curriculum and assessment, and family engagement—also apply to Title I preschool programs in public schools. Although data about the scope and scale of Title I-funded preschool programs are scarce, available evidence suggests that many preschool programs operate at Title I school sites. Rescinding Head Start standards (in many cases, without replacement) could therefore leave schools that invest federal Title I dollars in preschool with less guidance on how to design those programs to best meet the needs of young learners.
These examples represent a fraction of what is contained in the sweeping proposal, which is open for public comment through October 6, 2026. As they illustrate, adopting the new rule would dramatically change the standards to which Head Start programs are held. Importantly, this specific proposal also comes in the wake of other federal actions that have placed some Head Start programs under stress, including funding freezes and delays, long timelines for technical assistance and support, and funding cuts to health and nutrition programs on which many Head Start families rely.
Head Start's standards have governed program quality for 60 years. This rule would rewrite a substantial share of them with consequences for young children, families, Head Start programs, and public schools. LPI's comment letter lays out our full response to the proposal.