The Trump administration’s threat to a program meant to pull kids out of poverty is alarming advocates, the New York Times reported.
According to reporting by The Times, the Trump administration is teeing up a “major rollback” of the federal requirements for Head Start, an early education and antipoverty program created in 1965. Advocates and experts told The Times that the rollback threatens to upend the 60-year-old program.
Ruth Friedman, a child care policy expert, told The Times that the proposed changes to Head Start are a “massive gutting.” The Times noted that the program currently serves about 700,000 kids under the age of 6 and has served more than 30 million children since 1965.
The White House is eyeing changes that would remove most of Head Start’s requirements for math and literacy curricula, class sizes, medical screenings, home visits, and even that children brush their teeth after meals, according to The Times, which spoke with three anonymous sources familiar with the plan.
“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,” Friedman said.
The White House last year called the Head Start program “radical” as it tried to cut off spending for it, and a White House budget document said that ending Head Start would help end the “radical indoctrination of our children,” The Times noted. An anonymous White House official told The Times that the federal funding for Head Start will stay in place, and that the Trump administration will support efforts to reduce the administrative burden of running it.
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