In 1965, as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, the federal government asked experts a novel question: What does a poor child in America need to start kindergarten on equal footing with their better-off peers?
The answer was, essentially, a whole lot. Early learning classes, physical checkups, mental health services, nutrition support and disability services, all provided in partnership with families and communities because poverty affects every part of a young child’s life. That answer became the basis of the federal Head Start program. For 60 years it has stood as the U.S. government’s clearest statement about what we owe our poorest children.
In August, the Trump administration proposed replacing many of Head Start’s federal standards with state child-care licensing minimums. An analysis from Arizona State University’s Children’s Equity Project found that in the vast majority of states, this change would weaken requirements for Head Start teacher qualifications, class sizes, health screenings and family services. The administration calls this deregulation. What the administration is actually doing is hollowing out the only place in federal law where the government spells out what a poor child deserves.
The recent debate over Head Start has focused on whether federal programs have too much red tape and whether states could better spend those dollars by tailoring programs for their own needs. Those questions miss the point of Head Start’s federal floor, which is to ensure that all children living below the poverty line receives the same basic services, no matter where they live. No other federal program for children makes promises that specific and, without them, what remains is just another source of funding, not any real standards.
I started my career as a community organizer in New York City public housing, where Head Start was often the first institution that treated all of a family’s needs as connected. A child could get a vision screening in the same building as a parent learning about nutrition or a social worker helping with a housing application. Later, working on domestic policy in the White House, I led the team developing Head Start policy in the Biden administration. As an organizer and from the West Wing, I have seen Head Start works because it makes specific and exacting demands, not in spite of them.
The Trump administration says it wants to loosen the existing federal standards for Head Start to serve more children with the same dollars. Having worked on the Head Start rules, I know firsthand how difficult it is to maintain high standards when there aren’t enough qualified educators and budgets are tight.
When we saw Head Start programs were struggling to retain staff members who could earn better wages elsewhere, we knew raising salaries would require a delicate balancing act. After careful analysis, we settled on a plan that would phase in wage increases and exempt small programs that were under the most strain. We applied that same rigor when we started taking into account family housing costs for Head Start eligibility and when we put in place new lead-testing requirements. Ensuring the program kept up with the evolving challenges faced by poor families took hard work, but it was well worth doing. We never considered sacrificing the quality of services children received.
The proposed rollback does none of that work. It’s simply another attempt to render Head Start a dead letter; previously, Mr. Trump had contemplated eliminating Head Start funding in line with Project 2025’s recommendations. State licensing programs like those this rule change would adopt for Head Start do important work, but their aim is different. Many focus on child safety, while Head Start is instead asks what children in poverty need to thrive. A program that no longer requires health screenings, mental health support or structured family engagement abandons Head Start’s ambition that no American child should be, as President Johnson put it, “condemned to failure by the accident of his birth.”
Multiple recent studies have found children who attended Head Start showed lasting gains in high school graduation and employment rates and reduced rates of adult poverty. The high standards the program sets are working — and they remain legally required. When Congress last reauthorized Head Start in 2007, it included a provision that all but forbids the government from reducing quality precisely to prevent the unaccountable wholesale rollback the Trump administration is now attempting.
At a time when children under 5 are the poorest age group in America, we cannot think small about children’s opportunity. We also know more than the Johnson administration’s team did in 1965. Researchers have documented how toxic stress in a child’s early years reshapes brain architecture and how supportive relationships can buffer the damage. Children in poverty need what children with means are far more likely to receive — medical attention, emotional support and individualized care.
Head Start has been this country’s best attempt to make real the American dream. It is an institution that does not just serve children in poverty but declares what they are worth. The Trump administration’s proposal walks away from this. We should not let that happen. The nearly one million children the program serves depend on it.
Zayn Siddique is chief executive of the Clinton Policy Institute. He was formerly principal deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council.
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