Meiqian Kuang switches seamlessly between Mandarin and English as she teaches her transitional kindergarten students at Hillcrest Elementary in Monterey Park. Signs in English, Mandarin, Spanish and Vietnamese decorate the classroom, reflecting the most common languages students speak.
This dual-language class is also a federally funded Head Start program — long considered a gold standard in early childhood education — and must integrate learning with each child’s cultural and linguistic upbringing.
But an overhaul of Head Start rules proposed by the Trump administration in August would fundamentally change that mission by mandating English-only classroom instruction. The proposed change would remove standards that require teachers or aides to speak the predominant home language of their students. Children’s developmental screenings and assessments would not be required to be conducted in a family’s language of choice. Essential materials for parents would no longer have to be translated.
Books, toys and curriculum materials in foreign languages would be purged from classrooms under the changes. The proposal suggests that school staff could use technology-based translation when they need to talk to families as communication avenues weaken.
The proposed changes for dual-language learners — which would hit Los Angeles County and California’s diverse population hard — are part of the Trump administration’s overhaul of Head Start. Plans also call for eliminating teacher-student staff ratios, defaulting caps to the licensing requirements of each state. It also seeks to remove current standards for developmental and health screenings and reduce the role of parents in Head Start operations.
The Trump administration says these changes will bring more flexibility to providers to better respond to the needs of their communities. The English-only mandate would align Head Start with President Trump’s executive order declaring English as the official language of the United States. Prioritizing English “opens doors economically,” the proposal reads.
“Head Start is designed to prepare young children to be ready to enter school, and providing a firm foundation in the English language is a critical part of that preparation,” a spokesperson from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement.
The English-language requirement would apply to instruction.
Critics of the overhaul say the new policies will alter the mission of the anti-poverty, early learning program to provide high-quality services that prepare young children for school. Health, nutrition and family engagement have long been core values and some fear that without guardrails the program will falter.
The English-only rule, in particular, will make it harder for English learners to acquire the language and feel comfortable in their classroom. Some are concerned that children’s multilingual skills could also weaken — along with communication with families.
“All that will be left is the carcass of Head Start,” said Khari Garvin, the former national director of the Office of Head Start during the Biden administration. “Developmental outcomes for children and families will absolutely wane.”
The proposal, which exempts tribal Head Starts furthering tribal languages, is currently undergoing public comment through Oct. 6. Roughly 800 comments address the English-only rule so far, largely showing strong opposition and calling it “detrimental” and a “barrier” for children learning English. A smaller number of comments applauded the administration’s plan saying that it would “strengthen kindergarten readiness.”
Advocates expect the language requirement to be challenged in court if it remains unchanged when the rules are finalized.
The Administration for Children and Families estimates that one-third of non-tribal Head Start programs nationwide will have to change curriculum, replace classroom materials in a foreign language and retrain or replace teachers at an estimated $99 million or more in one-time costs.
And the change would come as Head Starts across the county saw a 4-point increase in the proportion of dual-language learners enrolled since 2022, nearly 290,000 children, according to 2025 data.
California receives $1.5 billionannually in federal Head Start funding, serving 84,000 children across the state of which nearly two-thirds are dual-language learners. The state’s biggest grantee, the Los Angeles County Office of Education, which funds the Hillcrest Elementary program, expects the mandate will affect roughly 40% of students enrolled in their partner classrooms who identify with a home language that is not English. More than three-quarters of all Head Start students in the county programs identify as dual-language learners.
“We should be implementing practices and approaches that support child outcomes,” said Luis Bautista, executive director of L.A. County Office of Education’s Head Start and Early Learning Division. “An English-only approach would not be doing that. In fact, it would be hindering in many cases.”
California’s English-only history
California restricted bilingual education in public schools nearly 30 years ago when voters passed Proposition 227. The 1998 proposition, which was repealed in 2016, shut down most of California’s K-12 bilingual programs, dropping the number of students receiving bilingual instruction from 30% to 8% statewide.
The voter backlash to bilingual education reflected the sentiment of the time, said Lisa Garcia Bedolla, a professor of education at UC Berkeley. Prop. 227 followed a string of anti-immigrant actions, including a decision to make English the state’s official language. In the midst of a massive migration into California, voters were worried the state’s immigrant population was not assimilating adequately into U.S. culture, she said.
But as the retrenchment took hold, studies found that the English immersion approach did not improve academic outcomes. Since the law’s voter-approved repeal, students receiving bilingual instruction have demonstrated higher academic achievement across subjects and higher rates of English proficiency compared with students who received instruction in English only, Garcia Bedolla said.
“We learned and saw that actually multilingualism — biliteracy — is in fact a strength,” she said.
Revisiting English-only programming in Head Start may ultimately exacerbate those same problems, Garcia Bedolla said.
“In some ways, Head Start is going to be more impactful because that’s your introduction to what school is,” she said. “If school doesn’t feel good when you’re 3, it’s highly unlikely school is going to feel good when you’re 8 or 10 or 16.”
In the classroom
“Chester Raccoon stood at the edge of the forest and cried,” started Kuang as she sat at the front of the classroom last month, reading a book. Sixteen sets of eyes stared up at her from the rug as children strained to get a look at the tearful raccoon. She paused to translate to Mandarin before continuing to read Audrey Penn’s “The Kissing Hand.”
English and Mandarin proficiency was all over the map this early in the school year. In class, students learn half the day in Mandarin and the other half in English. They also learn Spanish culture and arts twice a week.
Early learning staff members for Garvey School District, a partner of the county Office of Education, speak English, Spanish, Mandarin, Vietnamese and Cantonese to accommodate the home languages of its community, including Monterey Park, a city that is nearly two-thirds Asian and just over a quarter Latino — and where 70% of residents speak a language other than English at home.
This single change banning language education to preschoolers would be a “moral crime,” said Supt. Anita Chu of Garvey School District, which includes Hillcrest Elementary.
Language support has been helpful for parents such as Yaya Huang, who is able to speak Mandarin with 4-year-old Xixi’s teachers about how she is doing.
Sidi Wang, another parent, said it’s helpful to communicate with office staff and teachers in Mandarin, even though she speaks English. She can glean more detailed information in Mandarin and feels more confident filling out school forms in her native language.
Both worry that restricting the program to English will also be a loss for their children, who they believe would benefit from the extra support for language acquisition.
Supporting a child’s home language
The benefit of supporting a child’s language extends further than academics. Wang said her daughter knew little English after spending a year in China with her grandparents. She had a difficult time making friends. And Wang estimates she could understand only a third of what her teacher said in the first day care she attended.
But switching to a bilingual Head Start program has given her daughter confidence and a newfound enthusiasm for school.
“The more comfortable they feel in their setting, the easier it is for them to integrate into school life, or in this case, Head Start life,” said Delia Pompa, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.
Studies show young brains have high plasticity that makes it easier for children to grasp new languages naturally. They are able to pick up sounds, grammar and pronunciation through immersion rather than formal lessons.
Because of that, experts say there is no detriment to English learning when a child is also exposed to another language. Instead, it can help children learn English faster, said Alexandra Figueras-Daniel, a bilingual early childhood education policy specialist at Rutgers University’s National Institute for Early Education Research.
Pre-reading skills, for example, are easier to develop in the language a child has been honing since birth. Those skills can transfer to English more easily once developed, Pompa said.
“You’ve got the native language as a scaffold for these young kids who are just beginning to acquire complex concepts, who are just beginning to understand the world around them,” Pompa said.
Sequeira reports for The Times’ early childhood education initiative, focusing on the learning and development of California children from birth to age 5. For more information about the initiative and its philanthropic funders, go to latimes.com/earlyed.
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