How Ending Head Start Could Help Families

The administration has now reversed course and included Head Start funding in its latest budget proposal. But is that the right move? The torrent of positive articles about Head Start in the wake of potential cuts have presented the public with a distorted picture of an unambiguously positive program that no one with a heart would ever want to eliminate. But the truth is much more complicated.

Education is not one of the federal government’s enumerated powers in the U.S. Constitution, and there’s a good reason for that omission. Even in the 1700s, our country was too big and too diverse for the national government to play a role in education. It makes no sense for bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., to be dictating education policy to communities across America.

What’s more, research on the effectiveness of Head Start, a 60-year-old program for children aged 3 to 5 established as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs, has found mixed results at best.

While academic studies that have shown long-term benefits for children who went through Head Start have dominated headlines and debate, a comprehensive study published in 2012 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the agency that oversees Head Start, found that most of those benefits faded away within a few years. The study found “initial positive impacts” for children enrolled in Head Start, but by the end of third grade, the analysis “did not show a clear pattern of favorable or unfavorable impacts” in cognitive, social-emotional, health and parenting practices.

Advocates cite other benefits, such as providing childcare for low-income working parents, but — as with education — there is no constitutional role for the federal government when it comes to childcare.

Moreover, many parents prefer flexible, home-based care for their young children over care in facilities. A December 2020 poll by the Bipartisan Policy Center found more than half of parents surveyed preferred a parent or a family member to be at home with their children. Around 24% said they preferred center-based care and split nearly evenly between preferring religious and secular facilities. Around 6% preferred part-time care.

A variety of providers can qualify for Head Start funding under current rules. But the rules make it hard for smaller, home-based or family child care providers to participate. No wonder 97% of Head Start providers are center-based facilities, despite some evidence that these aren’t the best environments for young children.

Vanderbilt University researchers who studied Tennessee’s statewide pre‑K program were surprised to find negative impacts from it. They pointed to problems with center-based care, which they called “the common denominator for studies with negative behavioral outcomes.” They also noted that “long-term negative outcomes on behavior for children in group care have been found in both small experimental studies and broad-based population studies.” The results of the Tennessee study caused one of the researchers to completely rethink early childhood education.

Rules for Head Start providers that require specific ratios of staff to children, and high school or even college degrees for caretakers, can’t ensure that these workers are good at their jobs – while they drive up childcare costs.

We’ve probably all known wonderful caretakers who didn’t have a degree. That’s just one way that a federal program like Head Start can crowd out parents’ preferred options and push them towards less-preferred models just because they don’t have to pay for them.

However, while participants who qualify for Head Start pay no tuition, the programs are far from free to the nation. In fiscal year 2023, the most recent year for which data is available, Head Start served nearly 550,000 children at a cost of $13,000 per child; the related Early Head Start program served nearly 200,000 children at a cost of $19,000 per child.

A Head Start supporter recently told me that Head Start is a “feel-good” program. But just because something is “feel-good” doesn’t mean it actually does good. The negative side effects of Head Start may sometimes be hidden, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

Bad policies are bad for society — even for those they’re meant to help. When the federal government gets involved, it inevitably introduces rules and regulations that increase costs while making programs less flexible. The diverse needs of families is one reason that education and childcare are best left to states, local communities and families. Funding childcare and early education through the federal government is an inefficient use of taxpayer money.

There is no guarantee that the money that taxpayers save through cutting Head Start would instead be marshaled by states and cities to fund early childhood programs. Those decisions would be up to voters and their elected representatives. States, local communities and nonprofits have become reliant on federal funds, but it’s often overlooked that the federal government’s money comes from taxpayers.

Removing early childhood education from the federal government’s budget would mean the issue would need to be addressed at the local level, where it belongs. Many states and large cities already offer universal or targeted preschool programs. Though these programs have also had mixed results, it’s better to have experimentation done by states — the laboratories of democracy — where constituents have better access to lawmakers and regulators than they do at the federal level.

In addition to whatever programs state or local governments may create, there is a long history of charities and religious institutions offering childcare for lower-income families.

States and local communities can also use creative approaches to help lower-income families who currently rely on Head Start for childcare. This could include private-public partnerships, such as Pennsylvania’s tax-credit scholarship program for preschool. Through this program, businesses and individuals donate to preschool scholarship organizations and receive credits for those donations on their state income taxes. Better still would be to have individual families making these decisions in the private sector.

It may be just as well that the administration has backed away from immediately eliminating Head Start, which would have created hardships for the families who rely on it and the workers who staff the centers. But that doesn’t mean it should remain a permanent fixture. A more gradual phasing out would enable families, nonprofit organizations, communities and states to adjust and find local solutions. Over time, this would improve the education and care children receive, while also respecting the Constitution.