Here they go again.  Just when you thought the Heritage Foundation “geniuses” at Project 2025 who proposed a two-tier regressive system increasing taxes for lower and middle class Americans while giving the wealthy new and deeper tax cuts, wait until you see their plan to reduce opportunities for early childhood education.  Not only do they want to get rid of Head Start, they want the beneficiaries to pay for making it go away.  From page 482 in “Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership”:

Eliminate the Head Start program. Head Start, originally established and funded to support low-income families, is fraught with scandal and abuse. With a budget of more than $11 billion, the program should function to protect and educate minors. Sadly, it has done exactly the opposite. In fact, “approximately 1 in 4 grant recipients had incidents in which children were abused, left unsupervised, or released to an unauthorized person between October 2015 and May 2020.”⁶⁸ Research has demonstrated that federal Head Start centers, which provide preschool care to children from low-income families, have little or no long-term academic value for children. Given its unaddressed crisis of rampant abuse and lack of positive outcomes, this program should be eliminated along with the entire OHS. At the very least, the program’s COVID-19 vaccine and mask requirements should be rescinded.

The identified endnote #68 is found on page  501.

Madison Marino, “Over 1,000 Safety Violations Mar Head Start.  Children Deserve Better,” Heritage Foundation Commentary, November 10, 2022.

You might wonder, “Who is Madison Marino?”  She is according to the Heritage Foundation website, “a Senior Research Associate for the Heritage Center for Education Policy.”  And the cited article originally appeared in The Daily Signal, which, though legally separate from the Heritage Foundation, has many of the same donors and relies heavily on Heritage staff for content.  To recap, a conservative think-tank justifies a call to end Head Start based on an article by a member of its own staff published in a legally separate, but allied, publication.  To quote Captain Renault (Claude Raines) in Casablanca, “I’m shocked, shocked that gambling is going on in here!”

Of course Head Start has flaws and there are instances of people gaming the system in every federal program.  Ask the major corporations that received a total of $530 million in SBA loans after 9/11.  The question is, “Would the Heritage geniuses have come to a different conclusion if they had read a June 2019 report by the Brookings Institute which looked at the long term impacts of the program?”  Their conclusion draws heavily on a January 2018 study by economics professor Andrew Barr (Texas A&M) and education professor Chloe Gibbs (Notre Dame) titled, “Breaking the cycle?  Intergenerational Effects of an Anti-Poverty Program in Early Childhood.”  Brookings summarized their work as follows.

New research by Gibbs and Barr finds intergenerational effects of Head Start along the same lines of the Heckman work – the children of those who were exposed to Head Start saw reduced teen pregnancy and criminal engagement and increased educational attainment.

By the way, the operational issues identified in Project 2025 come from a September 2022 report by Suzann Murrin, deputy inspector general of Joe Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services in which the department calls for more oversight to address these concerns.  Dare I say, in contrast, the tag line for the Project 2025 proposal should be, “Throwing out the baby’s education with the bathwater.”

But wait.  The impact on low-income families also has a financial dimension.  Eligible low-income beneficiaries do not pay for their children to participate in Head Start programs.  If the program is eliminated, those same families would be saddled with daycare expenses for the six hours/day previous covered via Head Start (the average length of a daily Head Start program).  What does that mean in out-of-pocket expenses?

CARE.COM reports that the average cost of childcare per child in 2024 ranges from $766/week (nanny) to $321 (daycare) to $230 (family care center) to $192 (babysitter).  Since most Head Start programs do not run through the summer, a family with one child would now face nine months (36 weeks) of childcare expenses.  Under the family care center option that equals $8,280/year.  Keep in mind, that is per child.

So let’s run the numbers.  The non-profit National Head Start Association reports there were approximately 809,000 children enrolled in Head Start in FY2024.  The federal Head Start budget for the same year was $11 billion.  Therefore to save $11 billion dollars (.0016 of one percent of the total federal budget), those “UNreal men of genius” who want to raise taxes on lower income Americans want to add $6.7 billion/year of out-of-pocket expenses on those who can least afford it.  Not to mention (but of course I will), as of July 2020, 17 states controlled by MAGA governors and legislatures impose work requirements on individuals who apply for TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) benefits.  Once again, the party that promotes the “traditional family” as the elixir for all that ails America promotes policies that do just the opposite. 

Someone needs to tell J. D. Vance that legislation to eliminate Head Start should forever be known as the “How to Discourage Motherhood and Create Homes for Cats Act of 2025.”

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP