Opportunity Knocks #110 - The High Cost of Defunding Head Start
Every week I share reflections, ideas, questions, and content suggestions focused on championing, building, and accelerating opportunity for children.
A few days ago, the Washington Post reported that the White House’s preliminary budget includes a proposal to completely defund Head Start, a $12B program that, since 1965, has promoted school readiness and development for over 40 million children from birth to age five.
If this proposal successfully passes through Congress, the result would be immediate and severe: an estimated 800,000 children would be directly impacted.
The research on Head Start is mixed (on balance, I think the evidence affirms the program's benefits). But, finding a study to support whatever ideological position you have is easy. The program has flaws. It could be better. But, let’s be honest, that’s true for many things the federal government funds. It pours billions into defense systems that don’t work. None of those face total elimination because of "mixed results." So when critics suddenly become hardline empiricists on this program—one of the few direct federal investments in poor children—I find it hard to believe it’s about the evidence. It’s about values. And it’s about which children we believe deserve public support.
And the “Head Start replaces parenting” argument is also a complete straw man. Head Start supports parenting. Head Start and its employees show up for kids and families in tangible ways: Head Start reaches kids early, reaches families directly, and tries to close gaps before they widen into structural inequalities that cost much more to fix later. Head Start serves families in rural and urban communities, small towns and massive cities, and red states and blue. It collaborates with local agencies, many of which are community or faith-based. The federal government provides the floor, not the ceiling, for these services.
Eliminating Head Start entirely—rather than reforming it—should not be interpreted as a commitment to fiscal responsibility. It’s not. And, if it happens, the impact won’t just be felt in preschools. It will ripple outward, destabilizing the country's social, cultural, and economic fabric.
So, what are the simple, cascading effects of withdrawing one of the only federally-funded commitments this country has ever made to young children and their families? Here’s how I think it goes (assuming states or local governments don’t backfill Head Start):
Education
Reduced early grade readiness → more children may require special education or remedial services (expensive and don’t always close learning gaps) → students fall behind → lower high school graduation rates and college attendance among low-income populations.
Health
Fewer immunizations, routine health screenings, and loss of access to healthy meals → undiagnosed vision problems, hearing loss, asthma, and developmental delays increase (particularly in rural and underserved areas) → combined with increases in child hunger and obesity (families turn to cheaper, unhealthy food) → higher incidence of chronic illnesses (given the link between early nutrition and adult health), and potentially even increased mortality rates for preventable conditions.
Economics
Some parents (especially single moms) might have to cut back work hours or leave the workforce → reduction in the overall labor supply (and this doesn’t even include the 250,000 Head Start jobs (teachers, aides, support staff) that will be lost → increase poverty and inequality → require greater public spending on remedial programs later.
I have yet to see a credible case in which the savings from cutting Head Start justify the long-term damage. What we don’t spend on early childhood, we will undoubtedly spend later on special education, remedial programs, healthcare, incarceration, and welfare.
Cutting Head Start might look like savings on a spreadsheet. But the costs—paid by children, families, and society—will compound for decades.
Until next week, be calm and be kind,
Andrew