By Sophia Paffenroth and Devna Bose | Originally published by Mississippi Today
The Trump administration wants to slash federal regulations for Head Start, an anti-poverty program that has long been considered a gold standard in early childhood education. Advocates say it could drastically impact about 18,000 children served by the program in Mississippi, while researchers say that Mississippi’s state-funded, high-quality early education programs protect some Head Start centers from the changes.
Among the biggest proposed changes are removing the regulatory requirements that govern class ratios, which means class sizes could double in Mississippi, and eliminating wraparound health services, such as medical and dental screenings, for children in poverty. Trump administration officials said the changes would cut red tape and serve more students while minimizing bureaucracy for Head Start providers across the country.
Critics say the changes would undermine the mission of Head Start, which has historically served the nation’s most vulnerable children. They also say it’s not clear that the administration would reinvest into the program the $2.2 billion it estimates saving from the proposed changes.
The federal proposals aren’t yet final. The public can leave comments about the changes until Oct. 6. Hundreds have already weighed in, and the Trump administration must review the feedback before finalizing the changes.
It’s hard to say how the overhaul could take shape in Mississippi, one of the nation’s poorest states. Nearly a quarter of 4-year-olds are enrolled in the program, according to an analysis by Mississippi First, an education policy organization that advocates for expanding charter school options and pre-kindergarten programs.
Mississippi’s 2nd Congressional District has one of the nation’s highest numbers of funded Head Start slots, third only to districts covering Chicago and New York City. Democratic U.S. Congressman Bennie Thompson, who represents that district, said the program needs strengthening, not weakening.
“Head Start was created to give children from low-income families a fair shot at success. If we lower standards for things like teacher-to-student ratios, we risk giving children who already face the greatest challenges fewer resources and less support,” Thompson said in an email to Mississippi Today.
Nita Norphlet-Thompson, executive director of the Mississippi Head Start Association, asks herself one guiding question about regulations: Are they good for children?
The proposed regulations don’t pass her test, she said, especially when it comes to increasing the number of children teachers must be responsible for.
“I don’t see how that’s going to improve outcomes and how that’s going to be good for children and families,” Norphlet-Thompson said.
Bigger classes, less attention
Eloise McClinton, chair of the National Head Start Association board of directors, works in Holly Springs and oversees 21 childcare centers in 14 counties across north Mississippi. It’s already difficult to hire new teachers, she said, but if more students are put into classrooms, “everybody will be quitting.”
It will be impossible to uphold the same standards under those conditions, she said.
“If you take all of these things away from Head Start, then Head Start will not be Head Start as it was intended to be,” McClinton said. “It will affect the whole state of Mississippi.”
The proposed regulations default to state childcare standards for teacher-student ratios. In Mississippi, that would mean one Head Start caregiver would be responsible for nine toddlers instead of four.
The Trump administration says the lower ratios can help Head Starts serve more students. But Micayla Tatum, a Mississippi First researcher who studies early education policy, said it would reduce education quality and safety.
Tatum worries that getting less individualized attention from teachers would hurt children’s development.
Ikendra Fox gives Jamorion King a high-five during class at Franklin Head Start in Bude, Miss., Thursday, March 31, 2022. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
“Those interactions are really important at that age,” she said. “The more interactions you have, it helps you develop speech.”
Head Start programs will also no longer be required to conduct certain screenings, such as ensuring a family has ongoing medical care or insurance, that children are vaccinated and that they’ve seen a pediatrician and dentist. These services are essential components of the Head Start program to Biz Harris, executive director of the Mississippi Early Learning Alliance, which focuses on strengthening the state’s early childhood ecosystem.
With the proposed changes, centers could keep previous Head Start standards, said Alex Adams, assistant secretary of the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “We trust these local programs to make good decisions.”
In theory, that might be true, said Elizabeth Pufall Jones, the director of preparation and work environment programs at the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California at Berkeley. But it remains to be seen if centers will receive federal funding to provide more than the bare minimum once the higher standards are written out of the regulations, she said.
Tatum shares Pufall Jones’ concerns. She said she believes there’s a good chance local grantees will follow the regulation shifts, especially if it leads to less paperwork.
Head Start has long been an outlier within the climate of what many have called a childcare crisis. Childcare in the U.S. is unaffordable, according to standards from Health and Human Services, and is often subpar and sometimes dangerous. The Head Start program’s rules are stricter than those governing other childcare options, because the program was designed to give disadvantaged children “a head start in life,” Pufall Jones explained.
More than 60 years after Head Start’s inception, that could all change.
Expanding state early learning programs
Mississippi can push back against the proposed changes, researchers say.
Mississippi’s state-funded early learning programs are highly rated by the National Institute for Early Education Research. One example is Mississippi’s early learning collaboratives, which create education partnerships between K-12 public schools, childcare centers and Head Start centers. The collaboratives, or ELCs, enroll 20% of the state’s 4-year-olds.
Head Start centers that partner with the collaboratives will be insulated from the federal changes because they have to follow the state program’s rigorous standards.
“Our state is very wedded to the thought of high quality pre-K programs,” Tatum said. “A good way to counter this deregulation happening at the federal level is to get more Head Starts into ELCs.”
Amid potentially wide-ranging changes, now may be the perfect time to expand those programs, said Steven Barnett, who leads NIEER. But that requires political will and resources.
“I think the state has been moving in that direction, but you can’t just wave a magic wand and invent the teachers and the classrooms you need,” Barnett said. “Mississippi has been moving fast. Whether they can move faster, I don’t know.”
Barnett said state leaders should consider how to supplement the ELC program and encourage Head Starts to join with the collaboratives.
Mississippi First, Tatum’s organization, found 14 school districts interested in joining the collaboratives this year — but there wasn’t state funding to expand the program.
House Education Vice Chairman Kent McCarty, a Republican from Hattiesburg, has long advocated for increased funding for ELCs. He plans to once again introduce a bill to boost funding next session.
“This is obviously a huge priority for me,” he said. “I’ve been pushing for the last few years for universal availability to every student. These changes establish an even greater need for that.”
A ripple effect
Childcare centers, schools and Head Start agencies comprise Mississippi’s early learning ecosystem.
“There is always going to be a ripple effect because our systems are running parallel to each other,” she said. “Whatever happens with Head Start will ripple in some way through ELCs, childcare centers and our early childhood system as a whole.”
For example, she said, if Head Starts are able to serve more families, childcare centers could lose students and money.
Under the proposed regulations, Head Start programs can also have shorter days. That could make it difficult for working parents to find additional childcare, Harris of the Mississippi Early Learning Alliance said.
“If you only have to pay for three hours of childcare instead of five, think about the cost savings there,” Harris said. “It’s potentially the difference between keeping you in the workforce or not.”
Already, more than 6,000 Mississippi families remain on a waitlist for childcare vouchers, or coupons that make childcare more affordable. If families can’t get the childcare they need at Head Start centers, that waitlist might grow.
Harris said Mississippi needs Head Start. The program addresses children’s health and kindergarten readiness. It enables their parents to go to work.
“I’m not sure we can overstate the ways this program is supporting some of our children most at risk of not thriving,” she said.
At best, Harris said, the new regulations won’t tank the program, but they will drain an already burdened system.
McClinton in north Mississippi fears the worst-case scenario.
“Just because you have written it on paper that you’re gonna have that billions of dollars in savings and get to serve more children doesn’t mean that it will actually come back into the program.”
