Forgot Your Password?

New to The Nation? Subscribe

Print subscriber? Activate your online access

.nation-small__b{fill:#fff;}

A New Trump Rule Would Lower Standards at Head Start and Exclude Immigrants From the Program

The Trump administration is on the verge of releasing a proposed rule that would eliminate crucial quality standards at the nation’s preschool program for low-income children.

The Trump administration is on the verge of publishing a proposed rule that, if finalized, will gut most of the crucial standards that ensure uniform quality of Head Start programs across the country while adding new requirements aimed at shutting out immigrants for the first time in the program’s history, according to two people with direct knowledge of the draft regulation. Head Start, the federal program that provides free preschool education and services to low-income families, was created in 1965 and currently serves more than 700,000 children, with an annual budget of $12.4 billion. In a leaked 2025 budget draft that called for eliminating Head Start entirely, President Trump said, “The federal government should not be in the business of mandating curriculum, locations, and performance standards for any form of education.”

The administration’s proposed rule, which has been drafted by the Department of Health and Human Services and sent to the Office of Management and Budget for review, would rescind the entire 133-page set of “performance standards” that currently spell out how Head Start laws must be implemented by states, counties, and programs, they said. While the Head Start Act includes some specific requirements, most standards in the program have been delineated by this set of rules. Instead, a much shorter set of standards would take its place, leaving it up to states and local governments to implement their own standards if they so choose.

The Trump Administration Is Making It Nearly Impossible to Get Food Stamps July 8, 2026

The Trump Administration Is Making It Nearly Impossible to Get Food Stamps

The Trump Administration Is Refusing to Follow the Laws Protecting Domestic Violence Survivors May 28, 2026

The Trump Administration Is Refusing to Follow the Laws Protecting Domestic Violence Survivors

“Nobody Heard Me at Amazon” May 11, 2026

“Nobody Heard Me at Amazon”

“What it does is transform a program that has high quality,” one of the people said, “and create a generic early-childhood funding stream that doesn’t look like Head Start.” The Administration for Children and Families, which oversees Head Start, did not respond to a request for comment.

Currently, the Head Start guidelines place limits on class sizes and specify how many adult staff are required to supervise certain numbers of children. The new regulations would eliminate those class size and ratio requirements; instead, they would require programs to adhere to state and local laws. Some states have strict childcare ratio requirements, but others are much looser, permitting higher ratios of children to teachers than Head Start currently allows. Head Start teachers work with some of the nation’s most vulnerable children and report that since the pandemic children have presented with such significant needs that they struggle to serve children under the program’s existing ratios, the first source said. The proposed rule also nixes specific requirements that........

© The Nation