'How Cruel': Child Advocates Rip Trump's Plan to Gut Head Start

Advocates for early education and vulnerable children are denouncing a new rule issued Thursday by the administration of President Donald Trump that would severely weaken the Head Start program relied on by families and communities nationwide.

"At a time when the US faces the highest rate of child poverty of any major country, how does Mr. Trump respond?" asked Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), in response to the rule. "Instead of expanding access to early childhood education, he is moving to dismantle Head Start and the standards that keep its 700,000 kids safe. How cruel."

Head Start—created as a federal program in 1965 and "designed to prepare America’s most vulnerable young children to succeed in school and in life beyond school"—has been an ongoing target of the Trump administration, which has moved to eviscerate the program's funding and voiced support for scrapping it completely.

Speaking with NPR, journalist Coral Davenport, who reports for the New York Times, explained that early childhood educators fear the changes being proposed represent the most sweeping changes—more like "erasure" than "reforms"—to the program since its founding:

The Children's Defense Fund (CDF) warns that the new rule, published in the federal register by the US Department of Health and Human Services, represents a new attack on Head Start that would "dismantle the program from the inside out."

The rule, according to the CDF, will result in the "stripping away of most of the quality standards that define what children and families actually receive" when they are part of the program, "including the requirements that ensure children are safe and supported, that hold programs accountable to the families they serve, and that guarantee the comprehensive services children need to arrive at kindergarten ready to learn."

In a letter stating their opposition to the attack, CDF—joined by EdTrust, Legal Defense Fund, NAACP, National Center for Learning Disabilities, National Urban League, The Arc, and UnidosUS—warned that Head Start "will exist in name only, offering unequal services based on where the child lives," if the rule is finalized.

According to the coalition:

The proposal strips away most of the quality standards that define what services children and families actually receive, including the requirements that ensure children are safe and supported, that hold programs accountable to the families they serve, and that guarantee the comprehensive services children need to arrive at kindergarten ready to learn. We urge the administration to withdraw it.

Over the past year, the administration has delayed funding that programs depend on to keep their doors open, cut the federal staff who support them, and proposed eliminating Head Start entirely. Each of these moves has created uncertainty for the providers who run these programs and the families who count on them. We oppose this latest attack on Head Start, which will harm the children and families the program was built to serve.

The signers of the letter called on the administration to rescind its proposal and said Congress must "stand behind Head Start and reject these changes so that we maintain the promise of Head Start for future generations."

Democratic lawmakers in the US House and Senate joined Sanders in slamming the move.

"Trump is trying to destroy Head Start—and he's hoping you won't notice," said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.). "He's gutting basic standards and protections for over 700,000 kids, after he already tried and failed to defund the program altogether. We need to speak up and SAVE Head Start."

"Head Start is not just preschool," said Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) in a social media post. "For hundreds of thousands of children from low-income families, it is where they learn to read, receive basic health screenings, get support for disabilities, and begin kindergarten with a real chance to succeed."

The regulations that govern Head Start, which Trump's HHS now wants to eliminate, said Levin, "are the difference between children getting the care and support they need or being left to fall through the cracks. Why on earth would anyone want to take that away from them?"

As Murray noted, "this rule is not final," meaning there remain avenues to defeat it.

When a previous Trump memo detailing the desire to eliminate Head Start leaked, said Murray, "we got loud and he backed off. We can protect Head Start again, but it's going to take all of us speaking up and taking a stand for our kids."