claim: Project 2025 would “end Head Start.”
evidence: Project 2025 Would End Head Start and Hurt Children with Disabilities [...] The 2024 Republican National Convention has highlighted the party’s platform this week, drawing heavily from Project 2025. The conservative policy plan calls for the elimination of Head Start, alarming education advocates who note that doing so would remove access to early learning for over 787,000 children from families with low-incomes across the U.S. Of those children served, over 111,000 (about 14.2%) are children with disabilities, and many more are at risk for developing disabilities. Head Start specializes in providing comprehensive services to young children with disabilities from families with low incomes, who face intertwined challenges from inequitable access to food, health care, housing, and high-quality early learning. If Head Start ends, so will critical services for thousands of children with delays and disabilities living in poverty across the country. [...] Project 2025’s brevity about the elimination of Head Start belies its potentially devastating consequences for some of the U.S.’s most vulnerable children and their families. Cutting Head Start comprises just one paragraph in the project’s 900-plus-page Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise. The paragraph includes misleading information about Head Start’s efficacy and no mention of its services for children with disabilities. It does not offer an alternative strategy for providing critical services to set young children up for long-term success.