Project 2025 would “end Head Start.”
This article is part of a series from the Center for American Progress exposing how the sweeping Project 2025 policy agenda would harm all Americans. This new authoritarian playbook, published by the Heritage Foundation, would destroy the 250-year-old system of checks and balances upon which U.S. democracy has relied and give far-right politicians, judges, and corporations more control over Americans’ lives. [...] Despite strong evidence that the program has helped boost educational attainment and fight intergenerational poverty, Project 2025—a far-right authoritarian playbook that would upend the 250-year-old system of checks and balances on which American government is built—proposes eliminating Head Start in its entirety. Enacting Project 2025’s plan to eliminate Head Start would vastly restrict the number of available child care slots, dramatically increase child care costs for families living in poverty, and undermine economic growth and exacerbate inequality. [...] Additionally, eliminating Head Start would upend the progress states and localities have made on universal pre-K. The District of Columbia, Florida, Iowa, Oklahoma, and West Virginia—top states in pre-K access for 4-year-olds—each have integrated Head Start programs into their state pre-K programs. For instance, in West Virginia, where pre-K is available for all 4-year-olds, 68 percent of the state’s preschool classrooms were in Head Start programs in the 2020 school year. Without Head Start, states would have to take on a larger share of funding to reach universal pre-K access.