Project 2025 Would End Head Start and Hurt Children with Disabilities

Carrie Gillispie

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.

Families of young children with disabilities often struggle to find high-quality early learning opportunities and developmental services. Head Start provides such services to families with low incomes through Early Head Start for infants, toddlers, and pregnant people, and Head Start for preschool-age children and their families. Head Start programs (including Early Head Start) must provide at least 10 percent of their enrollment spots to children with disabilities, and must work with local agencies providing special education services to coordinate services for enrollees. Inclusive classroom environments, in which children with and without disabilities learn side-by-side, are central to Head Start's approach. These inclusive spots are crucial to high-quality early learning but very difficult for families to find, and eliminating Head Start would slash the number of these placements, particularly for children from families with low incomes.

Children from families with low incomes are identified with disabilities later than other children due to inequitable access to high-quality care and other factors. Although federal law mandates that states identify every young child with a disability and provide their family services, far too few children and families are identified and receive services, especially children from families with low incomes. Head Start is a federal strategy for identifying children with developmental delays and disabilities, as it provides screening and consultation for families of children who are at risk for developing disabilities. In 2022-2023, Head Start provided this service for nearly half a million families with low incomes. Head Start programs must ensure each child is screened for developmental milestones within 45 days of enrollment. If the screening determines that a child may have a developmental delay or disability, Head Start staff must work with the child's family to connect them to a special education evaluation.

The earlier a child is identified as having a delay or disability, the earlier she can receive interventions, and the more likely she will have strong outcomes across several domains including health, language and communication, cognitive skills, and social-emotional abilities. Infants and toddlers in Early Head Start were significantly more likely to receive special education services than a control group in a large national study. The study also found that by the end of Early Head Start, 3-year-old children scored significantly higher than a control group on cognitive, language, and social-emotional developmental measures, with several positive effects sustaining for many children throughout elementary school. Head Start programs must also include mental health consultants who work with staff and parents to identify and support children with mental health and social-emotional concerns. Head Start staff are on the front line of identifying young children with delays, disabilities, and mental health concerns, and connecting them to services. Eliminating Head Start would drastically reduce the number of children identified and given supports.

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.

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