Conservatives are right to want to rein — or even eliminate — a Department of Education they describe as bloated, ideological and ineffective. However, that battle plays out, eliminating Head Start along with it would be a costly mistake. Head Start sits in the Department of Health and Human Services.
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 plan proposes scrapping the entire program, calling Head Start “fraught with scandal and abuse” and dismissing it as offering “little or no long-term academic value.” That’s not just wrong — it’s bad economics.
The evidence is overwhelming: High-quality early childhood programs, especially those like Head Start that support both children and families, deliver lifelong benefits. They increase educational attainment, improve employment and health outcomes and even support marriage and stable families.
The economic return on investment? More than 13 percent annually for disadvantaged children, outpacing the stock market.
Head Start does suffer from bureaucratic inefficiencies, heavy administrative burdens and confusing eligibility rules. These issues are real and deserve serious reform. But tossing out the program altogether because it doesn’t produce short-term test score gains is shortsighted and deeply misleading.
Critics often cite the Head Start Impact Study, a 2005 randomized trial that appeared to show only modest short-term academic gains. What they ignore is that the study’s control group wasn’t truly a control — many children in that group also enrolled in Head Start or similar programs. The result? A study that effectively compared Head Start to itself. That’s not rigorous science. That’s statistical noise.
Even respected researchers argue that “science is unsettled.” A recent Science Policy Forum article questions the long-term effectiveness of preschool programs. But those arguments rest on narrow metrics such as standardized test scores and overlook the deeper, more durable outcomes that are shown to predict the outcomes important to our economy and society.
We know from decades of research, including the landmark Highscope Perry Preschool Project, that the real value of early education lies in building relationships, not just delivering instruction. The most successful programs support parents as well as children. They create a stable foundation for learning.
The benefits come not from rote instruction or boxed curricula, but from human connection between parents, children, home visitors and teachers. Relationships drive development.
That’s what Early Head Start, which begins working with families during pregnancy through home visiting and other supports, gets right. And it’s what critics miss when they fixate on short-term evaluations and narrow test scores while ignoring what really matters in classrooms and families.
The Trump administration is right that federal education programs often come with too much red tape and not enough flexibility. We should cut administrative burdens that needlessly weigh down teachers and home visitors, and account for the realities they face.
But eliminating Head Start would do the opposite of what reform is supposed to accomplish. It would remove one of the few programs that consistently delivers for disadvantaged families.
And the scale of this impact matters. Nearly 1 million children participate in Head Start each year. These aren’t just data points. They’re future workers, parents, and citizens — children whose early development is critical to America’s long-term prosperity.
Public investment in early childhood is not charity. It’s predistribution: investing upfront in human potential, rather than paying the price later in remedial education, poor health, or lost productivity. The programs that work best are those that recognize this and build on the science of how children grow and learn.
We should demand more from Head Start — not less. That means strengthening the connection between home and school and making sure dollars go to what matters most: people and relationships.
We need to move education policy beyond the bureaucratic definitions of what is “evidence based” curricula and quality. That is politics, not practice.
DOGE promises major reforms and cost-cutting. They can deliver both, without destroying what works.
If Trump wants to be the president who cuts through bureaucracy and invests in American potential, Head Start is his chance. Eliminating it might look like savings on paper, but it will cost us dearly in the long run.
When a program has helped millions of children and families — and when the evidence shows it works — you don’t burn it down. You build on it.
James J. Heckman is the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and a Nobel laureate in economic sciences. Alison Baulos is the executive director of the Center for the Economics of Human Development at the University of Chicago and a Head Start alumna.
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