Head Start Providers Stand to Lose Funding

Pupils and teachers walk through the neighborhood surrounding the Head Start program at the Congressman George Miller Children's Center in Richmond, Calif. Though well-regarded, the agency that runs the center must compete for its federal funds this year due to new program rules.

—Ramin Rahimian for Education Week

By Lesli A. Maxwell

Concerns are mounting that strict new federal rules meant to improve the quality of Head Start preschool services for poor children could drive good providers out of business, as scores of Head Start programs begin to face the specter of losing the federal funding they have received for decades.

Under regulations that were announced late last year by President Barack Obama, agencies that fall short of the new federal quality standards for the Head Start program have to compete with other potential providers for funding, rather than automatically qualifying for it. The federal Office of Head Start announced in late December that 132 of the roughly 1,600 local providers of Head Start across the nation had failed to meet that quality bar and, for the first time ever, must compete.

The organizations cited—most of them county and city agencies, public school systems, or large, community-based organizations in 38 states, plus Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands—make up the first group of grantees to be tapped for "recompetition" under new rules that will force at least 25 percent of Head Start providers evaluated for quality in any given year to vie for funding against other providers in their communities. Those rules, which took effect in December, mandate Head Start programs to set and use school-readiness goals that include children's achievement and progress in literacy development, cognition, and general knowledge; approaches to learning, physical well-being, and motor development; and...