This article is part of First Focus on Children’s analysis of Project 2025, the granular policy agenda intended to serve as the “playbook” for a Republican presidential administration. This extremist agenda, along with the Republican candidate’s own words and platform, proposes measures that would leave America’s children poorer, sicker, and less likely to become productive citizens. Our series explores some of the most harmful proposals.
Project 2025, the blueprint for a future Republican administration created by the conservative Heritage Foundation and partners, would do grave harm to the children and families who benefit from the programs under the Department of Health and Human Services, including early learning. This plan would eliminate high-quality, affordable child care slots at a time when there is a crisis in care across our country, harming children, their families, early childhood professionals, and our national economy. This document would limit choices for families and provides no new solutions to help children and families access care.
Eliminating Head Start
Project 2025 proposes eliminating the Head Start program, which provides early learning and development, health, and well-being services to low-income children birth to age 5 and their families. Head Start currently serves over 775,000 children and their families, including children with disabilities, those in foster care, and children experiencing homelessness, and it has served over 40 million children and families throughout its history. The Head Start programs includes preschool and child care for children ages 3 and 4; care through Early Head Start for infants, toddlers, and expectant families; the American Indian and Alaska Native Head Start program; and the Migrant and Seasonal Head Start program. Child care under Head Start can be center-based, home-based, and family child care, giving families many choices, and prioritizes the inclusion of parents as partners in decisions and operations. The programs produces both short- and long-term positive results for kids and families.
Eliminating Head Start would decimate child care and other family services for hundreds of thousands of families that rely on it, and increase inequity in early learning. There is already an early learning and child care crisis in this country, with child care being least affordable and accessible for Black, Hispanic, and low-income working parents. Under current funding levels, Head Start is only able to serve 33% of eligible families, Early Head Start serves 11%, and the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) serves 15% of families who qualify. Costs for care are astronomical. In 2023, the cost to a family of child care for two children in a center was more than annual mortgage payments in 45 states and the District of Columbia. The cost of child care for an infant at a center was more than in-state tuition at a public university in 39 states and D.C. CCDBG, which is only able to serve a fraction of eligible families with child care assistance, would have no capacity to absorb families that formerly received Head Start services. Eliminating Head Start would leave countless families without an option for care for their children, putting their job security and our national economy at risk.
Limiting Family Choice
Project 2025 would limit family choice in care. The document claims that it wants to increase choice for parents, but would do this by eliminating center-based child care options and instead compensating parents (code: mothers) for staying out of the workforce to care for their children or finding family members to care for children. This is not a reality for many families. Families should have the full array of affordable, high-quality child care options, including kinship care, center-based care, family child care, and care during overnight or off-hours. Some of these choices cannot come at the expense of others, as Project 2025 would do.
Providing No Solutions
Project 2025 would not provide a solution to the child care crisis and instead would exacerbate it. The child care sector has not recovered in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and has not been able to permanently increase wages and benefits to attract and keep teachers. Lawmakers provided approximately $50 billion in emergency funding to the sector, much of which expired in 2023 and the remainder of which will expire in September 2024. In states that have not addressed this shortfall, the share of families who need child care and do not have it increased from 17.8% to 23.1%. States used this pandemic-era funding to eliminate copays for families, increase compensation for early learning teachers, reduce waiting lists, and expand child care assistance eligibility. These funds also increased women’s participation in the workforce. We know what works – increased investments in early learning programs produce positive results for children and their families. Eliminating programs that currently serve low-income families is not progress.
Project 2025 would inexplicably attempt to address our crisis in child care access and affordability by eliminating existing child care slots and limiting parent choice. This is no way forward on a national priority for children and their families.