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The federal government last week proposed sweeping changes to Head Start, describing them as a way to expand access for children. For families of children with disabilities, the question is what support will still be there once a child enters the classroom.

I’ve been around long enough to know that when it comes to meeting the needs of children with disabilities, specifics matter. Head Start currently has a robust set of with numerous related to services for children with disabilities The require programs to follow federal law and promise added flexibility in how that’s done, but offer no guidance, stripping away detailed requirements. 

If the proposal is approved, programs would no longer be required to give developmental assessments to each child or accommodate all children so they can fully participate. 

It removes a specific directive that programs can’t turn children away because of a disability or chronic health condition. It removes the detailed guardrails on temporary suspensions and a prohibition on expulsion, which are important protections for children with disabilities. It also strikes requirements that programs support parents through the IEP process, which can be confusing and hard to navigate.

Head Start’s performance standards make sure children are given early support and opportunities that can shape their entire future. If those requirements disappear, children with disabilities lose the services, protections and pathways that make inclusion possible.

Since the 1960s, Head Start has provided early learning, health, nutrition, family support and developmental services to children whose families often face the greatest barriers to care. For children with disabilities, it has played an especially important role.

A decade before children with disabilities won the right to a free, appropriate public education, young children with disabilities were already being included in Head Start programs. Head Start helped establish a basic expectation that children with disabilities belong in early learning settings alongside their nondisabled peers.

Key to that progress are the standards built by Congress, advocates and the Office of Head Start, making room for children with all types of disabilities, including Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, and spina bifida, not just those with speech and language delays.

That’s important because children with disabilities are often turned away from other early childhood programs. Parents are told their child’s needs are too significant, that staff aren’t trained, that accommodations aren’t available or that another setting would be better. Families get the same message, again and again: Your child doesn’t belong here.

Head Start has been one of the few places where the answer is different: Yes, your child belongs, and yes, we know how to support them.

Federal law requires Head Start programs to include children with disabilities. The standards help make that requirement mean something in a child’s day. They catch delays in development early, oftentimes before it can affect learning. They shape whether a teacher knows who to call when a developmental concern comes up, whether a family gets help starting an evaluation, whether services continue while paperwork moves, and whether a child is supported in the classroom instead of sent home.

One of the central elements of a quality Head Start program is partnership. Partnerships with school districts, Medicaid agencies and parents. These partnerships work because the performance standards spell out the nature of the engagement. It’s not enough to tell a family that these services are available. Staff in all the partner agencies must understand fully their roles and responsibilities under multiple federal laws. When they don’t, which will happen if the performance standards are abandoned, children miss out. 

Without these standards, a child’s experience could depend far too much on where that child lives, what resources a local program has, and whether a parent knows how to navigate a complicated system. Children’s disabilities will be diagnosed later, which will put them at greater risk once they enter elementary school. Families with money and time may be able to hire specialists, pay for private evaluations or find another preschool. Families with fewer resources may have no alternative.

Children with disabilities are still eligible for special education services through the public education system, but without detailed standards they may no have access to the full array of Head Start’s comprehensive services, including physical and mental health care and parent engagement. That doesn’t give children more opportunity. It gives families less to count on.

Serving preschool children well, including those with disabilities, isn’t easy. It takes skilled teachers, family partnership, coordination with health providers and school districts, and a deep respect for each child’s development. Head Start staff do this work every day, often with too little pay and too few resources. Without the guidance of required performance standards, these essential supports won’t be maintained.

Children don’t get a second chance at early childhood. The first years of life are when communication, relationships, confidence and learning begin to take shape. When a developmental delay is identified early, a child can get the support they need to thrive. When a child with a disability learns alongside nondisabled peers, all children learn that difference is part of life and that every child belongs in the classroom. 

I’ve spent my career working with families, educators and advocates who know what happens when systems treat children with disabilities as someone else’s responsibility. Head Start’s standards help prevent that. They give programs clear responsibilities and families clear expectations. They help ensure that a child’s access doesn’t depend on how much a local program knows about disability or how hard a parent can fight.

The federal government should be strengthening that commitment.

Children with disabilities and children from families with low incomes already face too many barriers to early learning. Weakening Head Start’s standards would add another one.

This proposal should be judged by one question: Will it make it easier or harder for a child with a disability to be welcomed, supported and included? It’s very clear to me that this proposal eliminates and weakens the performance standards, that children with disabilities will be among the first to be harmed, and that harm could last a lifetime.

Head Start’s performance standards grew out of decades of experience with children and families. They must be maintained, enforced, and strengthened,  not dismantled.

The magic of Head Start is what happens once children and their families are enrolled, and for children with disabilities, that requires strong standards and a federal commitment to inclusion. That’s the Head Start worth protecting.

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