Head Start is worth defending. For more than 60 years, the program has helped prepare low-income children for kindergarten while connecting families with health care, nutrition, disability services and other critical supports. I have visited Head Start programs across the country and met the teachers, parents and local leaders who make that mission real every day. But defending Head Start requires confronting what has happened to the program in recent years.

Start with access. Advocates postulate nearly one million children depend on Head Start. But the program no longer operates at that scale. In 2011, Head Start was funded to serve 964,430 children and pregnant women. By 2025, funded enrollment had fallen to 666,923. Anyone who believes in Head Start should be troubled by that decline. A child who cannot get into the program gains nothing from even a well-intentioned federal regulation.

The central question, then, is why a program with a growing federal budget is serving fewer children and families.

There is no single explanation. But recent analyses show that federal policy choices have contributed substantially to the problem.

In 2016, the Obama administration comprehensively rewrote the Head Start Program Performance Standards. The new rules imposed substantial costs and acknowledged that, without additional appropriations, programs might respond by reducing enrollment. The policy made an explicit tradeoff: serve fewer children at greater cost in the expectation that more intensive federal requirements would improve quality for those who remained.

The Biden administration reinforced that approach in 2024 with additional wage, benefit and operational requirements carrying billions of dollars in projected costs. The administration itself estimated that those costs could force programs to eliminate more than 100,000 slots. Taken together, these regulatory choices make the tradeoff plain.

A program serving 10 children could be forced to give up three slots simply to absorb the added costs. The bet was that the seven children who remained would receive services of sufficiently higher quality to justify leaving the other three children and their families behind. That tradeoff might be defensible if it produced dramatic gains in quality. The evidence does not show that it did.

A recent analysis found that from 2015 to 2024, inflation-adjusted spending per slot rose sharply — 49 percent in Head Start Preschool and 32 percent in Early Head Start. At the same time, funded slots fell 29 percent from 2015 to 2025. Yet scores on CLASS, the only valid and reliable measure of classroom quality identified by the federal government, largely plateaued. Costs rose.

Access fell. The expected improvement in measured classroom quality did not follow. That does not mean Head Start is ineffective. It means the anticipated gains from these additional prescriptive regulatory requirements did not materialize — and that more regulation is not always the same as higher quality. The decline also extends beyond classroom seats. Head Start has always been distinctive because it is more than an early childhood education program. Its comprehensive model is designed to support entire families.

Yet another recent analysis found that between 2016 and 2025, the program served fewer children with disabilities, fewer pregnant women and substantially fewer families received family services. The number of newly enrolled children receiving required screenings within 45 days also fell sharply. Those trends deserve scrutiny, reflection and a different approach. Congress established important requirements in the Head Start Act, and our proposal preserves them.

Programs must continue to provide comprehensive services, serve children with disabilities, protect civil rights, engage parents, safeguard children and manage taxpayer dollars responsibly.

The federal government should enforce those obligations vigorously. But enforcing the law is not the same as having Washington prescribe nearly every operational choice made by more than 1,600 local Head Start programs. Local leaders are better positioned to judge whether a staffing model is workable, whether a classroom configuration makes sense and which requirements consume resources without improving services for children. Our approach starts from a simple premise: Those local leaders should be treated as professionals, not merely as implementers of federal directives.

We propose focusing federal oversight more directly on statutory responsibilities and results while giving local programs greater flexibility over operational decisions on how to achieve these. Flexibility is permission, not a mandate. A program that believes its current approach works can keep it. Another that needs a different staffing model, classroom structure or service strategy to open a classroom, recruit teachers or reach more families should have room to adapt.

Every dollar spent complying with an unnecessary federal requirement that does not improve quality is a dollar that cannot pay a teacher, provide a health screening, support a family service worker or open a place for another child. Our regulatory analysis estimates that the proposed reforms could significantly reduce operating costs and preserve or expand access for many more children. Those projections are estimates, not guarantees.

Local programs will make their own decisions, and the proposal is open for public comment so providers, parents and experts can help improve it. But the estimates make clear what is at stake. Good policy requires the humility to look backward as well as forward. When a policy produces results, preserve it. When the evidence shows that costs are rising, access is shrinking and outcomes are not improving as promised, consider alternatives.

Head Start is too important to let the status quo continue to erode slots. It deserves a future built around access, accountability and trust in the communities that have sustained it for more than six decades. Alex J. Adams is assistant secretary for the Administration for Children and Families.