Head Start’s Rule Change Will Need a State Assist: Six Recommendations for Early Childhood Leaders
By Theresa Hawley
In August 2024, federal administrators quietly issued one of the most consequential rule changes for Head Start in the history of the program, one that carries the potential to transform the entire early education field. The rule confronts one of early learning’s most vexing problems, namely, the poverty wages made by so many of its workers. With this change, local Head Start providers would be required to compensate their teachers at the same level as their peers in local school districts. Making less simply because the children one teaches are a year younger than those in kindergarten has long been a source of frustration among experienced and degreed preschool teachers.
In most areas (but not all) of the country, parity with school district salaries translates into a major pay raise for most Head Start teachers. It also promises to create ripple effects across the early care and learning field. One impact would be to help stabilize the Head Start teaching force, reducing turnover by diminishing the lure of better pay and benefits provided by local school districts.
As cited in a recent article by reporter Amanda Geduld of The 74 about this rule change, average salaries made by public preschool and kindergarten teachers range from $49,000 to $60,000, according to the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley. Meanwhile, the average annual salary of a community-based preschool or Head Start teacher is $35,000.
A second type of ripple effect may come in settings that mix Head Start workers alongside teachers whose salaries are paid using different funding streams, such as state child-care subsidies or state Pre-K dollars. Programs will be hard-pressed to maintain stability or morale if similarly qualified teachers working in the classroom next door earn wildly different salaries.
Here’s the tension: Without careful planning, a mandate to increase salaries – even if much needed – could result in fewer slots in programs to serve a community’s lowest income children. Teachers who aren’t let go in the process might make higher salaries, but local families would suffer from reduced access to quality programs.
Cutting access threatens Head Start’s unique mission. This longstanding federal program was designed to reach as many of our nation’s least-resourced children as possible. When a Head Start child arrives at kindergarten demonstrating readiness, everyone is served – families, communities, and school districts.
For this policy change to strengthen the entire early learning field and best serve children in poverty, all parts of a state’s/city’s early childhood system must play a role. This rule offers the opportunity to finally figure out how to structure a ‘mixed delivery system’ that maximizes resources, compensates teachers appropriately, and provides the best early learning experience for all children between the ages 0-5.
State leaders should seize the opportunity to act, starting with the following recommendations:
State Pre-K administrators should partner with local Head Start agencies. Pre-K administrators, who often work out of state Departments of Education and provide support and oversight to local school districts, should begin working now to plan, align, and coordinate. States can partner with Head Start programs to “layer” funding streams to ensure programs have sufficient resources to offer full-day programs with adequate staff salaries.
State child-care administrators should also partner with local Head Start grantees. In cities and regions where school-based Pre-K expansions have created vacancies in Head Start preschool classrooms for 3- and 4-year-olds, Head Start providers could work with state child-care administrators to integrate funding streams to help convert slots to Early Head Start serving infants and toddlers, where demand remains high.
Develop mechanisms to assess local needs. This rule change creates an even greater urgency to better understand precisely which income-eligible children are being served and which aren’t, and which services best meet families’ needs. Without real-time mechanisms to ascertain this information, children in low-resourced communities risk being left behind. Integrated data systems and a robust local ‘infrastructure’ are two examples of such mechanisms that can help.
Increasingly, states are investing in real-time, integrated early childhood data systems – and it couldn’t come at a better time. CELFE hosts the Chicago Early Childhood Integrated Data System (CECIDS), a cloud-based, comprehensive data warehouse that integrates a wide range of information on all Chicago children under age 6. CECIDS’ purpose is to help city leaders, providers, advocates, families, communities, and researchers better understand whether neighborhood needs match available resources. Such data catalyzes momentum toward equity and quality.
Help local Head Start grantees to find and enroll hardest-to-reach children. Easy access to up-to-date data also allows states to help Head Start programs to locate children most in need of quality services. Robust, coordinated community-level outreach can ensure full enrollment across all early learning programs. North Carolina, Michigan, and Illinois have invested in such local structures.
Assess how this rule fits into your state’s overall financing strategy. Spend time understanding how this compensation shift will affect your overall early childhood financing system. The change may necessitate broad rethinking or restructuring of a state’s infrastructure to make sure the needs of children and families remain the focus of your system. Further, states only win when they maximize the federal Head Start funds to boost the early learning of their state’s youngest children. A careful planning process would bring together program directors, federal administrators, state leaders, and advocates. Philanthropy also could play a role in supporting these conversations.
Start now. Regardless of whether a major new infusion of federal dollars into Head Start is in the immediate future, no state can afford to, nor do they need to sit back and wait until it does. Even with seven years to implement this new rule, time flies when it comes to system change. State early childhood administrators – both Pre-K and child-care – should begin working now with local Head Start grantees to plan, align, and coordinate.
Theresa Hawley is Executive Director of the Center for Early Learning Funding Equity