A Wake-up Call for the Country

As a nation, we can do so much better for young children and families

By Joan Lombardi, PhD

I walked into my first Head Start classroom in 1972. It was from that program, those families, and that community that I learned about the endless potential of young children. Less than a decade earlier, Sargent Shriver had called upon a pediatrician, Dr. Robert Cooke, to chair a panel of experts which led to the design of Head Start. This multidisciplinary group recognized the comprehensive needs of young children and realized that empowering parents is essential. It was a brilliant start. Today, we need to stand strong for the progress that has been made over the past 6 decades in Head Start and move forward with a broad set of investments and supports for young children, their families, and the communities they live in.

Over the years, Head Start evolved. It moved from a summer-only to a longer program year.  In the early 70s, improvement and innovation efforts were launched, and in 1975 performance standards were put in place to provide operational standards and guidance sorely needed. On its 15th anniversary, President Carter convened a special committee to review the program. The committee recommended an increased focus on program quality and acknowledged the need to serve younger children. On the 25th anniversary of the program, The National Head Start Association’s Silver Ribbon Panel recommended quality improvements and expansion. In 1993, Secretary Shalala launched a bipartisan review of Head Start, which led to landmark changes, including the establishment of Early Head Start. In the decades that followed, the support for Head Start continued under Democratic and Republican administrations. 

Now progress is seriously threatened. Instead of continuing this march forward to improve and expand Head Start, to really understand the next steps to assure quality, to better serve the nation’s poorest children, to discuss and debate how the program fits into the changing conditions of today, the current administration has turned back the clock on decades of progress. Rather than convening a panel of multidisciplinary experts as Shriver had done, the administration proposes to allow larger classrooms, fewer teachers, and reduced hours of operation; to devalue home language and culture; to permit expulsion; to disregard progress on reaching homeless children; and to undermine essential supports for health, mental health, dental, and disability services. This is on top of earlier action from the administration to delay funding, reduce oversight and try to erase equity, diversity, and inclusion.  

These actions on Head Start are all moving in the wrong direction. They are metaphors for the refusal to recognize the growing inequities of the country and the profound lack of support for our youngest children and their families. As I moved from those early days of teaching to overseeing and advocating for better child and family policy, I have seen families who love their children so deeply yet struggle every day without support. Mothers without basic medical care during pregnancy, parents without even a few days of paid leave when they have a baby, and parents who are shut out of any good child care options. I have heard from teachers who have chosen to care yet are denied decent working conditions and are forced to leave because they cannot afford to stay.

More broadly, I have watched food assistance and economic support shrink for families during the most critical period of their child’s development. When foreign assistance was brutally ransacked, it was the youngest children around the world who suffered some of the most devastating impacts. As the administration denies the realities of climate change, it is the children who are being denied a sustainable future. This is all in the wrong direction.

As a nation, we can do so much better than this. We need to move from a country of endless wars to one of peace, from investments in bombs to investments in babies. As this historic 250th year concludes, we need to look forward, not move backwards. We need to strengthen and invest in Head Start and other core services that support families: child care, health care, paid leave, good jobs with decent wages, a cleaner environment. We need to finally commit to policies that support the endless potential that is there at the birth of every child. 

This is a wake-up call for the country.  We can all stand up for Head Start right now and continue efforts to advocate for better policies for young children and families here and around the world. We have no time to waste.

This blog posted originally appeared as Guest Commentary, First Focus on Children, August 20, 2026.

__

Joan Lombardi, PhD, is a longstanding champion for children. For more than 50 years, she has dedicated her work to assuring the healthy development of young children and support for their families and communities in the US and around the world. Joan has served in several positions in the public sector including as the first Deputy Assistant Secretary for Early Childhood Development, Administration for Children and Families, U.S Department of Health and Human Services (2009–2011).