Head Start Efforts by the Trump Administration to undermine Head Start are very wrong. Head Start fulfills both egalitarian and meritocratic normative criteria. I emphasize Head Start as a component of meritocracy because it is the sort of policy that is integral to an efficient economy/society. Part of meritocracy involves matching students to schools and workers to jobs in such a way to maximize the relative value added of the matches (compared to other configurations) given some social objective. Another part involves making the distribution of skills across individuals the one that makes the matches most efficient when the matches occur. Chloe Gibbs @chloergibbs has written a great overview of the evidence on Head Start "Early Learning across Decades: Advances in Measuring Head Start Effectiveness," Journal of Economic Literature, forthcoming aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.12… which makes clear the contexts in which Head Start has been especially effective as well as limits to the body of existing literature. Studies that have particularly influenced my thinking on the value of Head Start include Christopher Walters, "Inputs in the Production of Early Childhood Human Capital: Evidence from Head Start," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2015 which studies heterogeneity across Head Start programs and reveals the importance of full-day programs in increasing cognitive skills and home center visits in improving socioemotional skills Rucker Johnson @ProfRucker and C. Kirabo Jackson @KiraboJackson, "Reducing Inequality through Dynamic Complementarity: Evidence from Head Start and Public School Spending" American Economic Journal: Economic Policy which finds significant dynamic complementarities between Head Start and the resources available to the schools participants attend, with implications for broader egalitarian/meritocratic policy design and Martha Bailey @martha_j_bailey, Shuqiao Sun @Sun_Shuqiao, and Brenden Timpe @bdtimpe, "Prep School for Poor Kids: The Long-Run Impacts of Head Start on Human Capital and Economic Self-Sufficiency," American Economic Review, 2021 which demonstrates Head Start has produce large long term educational outcome improvements among participants.

An Indefensible Attack on Head Start This is the latest effort by the Trump administration to eliminate Head Start. The specific policy proposed here will damage the program. Head Start fulfills both egalitarian and meritocratic normative criteria and easily passes standard cost benefit analyses. The effectiveness of Head Start is now well established. Studies I think are particularly compelling include Patrick Kline and Christopher Walters @c_r_walt, "Evaluating Public Programs with Close Substitutes: The Case of Head Start," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2016 which provides carefully constructed evidence that Head Start benefit cost ratio that exceed 1, even if benefits are restricted to adult earnings, once one properly accounts for program substitution into Head Start when accounting for net costs of the program Christopher Walters "Inputs in the Production of Early Childhood Human Capital: Evidence from Head Start," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2015 which studies heterogeneity across Head Start programs and reveals the importance of full-day programs in increasing cognitive skills and home center visits in improving socioemotional skills Rucker Johnson @ProfRucker and C. Kirabo Jackson @KiraboJackson, "Reducing Inequality through Dynamic Complementarity: Evidence from Head Start and Public School Spending" American Economic Journal: Economic Policy which finds significant dynamic complementarities between Head Start and the resources available to the schools participants attend, with implications for broader egalitarian/meritocratic policy design and Martha Bailey @martha_j_bailey, Shuqiao Sun @Sun_Shuqiao, and Brenden Timpe @bdtimpe, "Prep School for Poor Kids: The Long-Run Impacts of Head Start on Human Capital and Economic Self-Sufficiency," American Economic Review, 2021 which demonstrates Head Start has produce large long term educational outcome improvements among participants. nytimes.com/2026/07/31/us/po…