Over the past few years, Ginger Williams has watched the number of children learning English inch up at the six Head Start sites she runs across Snohomish County, Washington, just north of Seattle.
The federally funded preschool program has long been required to provide special support for what it calls “dual language learners.” If a majority of children in a program speak a language other than English, that program must have at least one staff member who also speaks that language — a regulation in place since the 1970s. Teachers are also required to focus both on teaching students English and helping their development in their home language.
This extensive language support not only helps kids feel comfortable at school but it also makes the teachers’ job easier, Williams said.
“When a child comes in understanding what’s going on, it’s not so frightening to them,” she said. When they’re afraid or anxious, they cry more, “or you might see them hitting their friends because they don’t know how to communicate,” she added.
This bilingual approach would be eliminated under a new Trump administration proposal to overhaul the standards followed by Head Start nationwide, as well as by its infant and toddler counterpart, Early Head Start. Instead, programs would have a new mandate: Educators must teach only in English. Head Start programs operated by Indian tribes would be exempt from the English-only rules if they are furthering “tribal heritage,” and other programs can apply for a waiver.
The proposed standards are part of a push by the Trump administration to remove many of Head Start’s federal requirements and shift authority over its programs to local and state governments. Programs would be able to make decisions on staff-to-child ratios based on state policies, for example, and choose when to screen children for developmental disabilities instead of following long-standing federally determined requirements.
“One-size-fits-all mandates from Washington cannot fully account for the realities facing 1,600 grantees,” said Alex Adams, assistant secretary for family support at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, when the administration released the proposal in August. Head Start is housed within HHS.
Federal money for Head Start flows to 1,600 nonprofits and other organizations around the country, which in turn oversee 14,000 individual programs. Roughly a third of those serve primarily dual language learners. The federal Head Start website itself currently touts the benefits of bilingualism: Learning more than one language is credited with “improving brain development and school performance, creating more job opportunities, and encouraging an overall positive and respectful attitude toward different languages and cultures.”
An English-only approach would be “a setback for us and for bilingual learners,” said Cleo Rodriguez, executive director of the National Ag Families Head Start Association, which supports Migrant and Seasonal Head Start programs. Those programs serve young children whose caregivers are employed in agriculture work, and most of the classrooms are bilingual.
“Head Start’s entire reason for existing is school readiness,” Rodriguez said. “We want children to become fluent in both languages because we know that that’s going to set them up for success.”
The administration’s proposal says that eliminating the bilingual requirement would “redirect resources towards English-language education and assimilation.” But it would also come with one-time costs, HHS estimates: nearly $47 million to replace classroom materials and between $26 million to $78 million for professional development, depending on how many teachers need it.
Officials from HHS did not respond to a request for comment.
Nationwide, around 35 percent of children in Head Start are dual language learners, slightly higher than the national average for kids ages 0-5. In some Head Start regions, such as the one that includes New York and Puerto Rico, the percentage of dual language learners is more than 60 percent.
Experts say it’s still unclear what this change would look like in practice. During a recent call with the National Head Start Association, an advocacy group for Head Start providers, several educators and program leaders asked if they would have to get rid of bilingual books and posters, or if they could speak to students in their home languages during lunch time and naptime. Leaders on the call said they didn’t know.
In Washington state, where a third of all children 5 and under are dual language learners, Williams said she fears an English-only policy will make it harder for children to learn English and prepare for school. Teachers are now able to explain complex topics, like gravity or how magnets work, in a child’s home language, Williams said. Instead of trying to learn a new concept and a new language at the same time, the child only needs to learn the English word for the concept, she said. “They’re going to miss out on all of those concept learnings if we just go full English.”
Eder Campos, a Head Start volunteer in western Washington state, started working in a classroom because he could communicate with the children in Spanish. His oldest daughter, now 5, struggled when she first started Head Start last year in an English-only classroom.
“I saw how hard it was for my daughter to adapt in the first few months, and how difficult it has been for other children who only speak Spanish,” said Campos, through an interpreter. “It was difficult for her to socialize because she didn’t speak English very well, and that was a barrier.”
After he started volunteering, Campos said the children he worked with started participating more in classroom activities, which is important to prepare them for school. Without this support, children may end up needing more help later on, he said.
“For children who are just starting and only speak Spanish, if you take away their language, it will be very hard to integrate and advance to kindergarten,” he said.
Simultaneous translation, or immediately repeating a word or phrase in a second language, is key to learning English for their young students, said José Martinez, the president and chief executive officer of a nonprofit called UMOS, which runs 140 Migrant and Seasonal Head Start classrooms in Wisconsin, Missouri and South Texas.
Removing that practice, he added, “is going to have a profound impact on the early language learning of our children.”
The public can submit comments on the proposed rule until Oct. 6.
Contact staff writer Jackie Mader at 212-678-3562 or mader@hechingerreport.org.
This story about English-only Head Start was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
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