# Head Start The federal early-childhood program launched in **1965** as part of [[Lyndon B. Johnson]]'s War on Poverty — comprehensive preschool services for low-income children, delivered through local grantees rather than through school districts or state agencies. It is the most politically durable program of the [[Great Society]], and the reason why is structural. ## The design Head Start began as an eight-week summer program in 1965 and became year-round. It bundles preschool education with **health screening, dental care, nutrition, and parental involvement** — the premise being that school readiness is not only a cognitive problem, and that a child who cannot see the board or has untreated illness will not benefit from instruction alone. The delivery model matters as much as the services. Federal funds flow **directly to local grantees** — community organizations, tribal governments, nonprofits — bypassing state governments. That was a deliberate choice in 1965, when routing anti-poverty money through Southern state agencies would have meant routing it through segregationists. ## Why it matters for the KB **1. It is the Great Society program that survived, and its survival is a lesson in constituency design.** Most War on Poverty programs were reduced, block-granted, or eliminated. Head Start persisted through the Reagan, Gingrich, and subsequent rounds of retrenchment because the direct-to-grantee structure created **a local institution with local employees in nearly every congressional district**. Cutting it means closing a specific center in a specific town, with named staff, rather than reducing a line item. The vault's recurring finding applies: programs with visible local constituencies outlive programs administered invisibly. **2. The evaluation fight is the template for evidence-based policy disputes.** Head Start research produced a genuine and much-litigated finding — measurable early cognitive gains that **fade in elementary school** — which opponents cite as proof of failure and defenders answer by pointing to long-run outcomes in health, graduation, and earnings, plus the counterargument that fadeout reflects the quality of the schools children enter afterward. Both readings are defensible on the data. It is the cleanest example in the vault of the same evidence supporting opposite policy conclusions depending on which outcome window is chosen. **3. It is where "school readiness" and parental-rights arguments collide.** The parental-involvement component that made the program politically durable in 1965 is the same component contemporary curriculum fights target. > [!warning] Current status not verified > This page does not carry current funding levels, enrollment, or any 2025–26 administrative action affecting the program. Verify before citing its present condition. ## See Also - [[Great Society]] · [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] - [[Medicare and Medicaid Act]] — the other durable 1965 program - [[Department of Education]]