Trump’s Head Start Overhaul Borrows a Playbook That Already Failed

When he launched the War on Poverty in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson spoke of the “millions of Americans…who have not shared in the abundance which has been granted to most of us, and on whom the gates of opportunity have been closed.” The ensuing years would see the creation of Medicaid and Medicare, the launch of Head Start. This era also ushered in the establishment of a permanent national food assistance program and a dramatic expansion of federal support for education and housing. These policies and programs were all rooted in the principle that the federal government has a responsibility to help families meet their basic needs and, ultimately, thrive.As people who have dedicated our careers to advancing policies that can reduce poverty in America, we are dismayed to now see the return of the disastrous 1990s-era “welfare reform” approach that measures success by how many people are kicked off of public assistance programs, rather than whether fewer people actually need it. Economic research consistently shows that this approach fails to meaningfully address poverty or increase employment. A true anti-poverty agenda would learn from those mistakes, rather than repeat them, an...