Most studies show that Head Start programs can have some short term positive impacts on child development, but those short-term gains are just that: temporary.  We’re not sure why it’s better to have union members teaching three year-olds rather than the old-fashioned idea of parents doing that.

Trump wants to deregulate the program but the education blob is aghast. The New York Times complains that Trump will undermine a quintessential Great Society program that “works.”

Heather McDonald reports in the City Journal that “Since its inception in 1966, Head Start has spent more than $240 billion in taxpayer dollars on early education and anti-poverty services for low-income children up to the age of five.”

The result: “A randomized controlled trial found that any early gains in school readiness among enrollees had faded by the end of first grade and were absent by third grade.”

That doesn’t matter to the unions. They just want the thousands of day care workers as dues-paying members.

Another quarter trillion dollars of social welfare spending down the drain.