Title 42 › Chapter CHAPTER 105— - COMMUNITY SERVICES PROGRAMS › Subchapter SUBCHAPTER II— - HEAD START PROGRAMS › § 9836a
The Secretary must set and update rules for Head Start programs. These rules cover the services Head Start must give (like health, parent involvement, nutrition, social services, and school transition help), school‑readiness education goals based on the Head Start Child Outcomes Framework (ten areas such as language, literacy, math, science, thinking skills, learning approaches, social‑emotional growth, creative arts, physical development, and English progress for children learning English), administrative and financial management, and facility safety and access. When changing rules, the Secretary must talk with experts, look at past standards and recent research, consider changing community needs (including tribal and non‑English speaking families), and explain duties between a Head Start agency and any delegate agency. The Secretary must also guide and approve assessment tools that teachers and programs use. These tools must be developmentally, linguistically, and culturally appropriate, valid and reliable, given by trained staff, and adjusted for children with disabilities or limited English. Assessments must help teaching, find special needs, improve programs, and not be used to exclude children. Personal data from assessments must be kept private like student privacy law, and there must be no national database of identifiable child records. Federal agents may not use assessment data to rank or reward individual children or teachers, and a single test cannot be the only basis for funding or judging a program. The Secretary will review each Head Start agency at least once every 3 years, check new agencies after their first year, and do follow‑ups for problems (return visits within 6 months or 12 months if more time is needed). Reviews can include surprise visits and must use trained teams that look at classroom quality, fiscal controls, special needs services (including a 10 percent minimum enrollment goal for children with disabilities), outreach and eligibility, and child outcomes tied to school‑readiness goals. Agencies must have procedures to evaluate, monitor, and, if needed, remove delegate agencies, while following fair processes. If an agency fails to meet standards, the Secretary must name the problems and require fixes right away if there is a danger, within 90 days for serious issues, or through an approved quality improvement plan. That plan must list problems, actions, and a timetable, and fixes must be done no later than 1 year after notice. The Secretary will offer training and technical help when possible. By 120 days after each fiscal year ends, the Secretary must publish a summary of review findings and quality plans in an easy format for parents and the public. Each agency must do a yearly self‑check with community input, set school‑readiness goals aligned with Head Start and state standards, and make improvement plans. Agencies must report monthly actual enrollment and reasons for any shortfall. The Secretary will identify programs underenrolled (using at least 4 consecutive months of data), help them make and carry out plans, and provide technical help. If, after 12 months of help, actual enrollment is still less than 97 percent of funded slots, the Secretary may call the agency chronically underenrolled and reduce its base grant by the percentage of the shortfall, though the Secretary can waive or reduce that penalty in certain cases. Any funds taken back must be redistributed by the end of the next fiscal year to increase enrollment in similar types of Head Start programs.
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The Public Health and Welfare — Source: USLM XML via OLRC
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Citation
42 U.S.C. § 9836a
Title 42 — The Public Health and Welfare
Last Updated
Apr 6, 2026
Release point: 119-73