Title 42 › CHAPTER 105 — COMMUNITY SERVICES PROGRAMS › SUBCHAPTER II — HEAD START PROGRAMS › § 9836a
Requires the Secretary to set and update performance rules for Head Start programs. These rules must cover the services Head Start must give (like health, family involvement, nutrition, social services, and school-transition help), what children should learn and be able to do for school readiness (for example language, reading, math, science, thinking skills, learning approaches, social-emotional skills, creative arts, physical development, and English progress for limited-English children), plus rules for administration, money management, and the safety and location of facilities (they must meet or exceed state and local licensing and allow monitoring unless law blocks it). When changing rules, the Secretary must consult experts and people with Head Start experience, consider past rules in effect on December 12, 2007 and changes since October 27, 1998, use research including the National Academy of Sciences study, think about changing community and child needs, tribal concerns, and explain what local agencies must do when they give work to delegate agencies. Requires research-based measures and tests to help teaching, find children with special needs, evaluate programs, and improve management. These measures must fit children’s ages, languages, and cultures, be valid and reliable, be given by trained staff, and include accommodations for disabilities and limited-English children. Measures cannot be used to exclude children. The federal government must protect personally identifiable data and may not build a nationwide database of such child data. Federal agents may not use assessment items or data to rank, compare, reward, or punish individual children or teachers, and a single test result cannot be the only basis for national funding decisions. The Secretary must review each Head Start agency at least once every 3 years, review new agencies after their first year, do follow-ups within 6 or 12 months when problems are found, and may do unannounced inspections. Review teams must include people who know Head Start and the needs of diverse children, check finances and services, and use reliable classroom observation tools. Head Start agencies must set procedures to evaluate, defund, and allow appeals for delegate agencies. If problems are found, agencies must make quality improvement plans and fix issues within timelines (not later than 1 year), with the Secretary or sponsoring agency approving plans within 30 days. The Secretary will offer training and help as funding allows. Each year, within 120 days after the fiscal year ends, the Secretary must publish a summary of review findings and improvement outcomes for parents and the public. Agencies must do a full self-assessment at least once a year, set school-readiness goals aligned with Head Start and state standards, and send improvement plans to the Secretary. Programs must report enrollment monthly. If an agency is underenrolled for at least 4 months, the Secretary and the agency will make a plan to fix it. After 12 months still below 97 percent of funded slots, the Secretary may call the agency chronically underenrolled and recapture or reduce grant funds by the percentage of the shortfall, though waivers are possible; recaptured funds must be redistributed by the end of the next fiscal year to programs of the same type and location as described in the rules.
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The Public Health and Welfare, Source: USLM XML via OLRC
Legislative History
Reference
Citation
42 U.S.C. § 9836a
Title 42, The Public Health and Welfare
Last Updated
Sep 22, 2026
Release point: 119-110