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“Families talk about the Head Start program with joy, and they love being in the program, so in rural communities we have to embrace that role as the compass for families. Not to intervene, but to partner with them in raising their families, to help show them the way in the face of toxic stress.”

–Missouri Head Start program director¹

Nome, Alaska, situated on Alaska’s west coast near the Arctic Circle, boasts postcard-worthy views of the state’s wilderness and is the finish line for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.² It is also home to nearly 4,000 residents and serves as the hub for nearby Kawerak Head Start, a grantee that operates 11 centers across the Seward Peninsula and Saint Lawrence Island.³ Their Head Start programs are the only early education options in the region, serving about 240 Alaska Native children from remote villages and towns.⁴

Serving young children and families in remote areas requires creativity, as it comes with serious challenges.⁵ Supplies, food, and sometimes even staff must be flown out to these isolated communities weekly, which drives up costs. Accordingly, remote rural Alaskans are accustomed to paying more for necessities—even more than other Alaskans pay. Fuel must be shipped in on barges once each year; a gallon of milk can cost as much as 10 dollars; and village water systems can sometimes freeze up in the winter, forcing an entire town to use bottled water.⁶

Nevertheless, Kawerak Head Start has been able to make it work. Most of the region’s towns lack health service providers, so the program flies in a dentist, audiologist, and vision screener twice a year. But what may be typical expenses for the average Head Start program can be major expenses for Kawerak Head Start. Regular teacher trainings require flights to Anchorage, Alaska, which can cost $800 in addition to hotel and per diem costs. The harsh weather also takes its toll on program facilities and leaves some of Kawerak’s buildings in dire need of repair.⁷

While Kawerak Head Start is an extreme example, its budgetary challenges and community needs resemble those of many other rural Head Start programs. It also embodies the mission of Head Start: to provide comprehensive services to young children and their parents no matter the challenges that might entail. Across the country, Head Start provides early education and medical, dental, and family services in areas where few other providers exist, bringing necessary resources to families where they live and work.

The very parts of country life that many rural residents cherish most—the undisturbed wilderness, the vast open spaces, and the independent lifestyle—can present enormous challenges when it comes to early education and service delivery. Low population density means that local governments and nonprofits face funding challenges and service delivery may become very costly when great distances are involved. As a result, resources and public services in rural areas tend to be scarce.⁸

At the same time, child poverty has been persistently high in rural areas.⁹ Due to rural communities’ physical isolation, it is usually more difficult to deliver services such as education, nutrition, and health care to families struggling to make ends meet.

For more than 50 years, Head Start has delivered a broad set of services to these struggling communities. Head Start helps vulnerable children by providing a comprehensive array of educational, nutritional, dental, medical, and mental health services. The programs also foster parental engagement, offer parent trainings and workshops, and connect families with a variety of social services that counter the innumerable daily challenges of living without consistent access to basic necessities.

In recent years, the benefits of Head Start have become even more clearly defined. Children who participate in Head Start have improved social-emotional and cognitive development; show higher levels of school readiness; and are more likely to graduate from high school and attend college.¹⁰ Head Start has even demonstrated intergenerational benefits, with reductions in teen parenthood and criminal behavior and increases in high school graduation and college enrollment rates for the children of Head Start alumni.¹¹

Despite sometimes facing significant challenges, Head Start provides evidence-based, locally administered services to hundreds of thousands of rural children each year at one of the most critical stages of their development. This report assesses the scale and scope of Head Start in rural communities by analyzing Program Information Reports (PIR) from several thousand rural Head Start locations across the United States using geographic analysis tools to separate rural providers from their metropolitan counterparts as well as collecting insights via interviews with 20 rural Head Start administrators. For the purposes of this report, the authors use the general term “Head Start” to refer to the Early Head Start, Head Start, Migrant and Seasonal Head Start, and American Indian and Alaska Native Head Start programs. This report excludes Head Start locations in Puerto Rico and U.S. territories. (see Appendix for full methodological details)

This comprehensive assessment finds that without Head Start, many rural counties would be left without any child care centers.¹² Head Start currently operates programs in nearly every rural county in the United States and is often the sole service provider for families in remote communities suffering from persistent, deep poverty.¹³

Key findings from this report include:

• Head Start has centers in 86 percent of America’s 1,760 rural counties. (see Figure 2)
• In the 2015-2016 program year, rural Head Start programs enrolled more than 175,000 children, employed nearly 50,000 staff, and delivered family services to more than 110,000 families.
• Within a 10-state sample, this study finds that 1 out of every 3 rural child care centers is a Head Start program.
• Across those 10 states, CAP identifies 48 counties that would have no child care centers if not for Head Start.
• Despite higher poverty rates, fewer resources, and unique challenges, rural Head Start programs provide children with an evidence-based early education and connect families with critical services at rates similar to those of Head Start programs in metropolitan areas.

Rural Head Start programs help fill a crucial role in delivering educational, health, and parent education services to families with few other options for assistance. Furthermore, these programs are often the only high-quality early education programs in rural communities, which helps parents work the hours necessary to get back on their feet.

The United States is the wealthiest nation on earth, yet it ranks near the bottom of the world’s advanced economies in terms of child poverty—above only a few, significantly poorer countries.¹⁴ According to recent estimates, more than 1 in 5 children in the United States lived in households below the federal poverty line.¹⁵ American children currently comprise 23 percent of the overall population but represent 33 percent of those living in poverty.¹⁶

The nation’s youngest children—those under age 6—are more likely to experience poverty than any other age group.¹⁷ American families with young children have significantly lower incomes than similar households without children, or those in which children have reached school age.¹⁸ In the absence of policies that help cover the costs of parental leave, child care, or the everyday expenses that children bring, young parents are often strained by low wages, irregular hours, and household debt.¹⁹

These hardships are particularly acute for rural families, resulting in child poverty being significantly worse in rural areas than in metropolitan areas. By the definition of rural used in this report (see text box below), more than 29 percent of rural children under age 5 live in poverty, compared with 23 percent of young children in metropolitan counties.²⁰ (see Figure 3) Children living in rural areas are also more likely to experience deep poverty, which for a family of four means living on an income of less than $1,000 per month.²¹ This study finds that young children in rural counties are 37 percent more likely to live in deep poverty than their metropolitan peers.²²

Head Start plays a critical role in mitigating the effects of poverty for children and families in rural areas. The experience of poverty can cause toxic stress, meaning that both children and their families need added supports.²³ In low-density rural areas, however, these resources may be hard to find or many miles away. Head Start has been designed to be geographically dispersed and to connect families with a variety of wraparound services in addition to high-quality early education.²⁴

Although Head Start plays an important role in helping rural families, there is a dearth of research on how Head Start programs in rural areas serve families when compared with overall Head Start service rates. The limited research on rural early education shows that children in rural America are less likely to attend early childhood education programs. One study found that 34 percent of children in the most rural census tracts entered kindergarten without any prior preschool participation, compared with only 24 percent in nonrural areas.²⁸ Another major study noted that “research on Head Start and related educational programs for low-income children has historically focused almost exclusively on low-income, urban environments.”²⁹

This report explores the critical role that Head Start plays in rural areas using findings from analyses of data from the 2015-16 Head Start Program Information Report and interviews with rural Head Start administrators. (see Appendix)

This section outlines findings from an original analysis of Head Start in rural areas. The section first presents data on the number of children enrolled and staff employed in rural Head Start programs. It then highlights the important role that Head Start fills in the supply of center-based child care in rural child care deserts. Finally, it presents findings on the scale and scope of comprehensive health and family services delivered to rural families through Head Start and compares service delivery rates among rural and metropolitan programs.

Enrollment and staffing

In the 2015-2016 program year there were 177,249 federally funded Head Start slots across 10,165 classrooms in rural counties. This accounts for about one-fifth of total Head Start enrollment in the United States. (see Table A2 in the Appendix for Head Start enrollment by state and rural status) Compared with metropolitan areas, in rural areas, Head Start serves a larger share of the population of children under age 6.

Head Start employs nearly 50,000 staff in rural areas. Well over a quarter—29 percent—of staff in rural Head Start classrooms are current or former parents. This is significantly greater than the just one-fifth—20 percent—of staff in metropolitan area classrooms.

Head Start in rural child care deserts

“If not for Head Start, there would be a lot of families that wouldn’t be able to get training, go to school, or look for jobs because there’s nowhere for their kids to stay.”

–Mississippi Head Start advocate³⁰

In a prior 22-state investigation of licensed child care supply, CAP found that small towns and rural areas with below-average median family incomes faced the deepest shortage of child care. These areas, referred to in the research as child care deserts, are home to approximately 3 in 5 rural Americans.³¹ These findings prompted the question of whether Head Start is potentially working to fill a gap in available quality child care for these undersupplied communities.

Many rural families living below the federal poverty line are working families. Fifty-five percent of rural Head Start children have at least one employed parent.³² (see Table A4) Interviews with rural Head Start administrators repeatedly confirmed that while most Head Start parents are working, many are working low-wage jobs, often with nontraditional or inconsistent hours.³³ As one Kansas director explained, “Quality child care is difficult for our families to find. Most families work; they work low-paying jobs, often not full time. [This is a] major challenge for families.”³⁴

These findings align with much of the research literature, which finds that rural families have unique child care needs.³⁵ Often there are very few quality child care options within a reasonable distance, and parents resort to using unlicensed care that is not regularly inspected.³⁶ While Head Start provides localized services that match community needs, the program boasts evidence-based quality standards that must be implemented regardless of location.³⁷ According to one Missouri Head Start director, “there are two counties [in the region] where there is no licensed child care. Even when they are operating legally, the standards are not up to the Head Start quality.”³⁸

For families living paycheck to paycheck, any quality child care options would likely be unaffordable, even with state child care subsidies, which usually only cover a portion of the child care bill.³⁹ Finding qualified teachers and staff also poses a significant challenge for rural programs and could contribute to the dearth of child care in rural areas.

CAP’s analysis of a 10-state sample reveals that Head Start programs represent approximately one-third of the center-based child care supply in these states’ rural counties. In terms of child care slots, rural Head Start programs in these 10 states represent 22 percent of the overall child care capacity, even when including home-based care. To conduct this portion of the analysis, this study examined 739 rural counties across 10 states, comprising 40 percent of the rural population of the United States. These 10 states have the highest number of rural counties among the states with publicly available data on child care locations. (see Methodology)

Since Head Start mostly serves 3- and 4-year-olds, the authors compared Head Start supply to center-based child care supply. This is because a majority of parents prefer center-based care for their 3- and 4-year-olds.⁴⁰ Among the 739 rural counties studied, there were nearly 1,900 Head Start centers, while there were around 4,000 other child care centers.

The study also finds that, when excluding Head Start, one-quarter of the rural counties in the 10-state sample have either zero or only one child care center. These underserved rural counties would have almost no child care centers available to families were it not for Head Start. In fact, across these undersupplied rural counties, Head Start accounts for more than 70 percent of the center-based child care supply—252 Head Start providers versus 103 non-Head Start child care centers.

Head Start fills an especially large gap in very remote rural counties, sometimes referred to as “frontier counties.”⁴¹ Using USDA-ERS rural-urban codes 8 and 9 to identify frontier counties, the authors analyzed the supply of licensed center-based care versus Head Start locations. Among the frontier counties contained in this 10-state sample, Head Start programs represent nearly half of the center-based child care supply.⁴² (see Figure 4)

This analysis identifies 48 counties in the sample in which Head Start was the only center-based child care provider.⁴³ These counties, which are spread across 9 of the 10 states in the sample, can be found in the Appendix. It is not hyperbole to say that without Head Start, there would be no child care centers to educate and care for young children in these counties.

All Head Start providers must meet high-quality federal standards that encompass children’s cognitive, socio-emotional, and physical development, which means that in areas with few other child care options, Head Start is often the highest-quality preschool in rural areas.⁴⁴ This assessment is backed up by the fact that the Head Start Impact Study report—the gold-standard evaluation of the program—found that Head Start’s largest and longest-lasting positive effects were concentrated among rural providers. The 2010 study found that 3-year-olds who attend Head Start programs in rural areas experienced significant and longer-lasting cognitive benefits and greater socio-emotional development than their urban peers.⁴⁵ It is possible that Head Start had this outsized impact in rural areas due to shortages of high-quality alternatives to rural Head Start, whereas metropolitan areas feature a greater number of high-quality alternatives. The results of this analysis align with that hypothesis.

Comprehensive services

“One of the things that is important about Head Start is the family approach. If there are issues that are keeping that family from reaching their full potential, Head Start connects people with the local and sometimes state resources to improve their situation.”

–Mississippi Head Start advocate⁴⁶

Head Start is a two-generation program, meaning that it targets services to both low-income children and their parents to promote family wellbeing. Particularly for families in underserved rural areas, Head Start may be the first point of contact with trained service providers who can make referrals to community resources.

In the 2015-2016 program year, 68 percent of rural Head Start families received some type of family service through Head Start. (see Table 2) This includes services such as parenting education, job training, and substance abuse prevention.