Head Start Grant Recompetition: Early Implementation Results Suggest Opportunities for Improvement

The Head Start program is the largest Federal investment in early childhood education. The Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act of 2007 required ACF to begin awarding 5-year grants for Head Start and to require grantees that ACF determines are not providing a high-quality and comprehensive Head Start program to "recompete"-i.e., to participate in open competition for funding renewal. In response, ACF began in 2012 to implement the Designation Renewal System (DRS). The DRS uses seven "trigger conditions" to assess a subset of grantees (known as a cohort) each year and determine which grantees will be required to recompete. These changes are intended to improve the quality of grantees receiving Head Start funds. However, stakeholders have raised concerns about the efficacy and fairness of this process.