August 9, 2026

Family educator Lisa Benson-Nuyen addresses her students in a circle in the Northern Lights classroom at the Meadow Lakes CCS Early Learning, a Head Start center, in Wasilla, Alaska, in 2024. The center has since closed because of a lack of staff and money.
AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson

Head Start could be in for a major makeover, NPR Ed’s Sequoia Carrillo reports.

The Trump administration is proposing a rewrite of the 133-page standards that make it so that Head Start care — federal childcare for children from low-income families — from coast to coast is the same. It governs a host of details, including, as Sequoia discovered, that the toddlers in Head Start care must brush their teeth at least once a day with fluoride toothpaste.

All those regulations, however, are unnecessary, according to the Trump administration. In a massive proposal that began accepting public feedback late last week, the administration says new Head Start rules should largely be set by states. It also says parents should have more say in what goes on in Head Start classrooms. The proposal says administrative costs should be capped more sharply too, and the resulting savings would be reinvested into the program to serve hundreds of thousands more children.

Advocates and childcare experts aren’t so sure that all the changes are in the best interest of children.

“Head Start makes a promise to a family — that their child will be safe, healthy and ready for school,” said Yasmina Vinci, executive director of the National Head Start Association advocacy group. That promise is the same in rural Montana as it is in Baltimore. We will read every page of this proposal against whether it keeps that promise or quietly lets it go.” (NHSA Deputy Director Tommy Sheridan spoke with Sequoia and NPR’s Here and Now about the proposal.)

Along with proposing to shrink regulations, however, came new proposals related to what kids eat at Head Start centers and how much physical activity they should get — and where that activity should take place.

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What’s it like to be an education reporter at NPR? “I am 6-foot-5 and 200 pounds. I do not blend in, especially in younger classrooms.” That’s NPR Ed’s Cory Turner, recounting some of his adventures in education reporting. So when he's recording in these classes, he has a special technique.

“I tend to, like, scoot around on the ground with my microphone. I crawl around. The kids think it's hilarious. But it also wins them over.”

Cory has spent a lot of time in K-12 classrooms, but he’s also developed expertise in student loans and other higher education topics. Be sure to listen as he recalls how an investigation with another NPR reporter righted a wrong for thousands of teachers whose grants turned into loans.

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Good reads and listens...

From prison to grad school: With an assist from Pell Grants available (again) to people who are incarcerated, more people have access, and financing, for college. At Pelican Bay State Prison in California, that meant access to classes and degrees from Cal Poly Humboldt. Arthur Monarque became the first student at Pelican Bay to earn a bachelor's degree that way, NPR member station Jefferson Public Radio reports. Now, after serving his 10-year sentence, he’s headed to Wake Forest University on a full scholarship to pursue his master’s degree.

New posters for the first day of school: This NPR video short captures what’s just been hung on the walls in some Louisiana classrooms. A lawsuit couldn’t stop it. Watch to find out.

Camp Widjiwagan in Ely, Minn., submerged some of their canoes in lake waters to protect them from the wildfires.
YMCA of the North

It’s still a (hot, smoky, very rainy) summer break for some kids though. This generation of school-aged kids has already dealt with the isolation of COVID-19, the global pandemic that forced students to work from home, NPR’s Ava Berger reports. Now, they're up against extreme weather.

E-bike (and scooter) injuries are on the rise for kids and teens, and bike helmets don’t do enough to protect kids on these much faster vehicles. “The injuries are of a much more severe degree than the cuts and scrapes and bruises that we see from regular pedal-bike injuries,” pediatric surgeon Cornelia Griggs told NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe. “I think one thing that parents and kids and grandparents don't realize is that if you're on an e-bike that's going really fast, you really need to be wearing a full motorcycle helmet that covers all of the structures of the face.”

Instagram, Facebook's Meta must pay millions to address kids' mental health online: A New Mexico court has ordered Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta to pay $567 million to address harms to young people from its platforms in the second phase of a landmark trial, the Associated Press reports. The bulk of the money — $420 million — will be used for treatment services for young people. The rest will go toward awareness and prevention, screening services and other costs over the next five years.

Next-gen crabbers leverage social media to sell their catch: "There aren't many 18- to-30-year-olds left crabbing," says Jack Torney, 23, as he glides past a big catamaran at anchor and million-dollar-plus homes that dot the Maryland shoreline. "Most people my age don't see it as a full-time job. They'd rather work in an office building than be out on the water." To earn more for what he catches, he uses Facebook to sell directly to consumers from his driveway, NPR’s Frank Langfitt reports. One of Torney's contemporaries, Luke McFadden, 30, has taken that model to extraordinary levels: He's become a social media star with more than 3 million followers.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Khalib Townsend, 7, meets with his mentor and conservation scientist Keith Russell at the Audubon Discovery Center in Philadelphia.
Beck Harlan for NPR

NPR Ed’s Janet Woojeong Lee asked 7-year-old Khalib Townsend, of Philadelphia, that very question.

It’s one so many kids are asked. Most don’t have an answer. But Khalib did. And Janet wanted to keep that spark alive.

So she made it her mission to connect him with someone right in his city who could deepen his interest, and possibly inspire a career. Read and listen to see what happened. 🐦

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