Nine research sessions disappeared from the agenda of one of the nation’s most important early childhood education conferences less than a week before it was set to begin, after an unprecedented intervention by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the conference’s sponsor.
The cuts affected nearly a fifth of the 48 sessions of the three-day program. National Early Childhood Research Conference in Arlington, Virginia, is scheduled to begin tomorrow.
The researchers said they were informed by email on June 16 that their sessions had been removed during HHS’s final review of the conference agenda. The cancellations are unusual because the presentations had been selected months earlier through a peer review process after proposals were submitted last fall. Presenters were only told that “multiple revisions were required” as part of the department’s permitting process. A significantly revised conference agenda was released on June 17, replacing the old one.
The last-minute deletions rattled researchers in the field, many of whom said they had never seen accepted conference sessions pulled so close to the start date of a major meeting. The canceled presentations cover topics ranging from child care licensing and kindergarten transitions to infant mental health and social-emotional development.
“It has been deeply disappointing and disheartening,” said Lieny Jeon, an associate professor at the University of Virginia, whose session on improving the early childhood workforce was among those scrapped. “We value opportunities to share evidence that can inform policy and practice, and it has been disheartening to see these opportunities taken away unexpectedly. »
A canceled session examined the state’s efforts to expand access to early childhood education. Another study focused on the administrative burdens faced by child care providers. A third focused on collecting evidence of “continuous quality improvement” in early childhood programs — an ironic casualty, given the Trump administration’s stated desire to bring more business know-how to the public sector.
The canceled sessions included nearly 40 presenters from universities, nonprofit research organizations, and government agencies, including Yale University, the University of Alabama, Child Trends, the Urban Institute, the Office of Head Start at HHS, and several state early childhood agencies.
Researchers who asked HHS for clarification on why their panels were canceled said they received none. In a response reviewed by the Hechinger Report, conference organizers told researchers that the HHS authorization process was “complete,” that the agenda was “final” and that they could provide “no additional information.” Canceled researchers were nevertheless encouraged to attend the conference.
HHS and its early childhood division, the Administration for Children and Families, which sponsors the conference, did not respond to questions over the weekend about why the sessions were scrapped or what criteria was used.
The cancellations fueled concerns about political interference in research, although no clear trend emerged among the deleted sessions. Some involved Head Start, the federal preschool program that the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation proposed eliminating in its 2025 plan for the Trump administration. Others discussed bilingual education and social-emotional learning, two frequent targets of conservative activists. Yet similar topics remain on the agenda, making it difficult to identify a coherent rationale. A session on improving home visits for Native American families also remains on the agenda.
Several researchers said they were reluctant to publicly criticize the administration because it depends on federal grants or works for institutions that receive federal funds.
The conference occupies an unusual place in the educational research landscape. Held every two years, it is one of the most important meetings in the field, known for bringing together research luminaries and involving policy makers in discussions. Because the conference is federally funded, attendance is free, attracting early childhood educators, creating a rare forum for direct exchange between researchers and practitioners.
The conference falls under HHS because Head Start and other early childhood welfare programs remained within the federal Health and Human Services bureaucracy when the Department of Education was created in 1979.
This year’s conference was already noticeably different from previous gatherings. Topics such as immigrant children and systemic racism, which have attracted the attention of the Trump administration, were absent from the program even before the latest cancellations.
“I think everyone, in writing their proposals, probably knew that they needed to proactively sanitize their language,” said Kate Zinsser, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago who was not affected by the cancellations but plans to attend the conference and has been in contact with the canceled researchers. “But these are not radical sessions, these are seemingly mundane research presentations that are subject to this kind of scrutiny and censorship.”
Contact staffwriter Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal or barshay@hechingerreport.org.
This story on early childhood education research was produced byThe Hechinger reportan independent, nonprofit news organization that covers education. Register for Proof pointsand othersHechinger Newsletters.
The article HHS Cuts Nearly One-Fifth of Early Childhood Research Conference Sessions appeared first in the Hechinger Report.
