Head Start grants target schools serving low-income families, particularly those living on reservations, inner-cities, and migratory-labor communities. In addition to more traditional educationally-focused programs, the grants are intended to provide social, health, and nutritional needs. Parents are encouraged to actively participate in the programs supported by the grants.
Early Reading First grants attempt to provide language-rich environments to low-income children. The grants are intended to provide books, learning materials, and other programs that encourage kids to learn to read and to incorporate reading into their leisure activities. Support materials include teacher-lead activity plans designed to introduce reading to children.
These grants are available not only to schools and nurseries but also to organizations creating educational materials that they wish to provide to educational institutions. Emphasis can be placed on any number of educational activities such as reading or math. The grant focuses on the production of material for early elementary and preschool children to be used both in school and at home.
The objective of the Foreign Language Assistance grants is to foster language acquisition in public primary and secondary schools. These grants offer more individual school program development since the goal is on foreign language acquisition as it best fits the needs to each school's student body. The foreign language taught is at the discretion of the school, with some limitations.