A Vision of Quality and Accountability for Head Start

With the beginning of the 21st century, the Head Start program enters an era of increased accountability for both resources and outcomes. Building on more than 35 years of experience and success in providing comprehensive services to the nation's poorest children and their families, Head Start continues in its roles as a national laboratory and leader for the entire field of early childhood education. In these roles, Head Start has assumed the challenges of improving the quality of educational experiences provided for young children and increasing accountability for the public expenditures and trust that have been placed in it.

Quality and accountability can best be improved when administrators, education managers, Early Literacy Mentor-Coaches (ELMCs), teachers, home visitors, other staff, and parents:

understand the program's goals for children's learning and development—specifically, the outcomes they want children to achieve;
articulate plans for helping children achieve those outcomes through well-designed curricula and effective teaching strategies;
evaluate children's learning and developmental progress through ongoing assessment; and
use the results of assessment of child progress and classroom practices to support each child's learning and development for continuous program improvement.

The 1998 reauthorization of Head Start by Congress requires programs to demonstrate that children make progress on specific learning outcomes. To ensure that practices in Head Start reflect the most current research about child development and learning and to ensure the continued comprehensive approach that is the hallmark of the program, the Head Start Bureau developed the Child Outcomes Framework. The Framework provides, for the first time in Head Start's history, a set of consistent, research-based, developmentally appropriate outcomes for preschoolers in Head Start.

The Framework incorporates the legislatively mandated (required) outcomes within a comprehensive set of learning and developmental goals for preschool-aged children. These long-term goals are referred to as Domains. There are 8 general Domains: Language Development; Literacy; Mathematics; Science; Creative Arts; Social & Emotional Development; Approaches to Learning; and Physical Health & Development. (See the Head Start Child Outcomes Framework with the 4 mandated Domain Elements and 9 mandated Indicators noted by a star *.)

Head Start is built on the principle that the areas of children's development and learning are all important and interrelated. The program's long history of attention to children's physical and mental health, social and emotional well-being must continue. However, Head Start programs can and should do more to support children's cognitive development, especially to significantly boost language development and to help preschoolers acquire the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that predict later success in reading, writing, and mathematics.

Beginning in Fall 2003, all 4- and 5-year-olds in Head Start, including children with disabilities and English Language Learners, will be assessed on specific language, literacy, and numeracy outcomes. They will be assessed again in the Spring before they go to Kindergarten. This new accountability system is referred to as the National Reporting System (NRS). (See …the Guide for an overview of the NRS and the Head Start Bulletin on Child Outcomes (July 2003/Issue 76).

Head Start continues to be a comprehensive child development program with the ultimate goals of enhancing social competence and school readiness in preschool children from low-income families. Programs must comply with the Head Start Program Performance Standards (2002) because meeting the Program Performance Standards provides the context in which children are most likely to achieve positive learning outcomes, social competence, and school readiness. In short, Head Start needs to continue what it has been doing well, while at the same time, Head Start needs to take some new and different steps.

Why emphasize educational quality in Head Start?

Head Start needs to place more emphasis on promoting school readiness for several reasons. First, there is new research and knowledge that indicate children are capable of learning more in the early years than was previously assumed (Bowman, Donovan, & Burns 2001). For example, children who enter kindergarten with certain kinds of knowledge and skill in early literacy are more likely to succeed in reading later on. Even more important, children who are severely lacking in these areas are more likely to experience difficulties in learning to read (Snow, Burns, & Griffin 1998).

Several major reviews of current research provide a strong knowledge base and rationale for each Domain of the Child Outcomes Framework and for the practices recommended here. These include extensive reviews by the National Research Council of the National Academies: Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (Snow, Burns, & Griffin 1998), From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development (Shonkoff & Phillips 2000), Eager to Learn: Educating Our Preschoolers (Bowman, Donovan, & Burns 2001), and Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn Mathematics (Kilpatrick, Swafford, & Findell 2001). In addition, The Child Mental Health Foundations and Agencies Network (FAN) reviewed research on social and emotional development in A Good Beginning: Sending America’s Children to School with the Social and Emotional Competence They Need to Succeed (FAN 2000).

Further impetus to focus on educational quality comes from the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) (ACYF 2001). This study found that while children are making significant progress in some areas such as vocabulary and pre-writing during the Head Start year, they are not improving in others, such as letter identification and knowledge of print conventions which are strong predictors of later reading success. The FACES research also finds that classroom quality is linked to child outcomes. All Head Start programs should be achieving maximal gains for children and families.

Many research studies indicate that achievement gaps continue to persist between children from low-income families and children from middle-class families. Professionals and parents are concerned about these disparities in children’s achievement. These gaps are evident as early as kindergarten entry (West, Denton, & Germino-Hausken 2000). Therefore, interventions at kindergarten may not be sufficient for some children. It is necessary that preschool programs, including Head Start, begin to close that gap.

In conclusion, the Child Outcomes Framework is an important step that Head Start is taking to close the achievement gap and prepare disadvantaged children for school. It provides a consistent set of goals for all Head Start preschoolers that will promote their overall development and their school success. Each Head Start program needs to align its specific curriculum and assessment tools with the Child Outcomes Framework to ensure that children make progress toward the expected goals.