ACF OPRE: Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES)

Section III

1.0 Introduction to Head Start Staff

1.1 Overview

For FACES, interviews were conducted with over 900 Head Start staff, including:

Center Directors (CD);
Classroom Teachers (CT)1;
Home Visitors (HV);
Family Service Workers (FSW);
Education Coordinators (EC);2
Parent Involvement Coordinators (PIC);
Social Service Coordinators (SSC); and
Health Coordinators (HC).

These interviews were intended to provide information about the background of Head Start staff; their activities, goals, and priorities; and their roles in providing services to children and families. Head Start Program Directors also participated in discussions regarding the influence of recent revisions of the Head Start Program Performance Standards and federal and state welfare reform regulations on the operations of their local programs.

In recent years, the Head Start program has taken steps to improve the professional qualifications of the staff directly serving children. Since 1993, additional funds have been allocated each year to each program grantee to increase salaries and benefits for staff, particularly classroom teachers. In addition, Congress established goals for classroom teacher qualifications in the 1998 reauthorization of the Head Start Act, requiring a significant increase in the percentage of teachers holding academic degrees. The interviews conducted for this project provide a profile of Head Start staff in transition to a more advanced level of professionalism.

Research Questions

The contents of the staff interviews were guided by research questions related to staff qualifications, goals, and implementation of the program:

All Staff

What are the levels of experience and education for Head Start staff in each position?
What are the amounts and types of training provided to staff over the course of a program year?
What are the internal program and external family and community factors that enhance or inhibit program/component effectiveness?

Center Directors

What strategies are in place for involving families in center activities and decision making roles?

Classroom Teachers

What are the relationships among program-based activities with parents and children and (a) family-child activities at home, (b) parent involvement, and (c) parent satisfaction with Head Start?

Center Directors and Classroom Teachers

What is the level and type of communication with parents? What is the level and type of parent participation in program activities? What are the barriers to full parent participation in the Head Start program?
What curricula are employed in classrooms? What activities are provided for children and how often are they provided? What are the most important elements of the program for children and parents?
What are the most important elements of the program for children and parents?

Component Coordinators and Family Service Workers

What are the staffing patterns and operational elements of each service component?
What are the primary goals and philosophy of each service component?
What community resources are available and how are they used by Head Start?

The staff interviews developed for FACES contained questions grouped around the topics displayed in Exhibit 1-1.

Exhibit 1-1

Contents of the Staff Interviews
Interview Section	Coordinators	FSW	CD	CT
Experience with Head Start	X	X	X	X
Educational background	X	X	X	X
In-service training (during the past year)	X	X	X	X
Program goals, philosophy, and priorities	X	X	X	X
Recruitment/enrollment	X	X	X
Parent involvement with the program	X	X	X	X
Contact and communication with parents		X	X	X
Male involvement with the program	X		X	X
Barriers to parent participation	X	X	X	X
Curriculum and classroom activities		X	X	X
Home visits	X	X	X	X
Community resources and needs	X	X	X	X

In addition, Component Coordinator interviews included sections related to the activities within those domains, such as child recruitment and enrollment (Social Service Coordinators), educational strategies (Education Coordinators), parent support activities (Parent Involvement Coordinators and Family Service Workers), the Parent Policy Councils (Parent Involvement Coordinators), health risks and health needs of children (Health Coordinators), and the Health Services Advisory Committee (Health Coordinators).

1.2 Organization of Section III

Section III contains a description of the elements of the interviews and results of analyses of the information obtained from Head Start staff. Chapter 2 of this section provides information relating to the data collection, including instrument development and pilot testing, data collection procedures and staff, and the strengths and limitations of the research database. Chapter 3 includes data on program staffing patterns, staff experience, education, and training, compensation and benefits, and the primary goals of Head Start staff regarding families and children. Chapter 4 contains information on recruitment and enrollment, strategies and priorities for involving parents in program activities, communication with parents, and perceived barriers to full parent participation in the program. In addition, Chapter 4 covers educational curricula, staff priorities for children’s experiences in the program, and classroom activities with children. The relationships between staff reports of program characteristics and parent reports of family-child activities in the home, parent involvement and parent satisfaction with the program are also presented.

1In some cases, a Classroom Teacher also served some of the administrative functions of a Center Director when a Center Director was not assigned to a center. Within this report, such teachers are referred to as Administrative Teachers.(back)

2Under revised Head Start Program Performance Standards implemented in 1998, these four component coordinator titles were discontinued, although the functions of these positions were retained and redistributed across staff. Interviews with the Component Coordinators were completed in spring, 1997.(back)

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