Appendix B

PRELIMINARY HEAD START CHILD OUTCOMES AND INDICATORS
DECEMBER, 1999

Notes of Explanation:

As an initial summary of Head Start child outcomes, this chart integrates elements from Head Start's Performance Measures and provisions related to child outcomes from Head Start's 1998 reauthorization legislation. Legislative provisions are indicated by bold typeface.
This chart is designed to stimulate program planning for systems of assessing, tracking, and using data on key domains of child development and learning. Accordingly, it does not include other key aspects of Head Start quality and outcomes such as strengthening families, providing high quality, comprehensive services, and effective management systems. It is expected that existing grantee management and self-assessment systems are adequately tracking these other key aspects of program functioning.
In order to reflect Head Start's commitment to and Performance Standards on comprehensive, well-balanced curriculum and child development services, the Head Start Bureau is developing additional indicators for the full range of child outcomes, which will be included in a subsequent version of this chart.

CHILD DEVELOPMENT OUTCOMES	INDICATORS
1. Head Start children demonstrate improved emergent literacy, numeracy, and language skills	Indicators of children's emergent literacy, such as: Develop phonemic and print awareness Know that letters of the alphabet are a special category of visual graphics that can be individually named; Recognize a word as a unit of print; Identify at least 10 letters of the alphabet; and Associate sound with written words Develop and demonstrate an appreciation of books Indicators of children's language skills, such as: Understand and use language to communicate for various purposes In the case of non-English background children, progress toward the acquisition of the English language Understand and use increasingly complex and varied vocabulary. Indicators of children's numerical skills such as developing numeracy awareness.
2. Head Start children demonstrate improved general cognitive skills.	Indicators to be developed.
3. Head Start children demonstrate improved gross and fine motor skills	Indicators to be developed.
4. Head Start children demonstrate improved positive attitudes toward learning.	Indicators to be developed, such as children's initiative, attitudes towards learning and task mastery.
5. Head Start children demonstrate improved social behavior and emotional well-being.	Indicators to be developed such as children's positive social behavior, rates of behavior problems, and social interaction with peers.
6. Head Start children demonstrate improved physical health.	Indicators to be developed such as the extent to which children experience normal height and weight growth rates.