ACYF Administration on Children, Youth and Families	U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES Administration for Children and Families
	1. Log No. ACYF-IM-HS-00-03	2. Issuance Date: 01/31/00
	3. Originating Office: Head Start Bureau
	4. Key Word: Child Outcomes, Performance Measures, Program Self-Assessment

INFORMATION MEMORANDUM [See Attachments at the bottom]

TO: Head Start Grantee and Delegate Agencies

SUBJECT: Initial Guidance on New Legislative Provisions on Performance Standards, Performance Measures, Program Self-Assessment and Program Monitoring

INFORMATION: The purpose of this Memorandum is to inform grantees about legislative changes on program outcomes, accountability and program improvement in the 1998 Head Start Reauthorization. These requirements, applicable to all Head Start grantees serving three to five year old children, build on and expand our current efforts to improve and document program quality and effectiveness.
Specifically, this Memo has three purposes:

• To clarify the relationship between new legislative provisions and current Head Start policies and management systems.
• To describe current Head Start Bureau initiatives to support implementation of these provisions.
• To provide guidance on initial steps for implementing these new requirements in local Head Start programs.

RELATIONSHIP OF NEW LEGISLATIVE PROVISIONS AND EXISTING HEAD START POLICIES AND SYSTEMS

Since its inception Head Start's primary mission has been to prepare children for success in school and local programs have worked hard to meet high standards in serving children and families. Local Head Start management teams, governing boards, Policy Councils, training and technical assistance providers, and federal staff have cooperated in implementing a variety of carefully planned series of initiatives to improve program quality and outcomes. The following four new mandates complement these ongoing efforts by introducing a new emphasis on assessing, tracking and utilizing data on program and child outcomes to enhance Head Start program effectiveness.

1. PERFORMANCE STANDARDS
Legislative Provision: Section 641A(a)(1)(B)(ii) establishes additional education performance standards as follows:" to ensure that the children participating in the program, at a minimum (I) develop phonemic, print, and numeracy awareness, (II) understand and use language to communicate for various purposes; (III) understand and use increasingly complex and varied vocabulary; (IV) develop and demonstrate an appreciation of books; and (V), in the case of non-English background children, progress toward the acquisition of the English language."

• Current Performance Standard 1304.21 requires that Head Start programs provide a child development and education approach that prepares children to succeed in their present and future school and life environments. The current Standards also include specific requirements for supporting emerging literacy, numeracy, and language development through a well-planned and carefully implemented curriculum.
• Current Head Start Performance Standards also require that programs administer developmental screenings (1304.21(b)(1) and base strategies to support children's learning on ongoing observations and assessment of each child (1304.21(c)(2).
• Accordingly, the new education performance standards fit well in the context of existing standards and long-standing grantee implementation efforts while providing additional focus on assessment of more specific indicators of children's literacy, numeracy and language skills.

2. PERFORMANCE MEASURES
Legislative Provision: Section 641A(b) establishes additional results-based performance measures as follows: "results-based performance measures shall include education performance measures that ensure that children participating in Head Start programs (A) know that the letters of the alphabet are a special category of visual graphics that can be individually named; (B) recognize a word as a unit of print; (C) identify at least 10 letters of the alphabet; (D) associate sounds with written words."

• In a developmental effort beginning in 1995, Head Start created our current framework of comprehensive performance measures, as shown in Appendix A, encompassing 5 overarching objectives and 24 performance measures. (The Head Start Performance Measures were discussed in Information Memoradum 98-19, 11/24/98). The five overall objectives reflect Head Start's philosophy and successful track record of promoting school readiness through a comprehensive, integrated set of strategies and services:
  • Objective I - Enhance children's healthy growth and development
  • Objective II - Strengthen families as the primary nurturers of their children.
  • Objective III - Provide children with educational, health, and nutritional services.
  • Objective IV - Link children and families to needed community services.
  • Objective V - Ensure well-managed programs that involve parents in decision-making.
• The primary initial mechanism for implementing the Performance Measures is the Family and Child Experiences Survey, (FACES), a longitudinal study of program quality and outcomes in a nationally-representative set of 40 Head Start programs.
• The four new performance measures established in Head Start's reauthorization legislation comprise additional indicators within the existing Performance Measure Objective I - Enhancing Children's Growth & Development and Performance and Indicator/Measure 1 "Head Start children demonstrate improved emergent literacy, numeracy, and language skills".

3. PROGRAM SELF-ASSESSMENT
Legislative Provision: Section 641A(b)(2)(B) requires that results-based performance measures "be adaptable for use in self assessment, peer review, and program evaluation of individual Head Start agencies and programs..".

• The current Performance Standards (1304.51(i)) require that each program, at least once per year, conduct a self-assessment to examine how the program is meeting its own goals and objectives and its success in implementing the Program Performance Standards and other federal regulations. The process must involve program parents, staff, and the community, and self-assessment results are intended to influence future program planning and continuous program improvement.
• This new legislative mandate calls for Head Start grantees and delegate agencies to augment their current self-assessment efforts by creating a system to track patterns of child and program outcomes and to use this information to inform program planning and improvement efforts.

4. PROGRAM MONITORING
Legislative Provisions: Section 641A(c)(2)(D) requires that program monitoring include "a review and assessment of program effectiveness, as measured in accordance with the results-based performance measures".

• Program monitoring currently examines grantee management systems and agency capacity to fully implement the Program Performance Standards and other federal regulations, including Standards related to curriculum, child assessment, program self-assessment, and program planning.
• The new legislative provisions will require the design, field-testing, and careful implementation of procedures to monitor grantee implementation of the new legislative mandates outlined above, as promulgated in appropriate regulations, so that program monitoring incorporates examination of how grantees are tracking and making use of data on child and program outcomes, as well as patterns of those outcomes.

HEAD START BUREAU PLANNING & SUPPORT EFFORTS
The Head Start Bureau has created a series of new efforts to support the successful implementation of these legislative provisions:

• A series of focus groups have been conducted with representatives of local grantees, higher education institutions, training and technical assistance providers, national experts, and ACF Regional Office staff. Focus group topics have included specific discussion of child assessment practices, outcomes-based accountability, and program self-assessment as well as a broader range of approaches to continuing to improve the quality of Head Start services to children and families.
• Head Start will continue the Family and Child Experiences Survey research effort as an ongoing national research effort to track and analyze connections between program quality and outcomes. While the FACES methodology is not directly adaptable for use by local programs, this ongoing initiative will generate lessons and tools to assist the Bureau in working with grantees and delegate agencies in implementing outcomes-based approaches to program self-assessment and monitoring.
• A new Child Development Work Group has formed to advise on the development of policies, plans and strategies to improve Head Start child development services and outcomes. The Work Group includes staff members from all units of the Head Start Bureau, each Regional Office, the Child Care Bureau and the Department of Education.
• A new Technical Work Group on Program Outcomes, comprised of Head Start staff and early childhood development and research experts, has been established and will provide ongoing advice and input on designing mechanisms and procedures for examining information on program effectiveness and results-based performance measures in program monitoring.
• The Head Start Bureau will be completing the following key tasks in the coming year, to set policies and design support for local grantee implementation and for monitoring this new aspect of Head Start management practice:
  • Head Start's Program Performance Standards will be amended to incorporate the new provisions from Head Start's legislation related to child and program outcomes and will be published as a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM).
  • We will develop a more comprehensive and balanced set of indicators of child outcomes, based on our existing set of performance standards, measures, as augmented by reauthorization provisions noted above. As shown in Appendix B, the Bureau will develop additional indicators of children's progress in the outcome areas of general cognitive skills, gross and fine motor skills, positive attitudes towards learning and physical health, to complement indicators from Head Start's legislation which focus on emergent literacy, numeracy, and language skills.
  • We will develop a statement of clear expectations for grantee implementation of outcomes-based program self-assessment, including principles related to child assessment, tracking and analysis of data on patterns of children's progress and outcomes, and utilizing information on child outcomes within program self-assessment systems.
  • We will create supportive guidance, resource materials and training and technical assistance to assist local implementation efforts.
  • We will develop materials, training and a plan for field-testing and phasing in the implementation of program monitoring on outcomes-based program self-assessment and on patterns of outcomes as an additional evidence of program quality and effectiveness.

INITIAL STEPS FOR LOCAL PROGRAMS
The following recommendations are provided to build a foundation for implementation of these new requirements:

• Programs should continue to fully implement Program Performance Standards at the highest levels of quality and consistency, to provide optimum outcomes for all children and families, and to ensure that implementation of outcomes-based accountability will show that Head Start is succeeding in our fundamental mission of enhancing school readiness
• Programs should discuss this initiative within their management team, and with program staff and parents, Policy Committees and Policy Councils, governing boards, and other relevant community groups and experts. These sessions should provide opportunity to solicit concerns, questions, and recommendations for local efforts to expand and improve child assessment and outcomes-based program improvement practices.
• Grantees should review their existing child assessment, program self-assessment and other key management systems related to child and program outcomes, including review of questions such as:
  • What are current practices regarding initial and ongoing assessment, observation and recording of each child's progress towards the goals staff and parents set for the child's development and learning? What is the level of satisfaction with current screening, observation, and assessment tools or instruments?
  • How are staff currently using information on children's progress and accomplishments to individualize curriculum and to communicate with parents?
  • How well do current child assessment systems and tools match with the areas of child outcomes contained in the Head Start Performance Measures and Head Start's legislation?
  • Are current child assessment systems a suitable basis for analyzing patterns of progress of groups of Head Start children and for systematic comparison of their levels of skills and capacities when they enter and complete a year of program services?
  • Are program managers currently using information on child and program outcomes for program planning, self-assessment or program improvement purposes?
• Grantees should become familiar with current or emerging school readiness assessment or early childhood outcomes initiatives in their state or communities that could provide opportunities for partnership efforts.
• Grantees should identify initial steps to improve and connect their current child assessment and program self-assessment practices and systems, and assess needs for assistance and support in areas such as staff and management training, technical assistance, materials, or new partnership efforts with research organizations or other sources of expertise.

/S/
Helen H. Taylor
Associate Commissioner
Head Start Bureau

Attachments:
Appendix A
Appendix B