Introduction
What About Existing Screening and Assessment Practices?
Communicate with Parents
Communicate with Your Local Education Agency Partners
References
THE HEAD START NATIONAL REPORTING SYSTEM (NRS) will
be a focus of attention this year as your staff and families learn
more about its purpose and procedures and how NRS data will contribute
to the continuous improvement of Head Start programs.
As the NRS is introduced, programs will need to understand
how it will relate to other Head Start program activities designed
to collect information on child progress, including those used in
identifying and serving children with disabilities and their families.
This article should stimulate discussion and planning within
your Head Start program about what the NRS will mean for
children with disabilities and their families and the importance
of clear communication with Head Start staff, families, and community
partners.
The NRS will inform local program managers and the
Administration for Children and Families (ACF) about the
progress groups of Head Start children make in the year prior to
kindergarten on the skills and knowledge important to early
school success.
What About Existing Screening and
Assessment Practices?
THE NRS WILL NOT REPLACE SCREENING or ongoing assessment
required by the Program Performance Standards. Your screening
approach remains the first step in a systematic approach to identifying
children who may need further evaluation to determine
whether they have disabilities (see Figure 1). Your ongoing
assessment of children provides the depth and context for making
instructional decisions for individual children and groups of
children. (For more information on this subject, refer to "How
Screening and Assessment Practices Support Quality Disabilities
Services in Head Start," Head Start Bulletin, April 2001,
No. 70.
The
NRS is not expected to generate a child's profile or progress records
for planning instruction or interventions for
individual children. Rather, the information generated by the
NRS will be used to understand the progress of groups of Head Start children.
It can be helpful in designing classroom and program level interventions
to improve and sustain
children's progress in certain areas just as the local outcomes
process does in other areas. And, since children with disabilities
are included in every Head Start program, a report on
their progress should be included in the NRS results.
The NRS is being designed
and field-tested to assure that, to the greatest extent possible, it
can record progress for every
Head Start child in the year prior to kindergarten enrollment,
including more than 10% of Head Start children who have a
disability. The commitment to include children with disabilities in the
NRS is consistent with the obligations of local education agency partners
(LEAs) responsible for implementing the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The
Reauthorization of IDEA specifies that children with disabilities
should be included in state and local efforts to measure educational
outcomes for children. To exclude children with disabilities
from these assessments would reduce expectations and
accountability for their progress. Similarly in Head Start, efforts
to report child progress include all children.
It is important to remember
that most Head Start children with disabilities participate in the same
learning experiences as their peers, receiving any additional supports
they need to address the objectives in their Individualized Education Program
(IEP). Therefore, it is appropriate that the NRS assessments provide
children with disabilities the opportunity to display the
progress they make during their Head Start experience.
Information about the progress of groups of children with disabilities
will help us understand how we are preparing them for
early school success.
Some Head Start children with disabilities
may, because of their disability, require appropriate modifications to
participate
in the NRS assessment. For example, a child with a vision
impairment may need to use enlarged print materials to permit a
valid assessment. Any such modification would follow guidelines
provided by the NRS project. This attention to the standardized
procedures helps assure that modifying the task does not significantly
change the nature or difficulty of the item and that the
measure of this child's progress is comparable to that reported
for other children in the program.
Finally, there may be a few Head Start
children with more significant disabilities for whom some or all of the
NRS battery could not be administered, even with appropriate modifications.
An example might be a child with autism who has not yet developed
the communication skills to complete the NRS assessment,
even when appropriate modifications are provided such as more
time for responses or frequent breaks. In such a case, where the
NRS instrument would not permit a valid measure of progress,
the NRS project will advise on an alternative means to record
information on this child's progress. It is important to remember
that for a child who may not complete the NRS assessment,
their ongoing assessment, using methods appropriate to determine
the child's progress on objectives contained in the IEP, will
still be available to describe their progress.
It is important to emphasize
that the introduction of the NRS cannot reduce your program's commitment
to recruit and
enroll children who most need the Head Start program, including
children with significant disabilities. It would be inappropriate
for a Head Start program to avoid enrolling any child because of concerns
about how well the child might perform on the NRS or on other assessments
of progress conducted
locally or nationally. The progress that Head Start children
with disabilities make toward their IEP objectives— even if these
accomplishments are not captured in the NRS measures— are
important outcomes of their Head Start
participation.
Communicate with Parents
THE ACTIVE AND INFORMED PARTICIPATION of parents
in their child's Head Start experiences requires programs to thoroughly
orient parents. This would include clear descriptions of the
assessment, how NRS results will be reported and used, and
the confidentiality and informed consent procedures that
will be implemented. For parents of children with disabilities,
this may require some additional attention to assure they fully
understand how NRS procedures and results are distinct from
the evaluations and progress reports associated with their
child's IEP.
Communicate with Your Local Education
Agency Partners
IN YOUR PROGRAM'S ONGOING COMMUNICATION with your local
education agency partners, it would be helpful for your staff to
introduce the NRS procedure and goals to the appropriate LEA personnel.
This
is an opportunity to clarify that the NRS will be used to provide information
on the progress of groups of Head Start
children and will not provide information on an individual
child's progress. As described above, ongoing assessment results
and the monitoring of progress on the IEP are the information
sources for transition planning for individual children.
Explore what your school partners may have
underway to improve early reading instruction for preschool children.
There
is an increased expectation that early, evidence-based interventions
can prevent many more instances of reading failure (Snow,
Burns, & Griffin 1998). Improving children's early reading success
can help more children escape a cycle of frustration, diminished
motivation, and poor performance that often results in
their being identified as needing special education in the primary
grades.
REFERENCES
Snow, C. E., S. E. Burns, & P. Griffin, eds. 1998. Preventing
reading difficulties in young children. Washington, D. C.:
National Academy Press. Also available at
search.nap.edu/readingroom/books/reading/#sum
Jim O'Brien is Program Specialist, Health and Disabilities Branch,
Head Start Bureau. T: 202-205-8646, E: jobrien@acf.hhs.gov.
