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Chapter VIII: Cross - Cutting Themes and Directions for Future Research
Previous chapters have described the extensive information that the Survey of Early Head Start Programs provides on fundamental aspects of the program—including characteristics of communities and families, services, management and staffing, and partnerships. The survey builds upon existing data from the Program Information Report, offering detailed quantitative and qualitative data on program operations and enrollment. It also highlights the wide range of services and experiences among current Early Head Start programs and offers a baseline for future inquiries on their operation and context.
In this chapter, we propose broad themes identified from survey data; in doing so, we review some of the key findings presented in previous chapters. We then suggest potential avenues for future research.
Cross-Cutting Themes
Several cross-cutting themes emerge from a broad examination of the survey findings. In identifying these themes, we pay special attention to areas of concurrence between the survey’s quantitative and qualitative data. We highlight connections that indicate key trends and challenges for Early Head Start programs.
- Community context, especially urbanicity, is associated to some extent with program services and management.
Survey data support the notion that program approaches and service offerings are associated with community context. As noted in Chapter VII, urban programs are more likely than suburban and rural ones to follow a center-based approach, while rural programs are most likely to implement a home-based model. Multiple approach programs make up about half of programs in each service area but are most prevalent in suburban areas. On the other hand, combination programs are low in prevalence overall, but are least likely to be in a suburban setting. In describing their reasons for choosing a particular approach, program leaders often mentioned efforts to meet the needs of local families (for example, by making child care available to parents who are working or in school). Program staff also noted such factors as parents’ access to transportation, or other limitations in local resources, when choosing a program model. Affiliation with a preschool Head Start program may also be a factor in choice of model; rural programs are most likely to be affiliated with a preschool Head Start program, but differences among programs across areas are not large.
Context also may be linked with program staffing, but the patterns in this area are less clear. Suburban programs seem most resource rich in general. They are the most likely to employ home visitors with an associate’s or higher degree, and they have the most access to specialists. Conversely, rural programs are the least likely to have these attributes. We caution that the suburban subgroup is made up of a small number of programs, and differences may be exaggerated as a result. However, it is also possible that programs in rural areas with limited labor pools find it more difficult to identify and hire well-qualified staff, and may have less access to specialists. The distinction between rural and other programs is not consistent across all types of staff, however; there is no notable difference in the credentials of primary caregivers in rural or urban programs.
Community demographics and patterns of family and community risk factors may be additional influences on hiring decisions. For example, programs in increasingly diverse communities tend to serve more racial/ethnic and language minority families. During site visits, managers of programs in such areas described their efforts to recruit and hire staff whose linguistic skills and ethnic background match those enrolled families.
These survey findings—that small, home-based, and rural programs have the least access to highly educated staff or specialists compared with larger, urban, multiple approach programs, may have implications for T/TA. Targeted T/TA and perhaps additional resources for small, home-based, rural programs may be warranted to support their efforts to hire and retain qualified staff.
- Early Head Start program work to serve families at high risk.
Families enrolled in Early Head Start present complex combinations of risk factors. Risks include children with identified disabilities, as well as families experiencing numerous simultaneous high risk characteristics and events, any one of which could present challenges to programs in providing services. Further complicating matters, the risk profile for a particular family can change—perhaps rapidly—over time.
Programs that serve many families in acute crisis were more likely to use a multiple service approach, suggesting that flexibility in the choice of approach may be important to serving them effectively. Further, these programs require staff with the skills and resources to cope with hard-to-serve families and deliver Early Head Start services. We might expect to see high rates of staff turnover, but found it does not differ across programs serving many high risk versus fewer high risk families. As described in Chapter VII, programs whose enrollment is characterized by many families with high psychological risks are more likely than other programs to employ mental health specialists. Evidently, programs have found ways to recruit and retain appropriate staff. However, given the prevalence of high risk families and the challenges they present, programs serving many such families may need continued and additional support, staff training, and technical assistance.
- Early Head Start programs are not static—as a group and individually, they change the mix of services they provide. They also experience transitions in staff and management structure, as well as in the characteristics of the families they serve.
Survey data provide some insight not only on Early Head Start programs’ current circumstances, but also on how they have changed. As noted in Chapter IV, about two-thirds of programs indicated they had made some change to program organization or program design since they began. Programs most often altered their organizational structure, but changes to program design were also frequent, with two-fifths of programs adding center-based services to their offerings, one-fifth adding home-based services, and one-tenth dropping home-based services. Such changes could be due to a variety of factors, including needs expressed by families, welfare reforms requiring families to work or attend school full-time, findings from the EHSREP evaluation that multiple approach programs had the broadest pattern of impacts, or a continued focus on individualizing and customizing services as programs mature. The movement toward multiple approaches observed in the EHSREP seems to have been maintained. This may be a response by programs to be able to flexibly meet the changing needs of families.
As with many providers of early childhood education, staffing changes and turnover are a common feature of Early Head Start programs. As noted in Chapter V, turnover at the director level is infrequent, with just over 1 in 10 programs experiencing a change in directors during the past year. However, turnover among frontline staff is higher: programs reported that about a quarter of all home visitors left their positions in the past year, and about one-fifth of all primary caregivers. (Compared with average staff turnover in early childhood programs, these rates might be considered moderate. According to state-level data compiled by the Center for the Child Care Workforce [2004], turnover rates among frontline early childhood staff typically range between 25 and 40 percent). However, staff transitions plainly create challenges for program directors and managers and have implications for the ability of children and families’ to form close relationships with staff.
Some programs operating in communities experiencing demographic shifts also report changes in the race/ethnicity of the populations they serve. For example, about one-fifth of programs serving Hispanic families indicated that the number of such families has increased substantially over the past five years. Such demographic changes have implications for the kinds of skills and cultural competencies that staff need.
- Many Early Head Start programs establish strong connections with other service providers, but some links appear to be easier to forge than others.
The Survey of Early Head Start Programs explores in detail the characteristics of program partnerships with other agencies, as well as the successes and challenges programs have experienced in developing such connections. Many programs have partnerships with Part C agencies, health care providers, and mental health providers. Partnerships for child development services are less common, however, and most programs provide all the services they offer directly. These patterns suggest that Early Head Start programs are especially likely to pursue organizational links that complement their own expertise and that offer the potential to address specific unmet family needs. It is also possible that creating partnerships for disability, health care, or similar services is a less complex process than establishing links for child development services, because programs with child care partnerships bear substantial responsibility for ensuring that such services meet performance standards. Interviews during site visits suggest that some staff feel the benefits of building partnerships for child care are not always worth the time and resources required.
Integration of Early Head Start and Head Start services could also be considered a process of establishing partnerships, though this often occurs within agencies. As with child care partnerships, programs appear to experience a mixed pattern of successes and challenges in creating connections. As described in Chapter III, a large majority of Early Head Start programs operate under the same agency auspices as preschool Head Start programs, but not all these programs offer seamless birth-to-5 services. Leaders of nearly half the Early Head Start programs receiving site visits cited their intention to integrate their services with preschool Head Start programs and described the progress they have made toward doing so. However, challenges to creating seamless services remain, such as (1) imbalances in enrollment levels between Early Head Start and Head Start programs, (2) addressing staff perceptions that they cannot learn the skills to work with older or younger children, and (3) the tension between offering continued services, birth through age 5, and fostering independence of families as well as serving more families.
- Early Head Start programs face the challenge of adapting to federal and state policies regarding whom they serve and employ.
As a means-tested (eligibility dependent upon income) government program, Early Head Start features requirements and eligibility criteria with which agencies receiving funding must comply. These requirements help ensure that the program maintains quality services and that it reaches those families who need its assistance most. However, policies at the federal and state levels also create challenges for Early Head Start programs as they try to provide continuous services and recruit and employ qualified staff.
Enrollments and transitions can be complicated by eligibility criteria under some circumstances. For instance, during site visits, some programs serving teen parents indicated that such parents are sometimes classified as “over income” because the income of their own parents’ is considered in determination of eligibility. Early Head Start children ready to transition to preschool may not qualify to continue receiving services through Head Start because of changes in family income since their initial enrollment. In such cases, alternatives for child care and family services must be identified. Early Head Start agencies also take into consideration the eligibility requirements of other programs, such as the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF). Subsidies provided with CCDF funds sometimes help fund child care slots at a partner center, for instance. Changes in parents’ eligibility for the subsidies can affect the stability of a child’s placement and the overall partnership.
Early Head Start programs are also subject to policies regarding minimum qualifications for staff. In many cases, however, a gap appears to exist between staff qualification requirements and availability of appropriately credentialed applicants. Programs may respond by prioritizing higher educational qualifications for some positions. For example, one possible reason that home visitors tend to have higher credentials than primary caregivers is programs’ intent to have more qualified people in positions that require greater staff independence. Programs may also respond to these requirements by investing resources to establish clear pathways for staff to enhance their credentials within the grace period defined under Head Start Program Performance Standards.
- Most Early Head Start programs have an MIS and many are using it to aggregate and track data at the program and individual levels.
Early Head Start programs have been encouraged to use data to improve service delivery for families and to target areas for staff training and support improvement efforts. Most programs have an MIS (88 percent) and of those about three-quarters are satisfied with its performance. Of the one-quarter of MIS users who are not satisfied, many (40 percent) find that the reports generated by the MIS are not useful. Without useful reports, programs will have little incentive to use their MIS in new ways, such as for tracking progress and targeting staff training.
Most MIS can generate basic reports, such as enrollment lists; fewer are useful for tracking ongoing child assessment information or staff training and characteristics—something that may be beneficial for programs to target services and training. The main challenges programs have with MIS are software problems (57 percent), difficulty of use (42 percent), and limited usefulness of reports (40 percent). Efforts to help programs install, use, and troubleshoot MIS may help them make greater use of the data they collect.
DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Having provided a national snapshot in time of the two base levels of the performance measures framework—program management and services—the Survey of Early Head Start Programs offers a substantial foundation for research. It will be important to take periodic snapshots to chart changes in program implementation. In addition, future studies could build on survey findings by examining the next layer of the framework: child and family outcomes. These potential studies could benefit practitioners and policymakers by identifying effective approaches to service delivery and program management and by linking services and management practices to family and child outcomes. Below, we describe several possible purposes and questions such research might address. These questions touch on key elements of the performance measures framework, including community context, management systems, services, and outcomes for children and families.
We organize possible future research studies into two primary categories: descriptive and experimental. Both types are useful, but for different purposes. The advantage of a descriptive study is that it allows examination of many program features to get an in-depth understanding (in this case, nationally representative) of the program and its operations. Correlations between program characteristics and outcomes do not enable us to establish causality between a given characteristic or practice and outcomes, but a study of this type can suggest likely pathways of relations for further research and avenues for training and technical assistance. An experimental study, on the other hand, is necessarily narrower in focus but allows a rigorous examination of the ways that particular program elements affect child and family outcomes. Unlike a descriptive study, a study using an experimental design with random assignment would allow conclusions about causal relationships between program characteristics or practices and participant outcomes.
Potential Descriptive Studies
Several of the research questions proposed below suggest the use of child and family outcome data, and the comparison of outcomes across programs taking different approaches to management and service delivery. Outcome data could be gathered through a descriptive longitudinal study similar to the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES). FACES gathers comprehensive data on the cognitive and social-emotional development of Head Start children through direct child assessments in multiple domains; observations of Head Start classrooms; and interviews with Head Start parents, teachers, and administrators (ACF 2003). In addition, FACES examines the characteristics of families; the quality of Head Start classrooms; and the qualifications and credentials, of Head Start teachers and other program staff as well as their views toward preschool education. The design and structure of the FACES study is a model that Early Head Start may want to build upon in future research.
Much like the FACES study described above, data from successive cohorts of Early Head Start children could answer questions such as these: What are the developmental skills of Early Head Start children when they enter the program? What is the quality of their Early Head Start classrooms as early learning environments, and what specific program approaches are being used? How do programs vary in how they reach full implementation of the comprehensive Head Start Program Performance Standards? What are the characteristics and qualifications of Early Head Start teachers, and how do they relate to children’s outcomes? Do the data suggest a potential relationship of classroom quality, program approach, and overall program implementation to children’s outcomes? What is the best way to characterize management structures and practices of Early Head Start programs? Are particular structures and practices linked to staff consistency and effectiveness? How can the quality of leadership at various levels within a program be described and assessed? Does leadership quality relate to staff turnover rates, qualifications, and effectiveness?
Potential Experimental Research
As mentioned above, experimental and descriptive approaches can complement one another in answering research questions. One way to determine the actual effect (impact) of a particular program element or service on child and family outcomes is to identify important potential elements, then randomly assign programs to them (for example, different levels of training and technical assistance for staff). Researchers then would estimate the impacts of the strategies on service quality and children’s outcomes. With an experimental design, researchers could establish clear causal links between these different program conditions and children’s outcomes. Further, a carefully designed experimental study or studies could address the extent to which variations in child outcomes are accounted for by the interaction between program and family/child characteristics. In other words, an experimental study could answer the question “What works best for whom?” Therefore, the Office of Head Start and training and technical assistance providers would be able to provide clear guidance to programs about which strategies have evidence of effectiveness, and for which families.
Clearly, the topics suggested here represent only an initial set of possibilities for future research. As the Early Head Start program continues to develop, practitioners, policymakers, and researchers will no doubt identify additional ways in which this study can inform efforts to understand and improve the program for the benefit of its participants.
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