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1 - Introduction
As the United States becomes increasingly diverse, services for children and families must continue to change to meet the cultural and linguistic needs of the population. The Head Start program, which provides comprehensive developmental services to preschool children and their families, has a long-standing commitment to multiculturalism. This report represents the first national study describing the range of bilingual and multicultural services offered by Head Start programs. This introductory chapter provides an overview of the Head Start program, outlines the purpose and basic design of this research study, and reviews Head Start policy and research findings regarding multiculturalism and bilingualism.
The Head Start Program
Head Start was designed to help break the cycle of poverty by providing preschool children and their families with a program to meet their educational, emotional, social, health, and nutritional, needs. The idea was that, with a little help-a head start-children from disadvantaged families could be ready for school like more advantaged peers. Since 1965, when it was launched as a 6-week summer program, Head Start has been extended to cover the school year -- and increasingly the full year -- and has served more than 16 million children and their families. In 1998, Head Start served more than 800,000 children in over 48,000 classrooms across the United States. Head Start is a recognized leader in providing services to children of migrant workers, and American Indian families. Programs for families of migrant workers have been serving pregnant women, infants and toddlers, as well as preschool-aged children for over 25 years. In 1995, nationwide services for pregnant women, infants and toddlers were initiated through Early Head Start.
In addition to providing developmentally and culturally appropriate services to children, Head Start is also committed to supporting parents in their role as primary educators, nurturers and advocates for their children. Head Start encourages parents to become involved in all aspects of the program, from participation in classrooms to involvement in policy and other programmatic decisions. Through linkages with community organizations and programs that focus on early childhood development, family support, health, and education, Head Start helps families access a wide array of community services.
Within the guidelines established by the Program Performance Standards, Head Start grantees have the flexibility to develop programs and services to meet the specific needs of the communities they serve. Generally, local governments, school districts, or Community Action Agencies apply for Federal grants to establish Head Start programs in their communities. Once the grants are awarded, these grantees either administer the programs themselves or delegate program administration to local community organizations, called Head Start delegates.
To support Head Start's overall goal of improving the school readiness of young children, Head Start Program Performance Standards embrace a core set of values, including commitments to:
- Establish a supportive learning environment for children, parents, and staff, in which theprocess of enhancing awareness, refining skills, and increasing understanding is valued and promoted;
- Recognize that the members of the Head Start community-children, families, and staff-have roots in many cultures. Head Start families and staff, working together as a team, can effectively promote respectful, sensitive, and proactive approaches to diversity issues;
- Understand that the empowerment of families occurs when program governance is a responsibility shared by families, governing bodies, and staff, and when the ideas and opinions of families are heard and respected;
- Embrace a comprehensive vision of health for children, families, and staff, which assures that basic health needs are met, encourages practices that prevent future illnesses and injuries, and promotes positive, culturally relevant health behaviors that enhance life-long well-being;
- Respect the importance of all aspects of an individual's development, including social, emotional, cognitive, and physical growth;
- Build a community in which each child and adult is treated as an individual while, at the same time, a sense of belonging to the group is reinforced;
- Foster relationships with the larger community, so that families and staff are respected and served by a network of community agencies in partnership with one another; and
- Develop a continuum of care, education, and services that allow stable, uninterrupted support to families and children (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1998).
Purpose of the Study
In recent years, Head Start has witnessed increasing diversity within its programs and in the communities it serves. Population data show that the combined minority population, including the Census categories of Black, Asian/Pacific Islander, American Indian/Alaskan Native, and Hispanic, saw an increase of more than 200% from 1960 to 1990. This increase was ten times greater than the growth rate of the white population in the U.S. In addition to the fact that there are more minorities overall, Census data indicate minority families are three times more likely than their white counterparts to be living in poverty. As a result of both increased diversity due to immigration and population growth and an increase in the number of pre-school children from minority families who are living in poverty, a growing number of minority children and children for whom English is a second language are eligible to participate in Head Start.
This dramatic shift in the demographic composition of the United States has important implications for America's educational policies. These changes create a need to re-examine the ways in which positive interactions can take place between people of diverse cultures and language groups, and to incorporate this knowledge into bilingual and multicultural child development programs and services.
Head Start recognizes that such demographic patterns demand that new policies be developed to foster bilingual and multicultural programming in order to encourage the participation of a culturally and linguistically diverse population. Anecdotal reports prior to this study suggested that many Head Start programs were responding to these demographic changes at the local level, but little documentation of the exact nature of these bilingual and multicultural programs was available.
The current study was commissioned by the Administration on Children, Youth and Families (ACYF) in 1993, in order to better understand the bilingual and multicultural populations served by Head Start and to identify the range of services provided to these children and families. The objectives of this study were:
- describe the Head Start population, including the cultural and linguistic groups served and their distribution.
- To describe what services program have developed (i.e., classroom curricula, parent involvement components, staff training, etc.) to address the unique service needs of children and families from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
- To describe barriers faced by Head Start programs as they address the needs of an increasingly diverse population
To fulfill these objectives, the study utilized the annual Head Start Program Information Report (PIR), a mail-administered written survey of grantees, and site visits to 30 Head Start programs (58 classrooms). A detailed description of the design and methodology of this study is provided in Chapter 2 of this report.
This research was a landmark study for Head Start in several ways. First, the study examined how the Head Start eligible population has changed over time, and how Head Start program services responded to these changes. Second, this study examined all of the Head Start component services -- health and nutrition, parent involvement, social services, and education -- rather than focusing on a single component, as was common in prior research. Finally, as a descriptive study, it focused on capturing the broad array of bilingual and multicultural program services, rather than determining the impact of one or more of these services.
Head Start's Approach to Bilingual and Multicultural Education
The Administration on Children, Youth and Families (ACYF) asserts that effective programming for low-income preschoolers "requires understanding, respect, and responsiveness to the cultures of all people and families" (ACYF, 1992, p. 5). In recognition of the growing diversity among Head Start's target population, ACYF published a guide to help programs better meet the cultural and language needs of children and families, entitled: Multicultural Principles for Head Start Programs (1992). A summary of the Head Start multicultural principles is provided in Exhibit 1-1.
Exhibit 1-1 Multicultural Principles for Head Start Programs
-ACYF (1992) |
According to these principles, Head Start programs are to provide services to their target audience in a manner that reflects the diversity of the community and celebrates individual differences. The goal for each child is to become "a world citizen through multicultural programming." This guide promoted the use of new staff recruitment procedures to increase staff diversity, not only in children's educational services but also in other areas of program service, such as home visitors and family service workers. In addition, the Multicultural Principles fostered the development of fully multicultural curricula or the addition of more culturally responsive experiences within a program's existing curricula. Head Start programs were also encouraged to seek out more culturally representative materials, especially books, with parents often taking the lead in the identification of materials that would be familiar to their children.
In 1992, Head Start began requiring grantees and delegates to use multicultural programming in all Head Start components -- education, parent involvement, health and social services. The Head Start guidelines, however, permit flexibility in order to avoid prescribing service provisions that may not be relevant within a community or neighborhood. The revised Head Start Program Performance Standards that took in effect in January 1998 encompass all the multicultural principles and mandate that:
- Staff reflect the ethnicity of their community and speak the languages of the children they serve;
- Children have someone to communicate within the classroom in the language of their choice; and
- Programs reflect the everyday experiences of the inhabitants of the local community.
Given the strong emphasis on cultural relevance in Head Start, the program has taken a pluralistic approach to meeting the language needs of its diverse population. As reflected in Head Start Multicultural Principle #6 and the Performance Standards described above, Head Start encourages the continued development of the child's home language in the program as well as the acquisition of English. In order to support this goal and ensure that staff composition reflects the languages spoken by enrolled children, Head Start programs often use parents as program aides or classroom volunteers, or hire parents as teachers' aides and assist them in attaining Child Development Associate (CDA) certification and becoming teachers.
Throughout its policies, Head Start consistently emphasizes that young children need a solid base in their own language and an environment that conveys respect for their expressions, and understandings of the world.
Organization of the Report
This report is organized into six chapters. Chapter 2 provides a detailed explanation of the research methods. Chapters 3-5 present the findings in terms of Children and Families (Chapter 3), Parent Participation and Perspectives (Chapter 4), and Classrooms (Chapter 5). Chapter 6 concludes the report with accomplishments, challenges and recommendations for the Head Start program.
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