School Readiness Goals and Head Start Program Functioning

2012-2014

The purpose of this task order is to generate knowledge about how Head Start grantees develop and utilize school readiness goals. The contract will support a study of the process used by Head Start grantees to define, measure, and prioritize their goals for children’s school readiness. The study also will examine the mechanisms programs use to communicate these goals to relevant stakeholders as well as how programs use data and other management strategies for linking their school readiness goals to inform program planning. An optional component will produce a set of measures of programs’ use of school readiness goals that can be included in other data collection efforts, such as research studies and grantee surveys. The contractor for this work is The Urban Institute.

The point of contact for this project is Mary Mueggenborg.

Brief
Report

How Head Start Grantees Set and Use School Readiness Goals – Highlights from a Research Study

January 20, 2015

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This brief presents highlights from a similarly named full report: How Head Start Grantees Set and Use School Readiness Goals, which describes how local Head Start grantees set school readiness goals, how they collect and analyze data to track progress toward goals, and how they use these data in program planning and practice to improve program functioning. The findings are based on data that was collected during the 2013-2014 school year...

Understanding Data Use for Continuous Quality Improvement in Head Start: Preliminary Findings

April 28, 2015

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Understanding Data Use for Continuous Quality Improvement in Head Start Brief summarizes common themes across two studies of local Head Start programs and a multidisciplinary literature review. The brief provides preliminary evidence that Head Start programs experience similar challenges and facilitators to data use for continuous quality improvement as those experienced in other fields including leadership, analytic capacity, commitment of resources, professional development, a culture...

Collecting Information from Head Start and Early Head Start Grantees on Implementation of the School Readiness Goals Requirements: Survey Items for Program Leadership, Teachers, and Administrative Data Collection

April 17, 2015

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This methodological report presents recommended survey items for understanding Head Start and Early Head Start programs’ use of school readiness goals. These survey items represent the second component of the School Readiness Goals and Head Start Program Functioning project, and were informed by the data collected from the main study. The report defines a set of key constructs and offers three sets of survey items related to the constructs...

How Head Start Grantees Set and Use School Readiness Goals

January 20, 2015

Expand

This report and accompanying brief present findings from a study describing how local Head Start and Early Head Start grantees set school readiness goals, how they collect and analyze data to track progress towards goals, and how they use these data in program planning and practice to improve program functioning. The findings are based on data that was collected during the 2013-2014 school year from 73 Head Start and Early Head Start...