Introduction
In any program evaluation, knowing how the program was implemented is critical for understanding program impacts and for making recommendations for program improvements. The National Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project is using several strategies to look into the operations of 17 research programs, including an assessment of the extent to which research programs have implemented Early Head Start, based on selected portions of the revised Head Start Program Performance Standards and the Early Head Start grant announcement. Our understanding of the Early Head Start intervention, and in particular the extent of program implementation, will help us design appropriate impact analyses, understand program impacts, and identify pathways to full implementation and high-quality services in the research programs.
This volume presents our findings on the extent of the research programs’ implementation in fall 1997, two years after they were funded and one year after they began serving families. It is the third volume in a series of reports that describes the characteristics and implementation of the 17 Early Head Start research programs soon after they began serving families. The first two volumes describe the programs’ expected outcomes and services delivered in each of the program areas (Volume I; ACYF 1999a) and present a descriptive profile of each of the 17 research programs (Volume II; ACYF 1999b). A second implementation report, to be completed later in 2000, will present findings on the extent of program implementation in fall 1999 and will describe the developmental pathways the 17 research programs followed over the first four years of Early Head Start program funding.