Federal

Rules Raise Bar for Head Start Centers

By Sarah D. Sparks — November 14, 2011 6 min read
President Barack Obama visits a classroom at Yeadon Regional Head Start Center, in Yeadon, Pa. Long-awaited final regulations released by the administration will require the early-education centers to meet higher-quality benchmarks every five years.
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

For the first time in the more than four-decade history of the Head Start program, early-education centers will have to prove they prepare disadvantaged children for kindergarten in order to hold on to their grants.

Long-awaited final rules, published Nov. 9, require the nation’s 1,600 Head Start and Early Head Start programs, including migrant and tribal programs, to meet higher quality benchmarks every five years.

Poor performers—which the federal Office of Head Start estimates to number about one in three—will have to recompete for their grants beginning as early as next month.

The recompetition requirement is “a historic change,” according to W. Steven Barnett, the director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, at Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, N.J. “This is the first time that [the regulations] have included actual classroom-performance measures as a criterion for competition,” he said. “That’s certainly an important step.”

The rules set no national school-readiness standards, but they require each program to develop and use school-readiness goals, which must include pupils’ achievement and progress in literacy development, cognition and general knowledge, approaches to learning, physical well-being and motor development, and social and emotional development. They take effect Dec. 9.

“We’re supportive of the changes,” said Rick Mockler, the executive director of the Sacramento-based California Head Start Association. “The whole field of early education in the last few years has recognized that the quality of a program really has a significant impact on many outcomes for children.”

Building Quality

The $7.6 billion Head Start and Early Head Start programs are administrated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and provide early-childhood education to nearly 1 million children in poverty. A 2010 federal evaluation of nearly 5,000 students found that those who participated in Head Start had early literacy advantages when they started school, but those gains mostly faded away by the end of 1st grade.

Each program’s classroom quality will be measured by the Classroom Assessment Scoring System, or CLASS-Pre-K, which uses classroom observations to gauge teacher-child interactions that research has shown are associated with “positive child development and later achievement.”

Yasmina Vinci, the executive director of the Alexandria-based National Head Start Association and a former Head Start program director, said the evaluation system will help programs create a “continuous trajectory of improvement.”

“When I saw the CLASS document, I said, ‘Gee, I wish I’d had that,’ ” during her time running a Head Start program, Ms. Vinci said. “I used to spend hours trying to put into words what I saw in a classroom in a way I thought would be helpful.”

The Washington-based Children’s Defense Fund has been both a longtime supporter of Head Start and a recent critic of program quality. Cathy Grace, the director of early-childhood development for the fund, said the more rigorous standards will be good for children.

“As expectations for children in kindergarten and the grades beyond reflect a greater intentionality of skill mastery than in the past, we must ensure all young children are ready to learn and have their developmental needs met,” Ms. Grace said, voicing particular support for the CLASS-Pre-K observations. “I think that hopefully will generate a fair and accurate assessment of what’s going on in the classroom, and it seems to me that’s what everyone’s been concerned about.”

New Requirements

A program would have to recompete for Head Start funding if it does not set and use its school-readiness goals, receives poor CLASS-Pre-K ratings, or if:

• Federal monitors find deficiencies during on-site reviews;

• State or local agencies revoke the program’s license;

• A Head Start grant has been suspended; or

• An audit has uncovered money or management problems.

However, administrators of multiple Head Start sites have voiced concern that the rules would put them at greater risk, as a program found deficient must have all its centers recompete, not just ones cited for poor quality.

“It appears the standards don’t account for scale,” Mr. Mockler said. “That’s a problem. If you’re running multiple programs, and all but one is high-performing, it doesn’t make sense to recompete all of them.”

Federal Head Start administrators stood by the decision, however, noting in the final rule that, “In a large grantee, a deficiency would not be cited for an isolated incident unless it is very severe or was not corrected when identified.”

“A grantee’s failure to ensure high-quality services are being provided to children that are served in any of their locations indicates that the grantee has failed to maintain a high-quality Head Start program through their ongoing monitoring,” the Office of Head Start explained in the final rules.

Yet Mr. Barnett argued that the program evaluation system should focus less on federal monitoring and instead include additional criteria to “ratchet up [performance goals] fairly quickly, as the highest payoff is at very high levels of performance on the CLASS, and not at mediocre levels,” as well as for child development and learning.

“There’s a tendency in the reaction to the Head Start impact study to rely even more on federalspecification of what the program is supposed to do. If that was working, we would have had much better results in the impact study,” Mr. Barnett said. “Give programs more discretion, and pay more attention to [whether they are] actually producing the impacts we want for the children and parents. You could see the new rules as a partial response to that, but they don’t cut back on the monitoring.”

Politics Continue

The rules were announced as part of President Barack Obama’s “We Can’t Wait” campaign, designed to show action taken without Congress on education and other issues.

“What we know is the first years of our children’s lives are most critical,” said U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius during a briefing with reporters. “When our children get what they need in those early years, it can set off a chain reaction of success that can follow them through every stage of their lives.”

Yet congressional Republicans countered that the broad sweep of the changes was laid out in 2007, when Congress reauthorized HeadStart and required all programs to move to five-year grants and go through regular reviews.

“Congress passed legislation in 2007 to address some troubling problems with the federal Head Start program, and one of the provisions congressional Republicans pushed for was to require the lowest-performing Head Start programs to compete for continued future federal funds,” said Sen. Michael B. Enzi, R-Wyo., the ranking member on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. “I am pleased President Obama has finally issued new Head Start regulations that have been long overdue.”

The Health and Human Services department first proposed the rview-process structure in September 2010. The draft regulations had been in revisions “for quite some time” after receiving 16,000 comments on the changes, according to Yvette Sanchez Fuentes, the director of the federal Office of Head Start.

Yet Head Start advocates also worry that future budget fights could derail implementation of the evaluation system. “There’s a practical question of whether the federal government has the capacity to manage recompetition on the scale and quantity that they are talking about,” Mr. Mockler said.

A version of this article appeared in the November 16, 2011 edition of Education Week as New Head Start Rules Aim to Set High Bar

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Equity & Diversity Webinar
Classroom Strategies for Building Equity and Student Confidence
Shape equity, confidence, and success for your middle school students. Join the discussion and Q&A for proven strategies.
Content provided by Project Lead The Way
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Professional Development Webinar
Disrupting PD Day in Schools with Continuous Professional Learning Experiences
Hear how this NC School District achieved district-wide change by shifting from traditional PD days to year-long professional learning cycles
Content provided by BetterLesson
Jobs Virtual Career Fair for Teachers and K-12 Staff
Find teaching jobs and other jobs in K-12 education at the EdWeek Top School Jobs virtual career fair.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Federal House GOP Passes Parents' Rights Bill in Clash Over Schools
The legislation seeks to give parents a role in what's taught in public schools, but it has little chance in the Democrat-run Senate.
4 min read
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, of Calif., right, speaks about the proposed legislation dubbed the "Parents Bill of Rights," on March 1, 2023, next to Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., on Capitol Hill in Washington.
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, of Calif., right, speaks about the proposed legislation dubbed the "Parents Bill of Rights," on March 1, 2023, next to Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., on Capitol Hill in Washington.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
Federal How Schools Fare in Biden's Proposed Budget
President Joe Biden released his fiscal 2024 budget, which calls for more money for preschool, Title I, and special education.
7 min read
President Joe Biden speaks about his 2024 budget proposal at the Finishing Trades Institute, Thursday, March 9, 2023, in Philadelphia.
President Joe Biden speaks about his 2024 budget proposal at the Finishing Trades Institute, Thursday, March 9, 2023, in Philadelphia.
Evan Vucci/AP
Federal The Push for a $60K Base Teacher Salary Gains Steam as Bernie Sanders Signs On
Sanders' legislation complements a proposal in the House and comes as state lawmakers from both parties prioritize legislation to boost teacher pay.
6 min read
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., outlines his priorities during an interview in his Capitol Hill office, Feb. 7, 2023.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., outlines his priorities during an interview in his Capitol Hill office, Feb. 7, 2023.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
Federal Q&A Ending 'Government-Run Monopoly' on Schools Is Top Priority for Rep. Virginia Foxx
The Republican chair of the U.S. House's education committee plans to pass parents' rights and school choice bills.
5 min read
House Education and Workforce Committee Chair Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., greets then-Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar at the conclusion of a House Education and Workforce Committee hearing on "Examining the Policies and Priorities of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.' Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, June 6, 2018.
House Education and Workforce Committee Chair Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., greets then-Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar at the conclusion of a House Education and Workforce Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington in June 2018. Foxx spoke to Education Week about her priorities as she becomes chair of the committee for a second time.
Carolyn Kaster/AP