HSIPC: Head Start Leaders Guide to Positive Child Outcomes

I. Introduction: The Head Start Leaders Guide to Positive Child Outcomes

This Guide is designed to help Head Start agencies improve the quality and effectiveness of child development services. Its purpose is to guide and inform education managers and program directors as they lead efforts to implement the Head Start Program Performance Standards and to help staff and families prepare children for success in school. The core of this Guide is a comprehensive set of effective teaching strategies to foster children’s progress toward a broad range of key early learning and development goals as articulated in the Head Start Child Outcomes Framework.

This Guide provides a clear vision of what educational quality looks like. It is not a curriculum nor is it an assessment tool. Rather it offers a picture of what a high quality Head Start program looks like in action and in detail: intentional, outcomes-oriented teaching and engaging, challenging learning opportunities for groups and individual children. The education leadership team in every Head Start program is responsible for making this vision a reality by explaining it to staff, parents, and community partners; using it to improve curricula and assessment efforts; and preparing teachers, home visitors, and other staff to become skillful in implementing it through supervision, mentor-coaching, and ongoing professional development.

About This Guide

To help education leaders achieve a vision of quality and accountability, this Guide is organized into sections:

A Vision of Quality and Accountability. This section includes a description and rationale for new policy requirements; a chart illustrating the context for these requirements; and the Head Start Child Outcomes Framework.
Frequently Asked Questions about the Head Start Child Outcomes Framework. These questions address issues about using the Framework with curriculum and assessment procedures.
Seeing the Big Picture in Head Start. This section provides a brief description of how current policies and practices build on the strong foundation of a Head Start program.
What It Looks Like: Effective Teaching Practices for Supporting Children’s Learning and Development. These descriptions of each of the 8 Domains of the Child Outcomes Framework include explanations of why they are important, followed by suggestions for effective teaching practices in the “Strategies” sections. Education leaders can expect teachers and home visitors to demonstrate these strategies as they guide children’s progress toward the outcomes.
Adaptations for Individual Children. These suggested strategies are research-based modifications for children with special needs and gifted children. They also may be effective for other children who are not making age and individually appropriate progress.
Looking Ahead: Next Steps. These strategies suggest how to implement the Head Start requirements for improved quality and increased accountability.

This Guide can be used in many different ways. Head Start staff who work directly with children and their families need to understand the Child Outcomes Framework and related teaching strategies. Education management and Early Literacy Mentor-Coaches (ELMCs) can use the Guide as the basis for staff training. The Policy Council needs to be familiar with the learning outcomes as well. Program managers and governing bodies need to ensure that the program systems (i.e., Governance, Planning, Communication, Record-keeping and Recording, On-Going Monitoring, Self-Assessment, Human Resources and Fiscal Management) provide the necessary support to ensure that the outcomes can be achieved. In addition to its use for staff training and parent education, the Guide can be read by classroom teachers and home visitors on their own who want to reflect on their practices. A user of the Guide might decide to start at the beginning and read through to the end or alternately, might chose to read the sections of greatest interest. In any case, the Guide is an invaluable resource to the Head Start team.

In the sections that follow, the word "teacher" refers to any of the people who serve preschoolers in Head Start, whether in family child care, center-based programs, or home-based programs. As a rule, the practices suggested also are appropriate for parents to use at home.

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Last Modified: 03/04/05


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