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4. Current Efforts to Establish Measures and Indicators
Pages 30-35

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From page 30...
... HEAD START PERFORMANCE STANDARDS AND MEASURES The Head Start program is structured to provide funds directly to local communities, mostly to nonprofit organizations. Louisa Tarullo, of the Commissioner's Office of Research and Evaluation in the Administration on Children, Youth, and Families, noted that Head Start is a "two-generation program in that it seeks to enhance children's growth and development and strengthen families as primary nurturers of their children." Head Start first developed program standards in the mid-1970s, and they have evolved over time to reflect the best knowledge from research and practice on quality and program implementation.
From page 31...
... On the other hand, as participants noted, the structure of the Head Start program has continually evolved with greater movement toward gauging performance and quality. Workshop participant Helen Raikes, formerly with the Administration on Children, Youth, and Families and then with the Gallup Organization, pointed out that in programs such as Head Start, focusing on performance measures and providing staff training, monitoring, and assessment has provided an important impetus for enhancing quality.
From page 32...
... The survey relied upon available measures such as the Early Childhood Environmental Rating Scale (ECERS) , although Tarullo noted the continuing need for more culturally sensitive and linguistically appropriate data collection measures.
From page 33...
... , a minimum of 4 percent of funds must be used to improve the quality of child care and offer additional services to parents, such as resource and referral counseling regarding the selection of appropriate child care providers. States have used these funds to provide training grants and loans to providers, to improve program monitoring, to enhance compensation for child care workers, and for other innovative programs.
From page 34...
... Kids Count noted a pressing need for state-level benchmarks on such critical issues as equity of access to child care within a community across families of different income levels, the stability of child care within a community, and licensed capacity relative to the number of children in families at some designated income level, as well as indicators of the quality of child care. Information in these areas could guide strategic planning at the community and state levels, as well as help to inform policy makers and the public about the adequacy and effectiveness of investments in child care and early childhood services.
From page 35...
... As a whole, the early childhood community needs to start collecting new data as appropriate so that lack of data does not undermine development of important measures. For example, child care officials in Missouri decided that the percentage of family income going to out-of-pocket child care expenditures is an important measure, and they have begun efforts to acquire data on this.


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