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Report to Congressional Requesters:

United States General Accounting Office:

GAO:

September 2003:

Head Start:

Curriculum Use and Individual Child Assessment in Cognitive and 
Language Development:

GAO-03-1049:

Contents:

Letter:

Appendix I: Congressional Briefing Slides: Head Start:

Abbreviations:

FACES: Family and Child Experiences Survey:  

HHS: Department of Health and Human Services:

United States General Accounting Office:

Washington, DC 20548:

September 12, 2003:

The Honorable George Miller 
Ranking Minority Member 
Committee on Education and the Workforce 
House of Representatives:

The Honorable Dale E. Kildee 
Ranking Minority Member 
Subcommittee on Education Reform 
Committee on Education and the Workforce 
House of Representatives:

To enhance Head Start's contribution to the school readiness of 
children from low-income families, the 1998 amendments to the Head 
Start Act provided for updating the Head Start performance standards to 
ensure that when children leave the program, they have the basic skills 
needed to start school.[Footnote 1] Head Start's performance standards 
for education and early childhood development require that the 
programs' curricula support each child's cognitive and language 
development, including emergent literacy skills. In preschool children, 
cognitive and language development refers to the fundamental abilities 
needed to reason and to speak a language. Skills in emergent literacy 
are the precursors to reading, such as learning the letters of the 
alphabet. The curriculum Head Start programs use must meet the 
definition for a written curriculum in Head Start's performance 
standards. Programs have the option of developing their own curriculum, 
using a curriculum developed locally or by the state education agency, 
and adopting or adapting a model developed by an educational publisher. 
Programs also may use teacher mentoring and individual child assessment 
to help implement the curriculum.

As reauthorization of Head Start approached, you asked us to answer 
these questions about Head Start programs' efforts to prepare children 
for school:

1. To what extent have Head Start programs made progress in meeting 
performance standards for cognitive and language development since they 
took effect in January 1998?

2. To what extent has local Head Start programs' use of curricula 
changed since the performance standards for children's cognitive and 
language development were issued?

3. To what extent have local Head Start programs used teacher mentoring 
and individual child assessments to support curriculum planning?

To determine what progress has been made in meeting the new standards, 
we used data from Head Start's compliance reviews. We analyzed the 
percentage of Head Start programs that met overall performance 
standards for curriculum and the percentage that met seven specific 
performance standards for cognitive and language development. To 
examine local Head Start programs' use of curricula, mentoring, and 
individual child assessments, we analyzed data from the Department of 
Health and Human Services' (HHS) Family and Child Experiences Survey 
(FACES). FACES is a series of longitudinal surveys of nationally 
representative samples of Head Start children.[Footnote 2] We used data 
from the spring 1998 and fall 2000 teacher interviews, which contained 
information about types of Head Start curricula and classroom 
activities, the percentage of teachers who received mentoring visits, 
the percentage of Head Start children who received individual child 
assessments and how teachers used the assessment information. Although 
limitations in the FACES data did not allow us to determine change in 
curricula and classroom activities over time, the data did permit us to 
describe Head Start curricula and classroom activities at two points in 
time. Information on mentoring and individual child assessment was 
available only for fall 2000. We also interviewed officials in 9 of 10 
HHS regional offices about Head Start programs' curriculum practices 
and analyzed HHS' 2002 Program Information Report data on curricula. 
The Program Information Report contains basic information about Head 
Start programs' operating characteristics and services. All Head Start 
and Early Head Start programs are required to submit data for the 
Program Information Report annually. We conducted our work between 
February and June 2003 in accordance with generally accepted government 
auditing standards.

We provided a briefing on the results of our work to staff of the House 
Committee on Education and the Workforce on May 15, 2003. We provided 
additional information in a second briefing on June 6, 2003. This 
report formally conveys the information provided during those 
briefings.

In summary, we found that data from Head Start compliance reviews 
conducted during 2000-02 indicated that most programs met performance 
standards for overall curriculum and for cognitive and language 
development. Of all 1,532 programs in HHS's 10 regions, HHS determined 
that the highest percent found out of compliance with any one of seven 
specific performance standards for cognitive and language development 
was 10 percent. Among the programs cited for compliance issues related 
to these standards, the areas most in need of improvement included (1) 
using classroom activities and materials that were sufficiently adapted 
to each child's developmental level and (2) using continuous 
observation and assessment to support each child's instruction in 
cognitive and literacy skills.

For the most part, Head Start teachers reported that children were in 
programs that used a specific curriculum or combinations of curricula; 
in 1998 and 2000, the largest percentages were in programs that used 
either High Scope or Creative Curriculum. Different methodologies for 
each survey precluded making comparisons over time. In 2000, children 
were more likely to listen to stories for which they see print, to 
learn about prepositions, new words, the conventions of print and 
letters, and to retell stories on a daily or almost daily basis, than 
to experience other language development activities, such as working on 
phonics, writing their name, or learning about rhyming words and word 
families.

Of those who had a mentor, teachers of about two-thirds of Head Start 
children received mentoring visits, weekly or bi-weekly. In 2000, 
teachers of an estimated 78 percent of Head Start children used 
individual assessments in their small group instruction and in overall 
curriculum planning. Almost 90 percent of Head Start children received 
individual assessments in cognitive and language development. About 
half were assessed in mathematics and emergent literacy. The children 
received individual assessments at least once a year.

We provided a draft of this report to HHS for review and comment. HHS 
indicated that it had no general comments but provided written 
technical comments, which we incorporated as appropriate.

We are sending copies of this report to relevant congressional 
committees and other interested parties. We also will make copies 
available to others upon request. This report will also be available on 
GAO's Web site at http://www.gao.gov.

If you or your staff have any questions about this report, please 
contact me or Betty Ward-Zukerman at (202) 512-7215. Sara Edmondson, 
Luann Moy, Christopher Moriarity, and Elsie Picyk also made key 
contributions to this report.

Marnie S. Shaul 

Director, Education, Workforce, and Income Security Issues:

Signed by Marnie S. Shaul: 

[End of section]

Appendix I: Congressional Briefing Slides: Head Start:

[See PDF for image]

[End of figure]

[End of section]

FOOTNOTES

[1] Pub. L. 105-285, Title I, Sec. 108 (amending sec. 641A of the Head 
Start Act).

[2] Nicholas Zill, et al., Head Start FACES (2000): A Whole-Child 
Perspective on Program Performance, Fourth Progress Report, A report 
prepared for Child Outcomes Research and Evaluation, Office of 
Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and 
Families, Department of Health and Human Services, May 2003, provides 
additional details about the FACES sample design.

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