FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Monday, March 22, 2004
Contact: Chris Downing
ACF Press Office (202) 401-9215
HHS ANNOUNCES INTENTION TO FORM AN INDEPENDENT PANEL TO HELP ASSESS FIRST YEAR IMPLEMENTATION OF HEAD START NATIONAL REPORTING SYSTEM
HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson today announced his intention to form an independent panel of experts on child development and the assessment of preschool children to help assess the progress in developing and implementing the Head Start National Reporting System (NRS) and provide recommendations for integrating the NRS with other on-going assessments of the effectiveness of the program.
The panel, to be made up of 10 experts in child development and assessment of preschool children, will be charged with helping to review the results of the first year of the Head Start National Reporting System and make recommendations for enhancements to the system with a particular focus on expanding it to include the assessment of children’s social, emotional and behavioral health. The panel will work in coordination with the existing Technical Work Group which helped develop the NRS, and make recommendations for how the NRS can be including in the broader assessment frame found in the Family and Child Evaluation Survey (FACES), the National Impact Study, Head Start’s Performance Based Outcome System, and the on-going evaluation of the Early Head Start program.
Under the existing regulations, grantees are required to assess the developmental and learning progress of every child in their Head Start programs. In the past, these assessments have taken place at the local level with no consistent set of evaluation standards or goals.
The National Reporting System, designed with the help of a technical working group of child development experts, is intended to provide a mechanism for assessing the ability of local Head Start programs to achieve good outcomes for children. Programs administer a common set of measures to all 4- and 5-year-old children at the beginning and end of the program year in order to determine some of the skills with which they enter Head Start, their levels of achievement when they leave Head Start, and the progress they made during the Head Start year.
The assessment information collected through the NRS will initially be used to better target training and technical assistance efforts.
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