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Administration for Children and Families US Department of Health and Human Services
 HHS News

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Thursday, May 13, 2004
Contact: Chris Downing
ACF Press Office (202) 401-9215

HHS Issues Head Start Management Initiative

HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson today released a new report outlining an initiative to promote effective management practices in Head Start programs.  The “Head Start Management Initiative,” is focused on administrative practices and builds on earlier efforts to ensure that Head Start children enter school ready to learn.

“With more than 900,000 children currently in the care of the Head Start and Early Head Start programs, we need to address every aspect of the program to ensure that we’re doing our best,” Secretary Thompson said.  “Good education results require good administrative practices, and effective administration of the nation’s 1,670 Head Start grantees plays an important part in achieving our goals for Head Start families.”

The management initiative has two major goals:

• Improving Head Start’s monitoring system to address under-enrollment, erroneous payments, child outcomes and grantee compliance with regulations, including executive administrative personnel compensation; and

• Improving Head Start’s training and technical assistance system delivery, outcomes and impacts.

Efforts to improve Head Start focused initially on the educational elements of Head Start as part of President Bush’s Early Childhood Literacy Initiative.  This included developing and implementing a new reporting system to assess Head Start children’s educational progress, strengthening early literacy and language development instruction and improving Head Start training programs.  

While continuing these efforts to improve early literacy and language development, HHS is also focusing on increasing accountability for resource use as well.  This initiative helps ensure that resources entrusted to Head Start programs are well managed and used wisely.  

Key elements of the initiative include:

• Under-enrollment.  Because some Head Start programs have enrolled fewer children than they are funded to serve, regional on-site monitoring will occur and under-enrolled grantees will implement plans with specific timetables to achieve full enrollment.

• Erroneous payments.  Current law allows for up to 10 percent of the number of children served to be from families with incomes above the annually established poverty line.  HHS will work to make certain that at least 90 percent of the families served by each program are below the poverty line.

• Child outcomes.  Through the National Reporting System, the Strategic Teacher Education Program and other ongoing initiatives, major efforts are underway to help close the readiness and kindergarten entry gap and better prepare low-income children for school.

• Grantee compliance with regulations.  Through the Program Review Instrument for Systems Monitoring, the Head Start Bureau will conduct not only required triennial, on-site reviews, but also fact-finding reviews as necessary to keep current and respond quickly.

• Executive and administrative personnel compensation.  As a result of Congressional leaders’ request for a review of the financial compensation and management of Head Start grantees, HHS launched a Head Start salary survey and will be providing guidance and technical assistance to help ensure grantees are complying with Head Start statutory requirements and all related federal laws concerning the compensation of Head Start staff.

• Improving training and technical assistance.  Training and technical assistance specialists no longer are out-stationed in organizational centers, but rather are locally based with experts working with individual, small caseloads of grantees. In addition, a Web site establishing an electronic learning center will be created as a central repository of materials on childhood development.

“The Head Start Management Initiative addresses the challenges of the new century and the needs of children and families who rely on Head Start for quality early childhood education and services.  By strengthening and improving the program, President Bush and Secretary Thompson are working to make Head Start more efficient and accountable so children have better outcomes as they prepare for school,” said Wade Horn, Ph.D., assistant secretary for children and families.

HHS’ Administration for Children and Families oversees the Head Start program.  Head Start's 1,670 grantees oversee about 47,000 classrooms, with a total of about 54,000 teachers and 51,000 assistant teachers serving more than 900,000 children.  Head Start’s total budget this year is $6.8 billion this year, or about $7,000 per enrolled child.

More information about the Head Start Bureau is available at

http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/hsb.

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Note: All HHS press releases, fact sheets and other press materials are available at www.hhs.gov/news

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Last Updated: May 13, 2004