What is our impact on children’s school readiness?
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In accordance with the 2007 Head Start Act, Family Resource Agency (FRA) wanted to be able to measure the extent to which they were meeting one of Head Start’s main goals: promoting the school readiness of low-income children.
To do so, FRA created a visualization to show children’s developmental progress from the beginning to the end of the program year. FRA shares this information with the Agency Board, the Policy Council, and in their Annual Report, showing a variety of audiences the positive impact that the program is having on enrolled children. FRA also creates this same report at the center and classroom level to inform everyone from directors to family support staff and help guide action as they try to produce the highest child outcomes possible.
ANALYSIS
FRA used data from the Snapshot and Snapshot by Dimension reports within the Teaching Strategies Gold software application and used this information to create a bar chart. For each dimension within the Teaching Strategies Gold assessment, the bar chart displays the percentage of children who “meet widely held expectations” during the fall assessment period (in blue) and then during the spring assessment period (in orange). The data reflects children’s progress from a point in the fall, near the beginning of the school/program year, to their spring levels as measured near the end of the program year.
The graph describes how the children’s participation in Head Start has benefited them and enabled them to progress to a developmental level similar to that of other children when using comparable national data. The data helps FRA describe the value added by Head Start and the level of child outcomes the program is achieving. It also is helpful as a management tool, helping leadership see where children have the most room to grow and where they come in strong, as well as where there is still an opportunity for the program to improve and help additional children reach “widely held expectations.”
The graph shown here is used at the end of the year, but FRA also creates this graph near the middle of the program year so that progress can be gauged and adjustments to teaching strategies and other services may be considered.
RESULT
FRA uses this information at both the program level to show impact and at a center level to impact management decisions. The information can be used by supervisors, teachers, and family support staff to help guide their activities and interactions with both the children and their families as they work to produce the highest child outcomes possible. In 2017-2018, as demonstrated here, FRA noted significant progress towards school readiness, with the vast majority of students meeting or exceeding expectations in the spring.
ADDITIONAL DETAILS
AUDIENCE: Management, leadership, staff, board/policy council
LEVEL OF ANALYSIS: Program, center
DIFFICULTY: Moderate
CONTENT AREA: School readiness
DATA SOURCES: Teaching Strategies Gold, Excel
CONSIDERATIONS AND CAVEATS: As with any yearly snapshot of data, the outcomes related to the year may, or may not, be the result of actions taken by the program or its staff during the program year. Therefore, it is best to look at data trends and multiple data sources since the data snapshot does not control for important variables such as how many children have received multiple years of service, how many children in the group may have a disability service plan and what that plan entails, as well as various other factors that may substantially impact the progress, or lack thereof, within a single program year. For the reasons previously indicated and others, this data should not be used to evaluate the effectiveness of individual staff throughout the organization.
TECHNICAL APPENDIX
The Snapshot and Snapshot by Dimensions Reports, as described by Teaching Strategies Gold (TSG), are generated from checkpoint data that is associated with the objectives for development and learning for birth through the third grade. This data enables staff to compare the growth of the children’s knowledge, skills, and abilities in each of the areas represented to the expected range of a national sample group of their peers. The Growth Report data is generated using data from the fall and spring checkpoint periods within the same program year, or from any other relevant report period chosen.
The data is usually displayed and analyzed at a midpoint of the year and, also, at the end to determine which developmental areas the children are strongest in and the areas where less progress is being made. Those areas where their progress is a bit weaker are then focused on with additional teacher training and/or additional child activities and experiences.
To generate the report, follow these steps in TSG:
(This first step includes all domains except Science and Technology, Social Studies, and The Arts. For those, see below)
In TSG go to the Report tab and click on “Snapshot”
Select “All Sites” for a program-wide report
Next select the time period you want the report to cover
Then click on “Data By Area” so that most of the domains are included
Next click on “Include Finalized Checkpoint” level so that the data excludes children who do not have complete data
Click on “Output” and then select “Widely Held Expectations”
Output type is by “Program” since you want the report to by program-wide
Then click on “Generate Report”
After the report is generated the data can be put in Excel to generate a bar chart graph. You can download this template if you’d like. We put data in for the fall and then compare it to either the mid-year or the end of the year to show progress on outcomes. We add the numbers together for “Meets Expectations” and “Exceeds Expectations” to come up with the numbers and totals that meet or exceed expectations.
For the other 3 domains not included in the above report, we use a similar approach. These are the steps involved in generating the report data for the Science and Technology, Social Studies, and The Arts domains.
In TSG go to Snapshot by Dimension
Select “All Sites”
Next select the checkpoint report period you are interested in
Go to include data and select only Science and Technology, Social Studies, and The Arts
Include finalized checkpoint
Next go to reports queue and hit table
To obtain a single number for each dimension of the domain then average the report numbers in each dimension
Those averages can then be plugged into Excel as the numbers are from the other domains included in the previous section
Questions about this use case? Email them to analytics@nhsa.org and we’ll get in touch with the author for you!