How does our state’s program schedule compare nationally?
The Indiana Head Start State Collaboration Office contracted with Transform Consulting Group (TCG) to complete their Annual Needs Assessments. To help create a benchmark and compare Indiana to other states, TCG pulled national data from the Program Information Report (PIR).
In the 2018 Indiana Early Head Start and Head Start Needs Assessment Report, a comparison was drawn that Indiana serves nearly half as many children in full-day, center-based slots five days per week compared to Head Start programs across the country. The majority of children in Indiana were being served in part-day center-based programs only four days per week.
Analysis
TCG looked at the center-based program schedule breakdown in the PIR to understand how many children were being served in full-day programs five days per week. They identified what percentage of center-based, Head Start students in Indiana participated in each program schedule. Then, they compared this to the percentage of all other students nationally.
Result
Indiana saw that their center-based enrollment for full-day five days a week was at 28%, while the national average was 57%. The state set a goal to increase the number of children being served in full-day, center-based care five days a week.
TCG conducted this same analysis the following year and saw a marked change. Indiana has now increased center-based enrollment for full-day programs five days a week to almost double: 47%, which is much closer to the national average.
Additional details
Audience: Leadership
Level of Analysis: State
Difficulty: Moderate
Content Area: Program Management
Data Sources: Excel
Considerations/Caveats: A similar analysis could be done to compare a single program’s data to the state average or to the national average.
Technical Appendix
For Indiana or local programs within the state, the center-based schedule breakdown can be easily found on the PIR Snapshot document with the table titled, “Detail - Center-based Funded Enrollment”. The percentage of enrollment based on schedule type (4 full days, 4 part days, 5 full days, or 5 part days) totals to 100%, so the Indiana Needs Assessment features a donut chart to represent the schedule portions. Portions allow for a quick visual comparison to see how Indiana and the national center-based schedules differ.
This template can be downloaded to make creating this for your state easily. Note: This template currently uses 2019 PIR data across all program types and states and may need to be edited for your use.
Questions about this use case? Email them to analytics@nhsa.org and we’ll get in touch with the author for you!