This report presents a summary of the findings of fiscal year (FY) 2017 Head Start monitoring reviews, fulfilling the reporting requirement in Section 641A(f) of the Head Start Act. It highlights the enhancements made to the FY 2017 monitoring review system, summarizes grantee review outcomes, and describes the types of findings most commonly…

Child care quality in general, and caregiver-child interactions in particular, are salient predictors of children's outcomes. While the importance of process quality is well known, the complex relations between structural quality and process quality are far less researched in family child care, compared to centre based child care. Flanders shows…

Research Findings: Preschool teachers' relationships with children are a critical component of classroom quality. We draw from a sample of N = 2,114 children attending Head Start to examine child-centered profiles of experiences across two dimensions of classroom interaction quality that are often considered separately: individual teacher-child…

Research Findings: The aim of this study was to examine associations between two aspects of teachers' occupational well-being, i.e., teaching-related stress and work engagement, and the quality of teacher-child interactions in Finnish kindergarten classrooms. Participants were 47 kindergarten teachers with their classrooms of 6-year-old children.…

Student-teacher relationship quality (STRQ) influences a variety of student outcomes, including academic, social, and behavioral functioning (McGrath & Van Bergen, 2015). Less is known about the importance of STRQ for preschool students with disabilities. Many studies are conducted with school-aged, typically developing students (Ansari et…

Research Findings: In recent years, several initiatives have been put into place both federally and state-wide to expand access to high-quality early education programs. At the center of these efforts are the tools that measure program or classroom quality. The present study compares the psychometrics of two such tools used in Michigan, the…

Quality in early childhood education (ECE) is central to equitable child development and preparation for formal schooling and has been widely studied by researchers and of interest to policy makers. As the federal pre-k program, Head Start is a key ECE context to understand quality and its implications for equity. One central measure of classroom…

This is the second in a series of policy notes and related publications exploring prospects for developing indicators of teaching quality. The first examined federal databases that include information about teachers, demonstrating that almost none of the measures in these datasets provides indication of teaching quality. This policy note takes the…

The years from birth to five are critical for building the emergent literacy skills that precede learning to read and write. Early childhood education and care services are in a unique position to support emergent literacy development, particularly for children in socio-economically disadvantaged communities. This article reports the findings of a…

Research Findings: We assessed socio-emotional behavior, nonverbal reasoning, German receptive language, and motor skills of refugee children attending early childhood development [ECD] programs and of those who did not (N = 207, mean age = 69.4 months). Young refugee children overall demonstrated lower levels of development and more…

Trauma-Informed Elementary Schools (TIES) is a program designed to bring trauma-informed services to early elementary classrooms. Built on a foundation of adverse childhood experiences research and the Attachment, Self-Regulation, and Competency framework, TIES provides early intervention to children who exhibit symptoms of chronic stress or…

This study evaluates a consultation coaching model aimed to improve positive-learning environment practices and teachers' instructional style and affect in early childhood (EC) classrooms. Teachers in 15 EC classrooms participated as consultees. The consultative coaches received training that included learning (a) specific content based on…

Head Start is a national program that promotes school readiness by enhancing the social and cognitive development of children through the provision of educational, health, nutritional, social, and other services to enrolled children and families. The Head Start program provides comprehensive child development services to economically disadvantaged…

The Head Start Act mandates that each Head Start recipient receive a monitoring review at least once every 3 years; each newly designated recipient be reviewed after the completion of its first year (and then at least once every 3 years thereafter); and all recipients that "fail to meet the standards" receive Follow-up reviews. Reviewers…

The Head Start Act mandates that each Head Start grantee receive a monitoring review at least once every 3 years; each newly designated grantee be reviewed after the completion of its first year (and then at least once every 3 years thereafter); and all grantees that "fail to meet the standards" receive Follow-up reviews. Reviewers…