Head Start Approach to School Readiness – Overview
The Head Start Approach to School Readiness means that children are ready for school, families are ready to support their children's learning, and schools are ready for children.
The Head Start Approach to School Readiness means that children are ready for school, families are ready to support their children's learning, and schools are ready for children.
For infants and toddlers, school readiness refers to their developing capacity to self-regulate, demonstrate curiosity, communicate effectively, and develop close, secure relationships. Good health and proper nutrition support this developing capacity. This happens within the context of nurturing, culturally responsive relationships with parents, caregivers, extended family, and community.
Teachers know and understand the broad range of content areas and the developmental expectations (i.e., social and emotional, cognitive, expressive and receptive language, motor, adaptive, and English language development) appropriate for young children as outlined by the Head Start Early Learning Framework. Teachers consider what they want children to know, understand, and be able to do using the five essential domains.
The Administration for Children and Families' (ACF) Office of Head Start and Office of Child Care are collaborating to more effectively provide training and technical assistance (TTA) across early care and education (ECE) programs.
Explore current Head Start research and evaluation projects from the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE). Each project page includes a description of the project and links to related reports and other resources.
Domain: Social and Emotional Development
During the 2015–2016 program year, the Office of Head Start (OHS) used the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS®) Pre-K Teacher-Child Observation Instrument during its on-site reviews of grantees. CLASS-reliable reviewers visited a random sample of preschool classrooms to obtain grantee-level scores. This document provides descriptive statistics of the 2016 grantee-level CLASS data.
Head Start programs deliver services to eligible children and families in core areas of early learning, health, and family well-being while engaging parents as partners every step of the way.
Read how Head Start teachers in Minnesota created a statewide learning community that has not only studied the value of authentic assessment but has also built a state Head Start database that combines assessment, demographic, and classroom information.
Explore Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) health care programs with the HRSA Data Warehouse. Use maps to select and plot health centers, grants, and other agencies' data as separate data layers.