School Readiness Goal: English and Spanish Language Acquisition

This example shows how a Head Start program—after it has collected and analyzed birth to 5 school readiness data from multiple years—proceeds to set a new program goal about language acquisition. Its planning process is outlined in this scenario. Table 4.3 delineates the steps the program will take based on its planning and review process.

SCENARIO

The Always Be Conscientious (ABC) Head Start/Early Head Start program with home-based and preschool center-based options, has had its infant/toddler and preschool school readiness goals in place for the past two school years. These goals are aligned with the ELOF and ABC's governing body and Policy Council have approved them. The program has collected and compared child assessment data, adult-child interaction scores (Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS®) Pre-K), home visitor practices that help parents support their infants' and toddlers' development (Home Visit Rating Scales (HOVRS) scores), performance on kindergarten entrance assessments, and data from other sources to determine progress on the school readiness goals. The program examined progress each quarter and at the end of the year, and it also collected data on trends over time.

During Ongoing Monitoring
The staff reviewed and compared child assessment reports and discovered that infants and toddlers in the home-based program consistently reached age-level scores on the program's ongoing child assessment tool in emerging language and literacy development (both home language and English). However, the preschool children, including those who transitioned from the Early Head Start home-based program, consistently scored below the norm on the vocabulary portion of the school district's kindergarten readiness assessment. ABC's aggregation of last year's data showed that mean scores of preschool children were below typical scores for similar children (e.g., age, socio-economic status, and culture and language background) for all language measures. This was also true for the previous year. While children did make progress on language measures, the majority of children transitioning from Head Start to kindergarten did not reach age-level scores. By reviewing sub-groups within the program, the staff could see variability among the classrooms. In a small number of classrooms, children scored at or above age level. The staff determined that they could use the data to make both program-wide and individual classroom adjustments.

During Self-Assessment
ABC's self-assessment team reviewed the multiyear school readiness data for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers and disaggregated the school readiness results by sub-groups:

• Ages of children
• Classrooms
• Home visitor caseloads
• Experience and educational levels of teachers and home visitors
• Presence of bilingual staff who can support continued development of home language and acquisition of English
• Children in their first year of Head Start
• Children in their second year of Head Start
• Children who transitioned into Head Start from ABC’s Early Head Start home-based program versus those who did not
• Children who are DLLs

After reviewing the data and discussing what worked in the preschool classrooms where children had the higher scores, the self-assessment team recommended the following actions.

• Focus ABC's professional development for the upcoming year on language and literacy, with an emphasis on increasing preschool children's vocabularies in their home language and in English.
• Select and implement a supplemental curriculum enhancement to strengthen the language components of teaching and learning.
• After assessing intensive coaching needs for all teachers, identify specific classroom teachers who would most benefit from intensive coaching on supporting children's language development.
  • The team also recommended that teachers in the classrooms with consistently higher-scoring children:
    • Assist with planning language experiences and supports across all program areas
    • Engage in peer coaching with other teachers not in need of intensive coaching
• Offer targeted professional development for home visitors to help them continue to:
  • Support families' use of effective language and literacy practices with their infants and toddlers;
  • Encourage families' use of their home language (Spanish) once their children transition to the Head Start program
• Review Human Resources' system for recruitment and hiring practices of bilingual staff.
• Extend outreach to local colleges who have Spanish-speaking students to volunteer.
• Monitor budget implications for the above.

During Planning
The ABC planning committee accepted the self-assessment team's recommendations and set the following new goal, objective, outcome, and expected challenge.

School Readiness Goal
Children will demonstrate an understanding of, as well as use, a variety of words in English and Spanish to communicate their ideas, feelings, and questions. They will also express knowledge of word categories and relationships among words during play, routines, learning activities, and conversations with others. Connects to P-LC6 and P-LC7 in the ELOF Language and Communication domain.

Objective
To strengthen the ability of teachers and parents to improve the vocabulary of enrolled preschool children in their home language (Spanish) and English as measured by improved scores on child assessment measures. Mean scores will improve by 50 percent by the end of the program year.

Expected Outcome
Children will enter kindergarten with age-appropriate receptive and expressive vocabulary in their home language (Spanish) and English.

Expected Challenge
Because LEAs have different kindergarten readiness expectations, it will be important to ensure all kindergarten-eligible children meet the language and literacy readiness expectations of the local schools they will attend.

This program organized and wrote its action plans according to area (e.g., teaching and learning; parent and family engagement; community engagement; health services; and program management) to ensure that staff understood their specific roles and responsibilities in relation to accomplishing this goal. This action plan is included as Table 4.3.

Table 4.3: Example 2 – ABC Head Start Action Plan (English and Spanish Language Acquisition)

Last Updated: August 8, 2023