Part II
Striving for Excellence

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The Advisory Committee believes that all Head Start programs should provide high quality comprehensive services in order to be effective and to better assure long term benefits for children and families. Head Start programs must have a clear understanding of policies and expectations and should receive sufficient levels of support and resources to achieve this goal.

The Committee believes that no Head Start program should be allowed to fall below a minimum level of programmatic and fiscal performance and still continue to operate. At the same time, all programs should strive for excellence in serving both children and families.

To accomplish the dual purposes of establishing a minimum floor of quality and encouraging excellence, the Committee recommends the following five specific steps.

Step 1: Focusing on staffing and career development.

Head Start delivers its services from people to people: 100,000 front line staff and managers working with children and families every day. It is not a factory or technology; it is a social system. Our strategy to improve quality, therefore, needs to begin with the working environment for staff. Our energies need to be placed on creating local capacity for assuring quality and creativity in the interactions between staff and children and parents.

Head Start staff need to feel valued and recognized. They need opportunities for outside observation and feedback. They need time, opportunities, and incentives for advancement. They need to feel part of a team.

In order to assure quality and achieve and sustain excellence in Head Start, the Advisory Committee recommends launching a Head Start staff support and improvement initiative. This initiative would weave together six key action steps to implement the following principles:

• All staff should have the knowledge and expertise required to effectively fulfill their job responsibilities;
• Staff in all components should reflect the language and culture of the children and families served;
• Continued efforts should be made to recruit staff from the community and to develop the skills needed in the community;
• Training should be ongoing and structured to include observation and feedback;
• Whenever possible, training should be linked to college credit and should lead to degrees or other recognized credentials;
• Training and resources should be made available to support a differentiated staffing model with various levels of qualifications, roles, responsibilities, and compensation;
• All staff should take initiative and personal responsibility for their own professional growth and should be offered ample opportunities and support for career advancement;

• There should be sufficient levels of supervisory staff available to provide ongoing and regular support to staff; and
• Caseloads and child-staff ratios should be at sufficient levels to encourage ample opportunities for staff-parent and staff-child interactions.

The Committee recommends the following six actions to implement these principles:

Action: Provide national leadership in developing and implementing staffing plans in every Head Start program.

Every Head Start program should have a staffing plan that addresses staff qualifications, job descriptions, staffing levels, mechanisms for establishing wage scales and benefits, and linkages to education and training that will allow staff to advance through various roles with increasing levels of responsibility and compensation. The plans should be designed to encourage successful staff-parent and staff-child interactions. While each plan will be different in order to respond to local needs, HHS should provide leadership through the development of model plans that can provide guidance to local programs and through technical assistance to support the effort.

Action: Develop a new initiative to encourage "qualified mentor teachers" to support classroom staff.

Head Start teachers working directly with children should receive adequate levels of observation, feedback, and support to promote developmentally appropriate practice. A sufficient number of master teachers with B.A. degrees in early childhood education or equivalent and appropriate experience should be available to supervise and support small numbers of classroom staff. In addition to providing more decentralized, qualified supervision to classroom staff, the master teacher position could serve as a career development opportunity for individuals who are classroom teachers. A "mentor" position should also be developed for home visitors and family service workers.

Action: Establish competency-based training for staff who work directly with families.

A new initiative is needed to identify the key competencies required of Head Start family service staff, to develop a curriculum that will support and develop those competencies in Head Start staff, and to promote and institutionalize a widely accepted credential that will signal attainment of those competencies. To ensure that existing work is not duplicated and that the credential is widely accepted throughout the early childhood and family support fields, Head Start should work collaboratively with the range of other organizations currently examining this issue. A joint initiative would strengthen the capacity of Head Start staff and enhance the quality of services provided to Head Start families, while also reinforcing Head Start's role as both partner and leader iii the early childhood and family support fields.

Action: Ensure sufficient staffing levels to serve children and families effectively.

While specific staffing ratios may depend on the staffing models chosen by individual programs, HHS should set goals designed to ensure that social services, parent involvement, and health staff have sufficient time to interact effectively with families and with community agencies. HHS should consider caseload goals of at least 1:35 for staff who work directly with families. In addition, while the specifics must again remain flexible given different program structures, HHS should set goals for supervisory staffing designed to ensure that component coordinators and supervisors have adequate levels of responsibilities to provide effective support and guidance to direct service staff.

Action: Continue to increase the compensation of Head Start staff

After years of inadequate wages and benefit levels, Head Start programs have begun to increase staff compensation. This important effort should be continued. In addition, local grantees and HHS should:

• Increase efforts to provide training opportunities that can lead to increases in salary;
• Provide sufficient flexibility so that additional resources can be made available for staff compensation in programs with particular needs;
• Provide federal leadership in the design of benefit pools and retirement plans for Head Start staff; and
• Conduct annual salary surveys and document the impact of salary enhancement on quality.

Action: Strengthen the availability of training and career development opportunities at the local level.

To ensure that all Head Start staff have the opportunity and financial support to pursue education, training, and career development that will ultimately benefit children, local grantees must have better access to institutions of higher education, professional organizations, state training initiatives, and potential federal leadership development opportunities.

• HHS should convene key players in the higher education community (including the historically black colleges and universities) in order to strengthen their work with Head Start grantees, build a nationwide network of quality academic programs, and improve the ability of local grantees to purchase effective, relevant training at a convenient academic location;
• Head Start programs and staff should be linked to career development systems for early childhood staff currently under development in a number of states. Head Start programs should encourage staff to participate and also share training materials and experience. HHS and the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services should work collaboratively to ensure well-trained special education staff; and
• HHS should develop a leadership fellows program to build outstanding leadership in Head Start and other early childhood programs and to provide opportunities for promising staff from the field to work in national professional organizations, and HHS regional and central offices. Such an initiative should include the foundation and corporate communities as well as leading colleges and universities.

Step 2: Improving the management of local programs.

The challenges faced by local Head Start programs have multiplied in size, scope, and complexity in recent years. HIIS and local grantees must ensure that the managers of local Head Start programs have what they need to lead programs effectively in a changing world: knowledge, skills, commitment not only to children and families but to the complex tasks of management and leadership, and the support and infrastructure they need to manage effectively. The Advisory Committee recommends that HHS implement the following five actions to improve local capacity to manage and deliver quality programs:

Action:Emphasize and expand management training.

All Head Start directors and management staff should receive training in fiscal management, planning, supervision and staff support, parent involvement in all components, and other topics related to the overall administration of the program. A system of follow-up and technical assistance should be included in the training. This training initiative could build upon the Johnson & Johnson Management Fellows Program and other successful models, and should seek to involve colleges and universities across the country.

Action: Strengthen financial management policies and practices.

All Head Start grantees must have mechanisms in place to ensure the proper use of funds. Special steps should be taken to strengthen the financial oversight of Head Start programs. The following strategies are suggested:

• Develop review groups to study existing financial management practices and help local grantees adopt best practices;
• Develop appropriate materials and increase training opportunities for Head Start directors and financial staff to ensure that they are able to carry out their program management and administrative responsibilities effectively. Special attention should be given to the training needs of new staff, to programs experiencing difficulties in the area of financial management, to the topic of cost allocation requirements, and to the automation of financial record-keeping;

Increase the opportunities for joint training on fiscal policies for both program and fiscal staff in the HHS central and regional offices; and

• Ensure consistency in monitoring and interpretation of fiscal policies across the regions, including the system of cost allocation.

Action: Support strategic planning at the local level through a multi-year "phased in expansion" strategy.

One barrier to the effective management of local programs in the past has been the nature of the expansion process. For the most part, expansion planning has been undertaken on a year-to-year basis without enough consideration of long-term expansion objectives and the overall child and family service needs of each community. In order to promote more strategic planning and more effective management of resources, HHS should consider phasing in expansion so that programs are able to look ahead over a multi-year time line, with not every program expanding every year.

Criteria to select programs for expansion in a given year might include the completion of a multi-year plan, readiness to expand, and high need of the community. Consideration should be given to the use of planning grants as a mechanism to assess needs and provide the information needed to phase in expansion effectively, particularly in areas of great need or limited resources and in new or underserved areas.

The Committee believes that many of the Head Start quality issues raised recently are related to the inherent uncertainties that accompany the annual appropriations process. Uneven and unpredictable funding increases, including the rapid expansion of the past five years without appropriate technical assistance and support, have prevented program administrators at both the federal and local levels from developing long term strategic plans and from phasing in program expansion efforts in an orderly fashion. Future expansion of the program must reflect the need to assist local grantees in strategic planning to better accommodate expansion targets while maintaining the level of quality required of all grantees. The Committee believes that, in order to achieve the goals of Head Start, the Administration should explore the full range of funding options for the Head Start program commensurate with an effort of this magnitude and importance.

Action: Update the Head Start Performance Standards.

Over the past 18 years Head Start's Program Performance Standards have defined the scope and quality of the services that local programs are expected to provide to all enrolled children and their families. Among other things, the Standards have helped to promote Head Start's fundamental concepts and goals; they have helped to sustain Head Start's stature as a national program with nationwide service requirements; they have served as the basis for the development of a relatively uniform system of federally and locally-conducted program assessments; and they have served as a model for emerging early childhood programs.

The Advisory Committee reaffirms the role and value of the Performance Standards. At the same time, they recommend that the standards and the guidance be reviewed and revised to reflect changing circumstances and problems facing Head Start children and families today, the evolution of best practices in the fields of family support and early childhood, the program's experience with the use of the Standards since 1975, and the anticipated expansion of the program over the coming years.

The Advisory Committee identified a number of key issues to be considered in the review and update of the Performance Standards. The Committee believes that the review should promote quality, respond to community needs, and strengthen as well as streamline standards. The following are among the specific issues the Committee recommends for review:

• Increasing the emphasis placed on the business practices of the Head Start program, including the development of performance standards in the area of financial management;
• Examining the adequacy of existing requirements in the area of management and administration and expanding these requirements to include, for example, minimal competencies for staff involved in financial and management related jobs;
• Including requirements on staffing levels and qualifications for key positions in each of Head Start's service components - education, health, social services, parent involvement, and disabilities;
• Including requirements and/or guidance supporting developmentally appropriate curriculum, emergent literacy, and transition of Head Start children to elementary school;
• Clarifying Head Start's immunization and other health requirements to ensure that there is consistency between the standards, reporting requirements, and best practices;
• Strengthening requirements (and providing resources) in the area of mental health to ensure that staff have access to the best practices about working with children with challenging behavior, that mental health services are seen as working collaboratively with Head Start family service and classroom staff, and that Head Start is linked with appropriate mental health providers and resources in the community;
• Ensuring that nutritional requirements meet the needs of children and families;'
• Placing more emphasis on expectations related to the provision of family services and making it clear that Head Start programs have a responsibility for working with families proactively through the conduct of family needs assessments, the development of plans for meeting family goals, serving as case managers, and ombudsmen, coordinating efforts with other service providers, and promoting basic skills and family literacy;
• Reinforcing the role of parents in the decision making process;
• Finalizing regulations governing programs serving children from birth through age three;
• Developing regulations to assure that safe and effective transportation services are available; and
• Providing incentives to coordinate with other local, state, and federal programs.

Efforts to improve the Performance Standards should also take into account the quality standards and systems in other early childhood and family support programs, such as the NAEYC Center Accreditation System; work in education and human service programs in establishing outcome based accountability systems; and guiding principles of the National Performance Review to increase responsiveness to clients, empower front-line workers, and minimize regulations and paperwork.

In addition, any future revision of Head Start's Performance Standards should take into consideration the special needs and unique circumstances of programs serving Native Americans and migrant and seasonal farm workers.

Action: Develop performance measures to support strong outcomes.

While there is considerable debate about the role of performance measures in general and outcome measures in particular in the early childhood field, the Advisory Committee believes that HHS should consider developing performance measures specially tailored to the Head Start program, in consultation with the Head Start and early childhood community. Performance measures assessed at the program level (not at the level of the individual child) can be effective as a management tool for increasing accountability, fostering a commitment to results that reduce red tape, and accomplishing program objectives more efficiently. The development of measures would be consistent with the requirements of the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 and the recommendations of the National Performance Review.

The Advisory Committee recognizes and appreciates the current debate in the early childhood field regarding the desirability and reliability of current methods available to measure child outcomes. Our intention is not to require or encourage such child-level measures in Head Start programs but rather to begin a debate regarding the most useful program-level indicators and measures.

A wide variety of measures might be considered, addressing program quality, operational and fiscal effectiveness, and - to the extent possible - the experiences of children and families. Measures that currently are collected through monitoring reviews (such as the percent of programs meeting the key Performance Standards) and through the Program Information Report would provide a useful starting point while imposing a minimal burden, though the limitations of these data sources must be recognized. Possible measures include program characteristics such as caseload levels and class size; program results such as immunization levels, services provided to families, and family needs assessments completed; and qualitative assessments of child and family experiences. The array of performance measures should also address financial and overall program management in such areas as legitimate use of federal funds, adequate documentation of expenditures, and appropriate internal controls.

Step 3: Reengineering federal oversight to provide for greater accountability.

To strengthen federal stewardship, to ensure that the federal government can live up to its responsibility to build capacity and support quality in local programs, and to restore the federal leadership capacity, the Advisory Committee recommends five specific actions:

Action: Reassess and design the Head Start training and technical assistance system to support program quality and expansion.

Training and technical assistance, whether provided by federal staff or by contracted providers, requires major attention as part of a quality strategy. Therefore, the Advisory Committee recommends that HHS consult with the Head Start community and respected external advisors to develop a training and technical assistance strategy that:

• Reflects the central priorities of this report;
• Retains sufficient flexibility beyond these central priorities to meet needs that emerge at the grantee, regional office, or central office level;
• Builds in ongoing feedback from all users, including Head Start grantees and regional office staff;
• Takes full advantage of new and emerging training technologies, such as interactive video;
• Allows for innovation in the structure of technical assistance (TA) where needed to link Head Start grantees to the best available expertise (for example, in health care or facilities financing);
• Links as effectively as. possible to related technical assistance and training efforts, such as state early childhood initiatives;
• Builds on existing expertise within the Head Start community as well as outside it;
• Determines the right staffing size and mix to ensure adequate training and technical assistance;
• Ensures that education staff receive training in developmentally appropriate practice and methods for supporting children's language and literacy; and
• Reflects best research and knowledge about how to train staff to effectively carry out their responsibilities.

Action: Review and strengthen Head Start monitoring.

On-site monitoring has been a key element of Head Start's overall strategy to ensure quality services and local accountability. However, both federal staff and local grantees report a need. to strengthen monitoring, to target it more carefully, and to link it more effectively to technical assistance.

Therefore, the Advisory Committee recommends that HHS conduct a thorough review of the current monitoring system, including the instruments used; the process of on-site reviews; the training and travel funds needed for federal staff; the adequacy and timeliness of feedback, follow-up, and links to technical assistance; the variability or consistency of standards across regional offices; and the qualifications and training of consultants employed in monitoring. Consideration should be given to alternative or supplemental monitoring systems which rely on grantee self-assessments and outside validation; to the use of outside accreditation by professional organizations as a supplement to monitoring; and to the development of new structures to support quality, such as a Quality Maintenance Organization that could help programs initiate self-improvement efforts and assess their progress.

Action: Ensure prompt action to deal with low-performing grantees.

HHS must make clear that persistently low performance - whether fiscal, management, or programmatic - is grounds for termination of a grantee. The Committee recommends that HHS put into place a time-sensitive process for working to correct deficiencies and, if necessary, defunding low-performing programs. To ensure that this process works smoothly across the country, regional offices should be trained and supported in resolving cases of low performance, and HUS should also consider developing "hard case team" which would specialize in handling the hardest cases in a timely fashion.

Action: Review Head Start's administrative structure and federal staffing levels.

HHS should convene a working group to review the federal structure and staffing of the Head Start program. Such a review should consider staffing levels, staff qualifications and training, communication between the central office and regional offices, reporting relationships, and opportunities for streamlining processes and responding more effectively to grantees.

While the Committee believes that such a review would identify opportunities to perform federal duties more efficiently, it also believes that increases in the number of federal staff at the regional office and central office levels are necessary to ensure quality. In addition, the Committee anticipates that the review would identify specific areas of particular need, such as health policy staffing in the central office.

Action: Launch a professional development and training initiative for federal staff at the regional office and central office levels.

To support quality in local programs, provide leadership on emerging issues, and effectively monitor and review program operations, federal staff need to stay up-to-date in their fields. The Advisory Committee recommends an initiative to target professional development and training to key federal staff in the regions and central office in order to maintain or enhance their expertise in early childhood education or other program components, and to strengthen their generic skills in program assessment and technical assistance. Exchange programs and fellowship opportunities that place federal staff on-site in local programs should be considered as one approach.

Step4: Providing for better facilities.

Over the years Head Start programs have invested significant resources in renovating facilities, yet the need for improved and expanded facilities remains a critical issue facing Head Start programs and a barrier to expansion The Head Start Improvement Act allows Head Start programs :he authority to purchase facilities. The following four actions are recommended in order to assist programs with such purchases:

Action: Issue regulations on facilities.

HHS should promulgate draft regulations implementing the Head Start Improvement Act which, for the first time, authorized Head Start grantees to use grant funds to purchase facilities. HHS regional offices and grantees should be provided training on the regulations when they are issued in final form, to ensure consistent interpretation.

Action: Assess the state of Head Start facilities

A systematic assessment of all Head Start facilities should be conducted to determine where problems exist and to understand better the level of funding and technical assistance which might be necessary to assure all Head Start programs are operating in high quality licensed facilities.

In addition, further consideration is needed for Head Start to be able to construct facilities, particularly in communities with a lack of facilities available for purchase or renovation.

Action: Provide technical assistance on facilities.

A national technical assistance capacity should be developed to assist programs in the planning and financing of facilities. Training and technical assistance should include issues related to financing, planning, development, site acquisition, construction, access and other code requirements. HHS should convene those involved in state and local facility projects to help document and disseminate promising initiatives. There should be someone designated at the regional level to serve as a facilities specialist for each region. Emphasis should be placed on the promotion of routine maintenance.

Action: Explore creative ways to leverage other funds to secure quality facilities.

HHS should explore launching a special initiative with Federal financial institutions and private investors to leverage additional resources to secure adequate Head Start facilities. HHS should convene a meeting or meetings with other funding agencies to help develop capital assistance funds to be utilized for critical existing capital replacement needs and facilities expansion.

HHS should encourage the use of existing tax incentives, federal loan guarantees, revenue bonds, and low-income tax credits to invite socially responsible investors to allocate private resources to the Head Start and child care facility renovation and expansion funds.

Step 5: Strengthening the role of research.

Head Start is entering an historic period of reexamination, improvement in quality, and expansion of services. The size of the program, its comprehensive services, the diversity of the population it serves, and the fact that it is federally funded suggests a role for Head Start as a national laboratory for best practices in early childhood and family support services in low-income communities. Because Head Start needs to expand and renew itself in order to assume its role as a state-of-the-art "technology," there is a concomitant and compelling need for a new, expanded, and formal role for Head Start research.

The Committee recommends five major actions and strongly endorses active and continued participation of the research community in their implementation.

Action: Build a strong and enduring infrastructure for Head Start research to ensure that Head Start is able to carry out its leadership role on an ongoing basis.

The recognition of a new role for research and the need for a comprehensive, coordinated and long-range program of research was the basic theme of the 1991 report, Head Start Research and Evaluation: A Blueprint for the Future. The panel presented the first opportunity in more than a decade and a half for a systematic analysis of research needs relevant to the future of Head Start. The Blueprint pointed out the necessity to build the capacity to establish the institutional mechanisms and collaboration between Head Start and the overall research community that are essential to carry out a research agenda. This Committee reaffirms that earlier work.

A strong and effective research voice depends critically on an ongoing organizational home, a reliable funding base, and strong institutional relationships with the external research community. In consultation with external researchers and the Head Start community, HHS should conduct a thorough review of the alternatives for providing these key elements of the infrastructure.

Key issues to address include:

• Development of an organizational structure to support Head Start research internally. Effective ongoing research requires both a primary organizational home and strong links across the federal government to other research enterprises that focus on related issues of child and family development;
• Assurance of sufficient financial and personnel resources to carry out a strong research program;
• Development of strong and lasting relationships with the external research community;
• Development of a data infrastructure, through the establishment of a data archive and continual updating, synthesis, and dissemination of the literature; and
• Assurance of ongoing input from researchers as well as practitioners, through one or more working groups that can provide advice in the planning and design of the research agenda and individual studies.

Action: Conduct new Head Start research focusing on quality and other policy issues.

Although some data is available regarding the quality of Head Start programs, much more information is needed to help plan program improvements and to help inform policymakers about the key elements that lead to program effectiveness. Information is needed at the local and national level which examines the best ways to provide quality services in all components - education, health, social services, parent involvement, and disabilities.

The Head Start Program Performance Standards can be a useful tool to the research community to help understand and assess the indicators of quality at the local level. The way programs interpret these standards to meet the needs of a diverse population under various local conditions can provide a rich source of data regarding how to define and implement comprehensive child development and family support programs.

Examples of issues for research to address include:

• How are educational services being delivered to children in various settings? How do staffing patterns and curriculum vary? What approaches are most effective for which children? Is language and literacy of children being adequately addressed by programs?
• What types of services are being provided to families and how are these affected by local conditions, family needs, allocation of resources, level of training provided to staff?
• How are parents involved in the program? What methods are most effective in involving hard-to reach families, mothers and fathers, grandparents and other extended family members, working families, families with special needs?
• How are health services being provided? How is the effectiveness of health services affected by local conditions, local resources, training of staff, needs of children and families, access to community resources?
• How are the needs of children with special needs and their families being met by Head Start programs? What can we learn from these promising practices for Head Start and other early childhood programs? How are services coordinated with other funding streams and service providers? What efforts are being made to serve children with more severe handicapping conditions?
• What factors are important in sustaining and improving quality, especially as programs are extended to full day, full year?
• What community factors influence program quality, and how do Head Start programs affect the quality of services available in their communities?
• How are Head Start programs and other early childhood and family support programs coordinated, how can coordination be improved, and what is the quality of children's experiences across combinations of programs?
• What impact are state collaboration efforts having on the delivery of Head Start services? On other early childhood and family support programs?

Action: Conduct longitudinal research on children and families served in Head Start programs.

There is a limited number of studies on the long term impact of Head Start on children and families. Available information is dated, since we know that the conditions under which children and families are living have changed dramatically. In addition, Head Start serves a more diverse population than in earlier days, and one that is not adequately represented in the majority of the studies. Furthermore, most data focuses primarily on the effect of programs on children. New efforts are needed which focus on the effects both on children and on overall family functioning.

One primary purpose of conducting longitudinal research is to identify the intervening mechanisms which promote or inhibit successful development for children and families in the years following Head Start. Research is needed to identify the interacting mechanisms that are operating at the individual (child), family, school, and community levels over the course of development.

The Advisory Committee believes that HHS should take steps to implement a plan of longitudinal research on Head Start children and families which adheres to the principles and recommendations outlined by previous advisory committees on Head Start research.

Action: Expand the partnership between research and practitioners by encouraging better communication and better utilization of data.

In the past, Head Start research often has been isolated from practitioners. The members of this Committee believe that practitioners of today should be partners in any new research effort. To this end, HHS should continue to highlight emerging research, encourage dialogue between practitioners and the research community, and seek input from the Head Start community as new research and evaluation efforts emerge and new methodologies for data collection are developed.

In addition, if Head Start programs are to attain the goals for quality and responsiveness articulated elsewhere in this report, HHS must greatly strengthen its capacity to disseminate research that can be used by practitioners to improve their programs. To this end, HHS should consider developing materials and technical assistance that help translate "research into action" for program operators.

Such efforts should include training on how to use program and community information for planning as well as the dissemination of emerging findings from a wide variety of studies which address issues related to low-income children and families.

Action: Develop a long-term research plan for Head Start which places Head Start in the broader context of research on young children, families, and communities; ensures a commitment to ongoing themes; and yet has the flexibility to respond to new and emerging issues.

Too much of Head Start research has been ad hoc and isolated from key developments in the broader field. The Committee recommends that HHS, with extensive consultation in the academic and Head Start communities, develop a long-term approach to research that draws on emerging themes and developments in the broader early childhood field. The approach must:

• Link to the knowledge now being developed in related research agendas about child growth and development, child rearing, family economic well-being, assessment of quality in early childhood programs, and capacity-building in communities and in human services programs;
• Provide enough continuity and coherence so that research efforts can be sustained, so that researchers can learn from the accumulated results of multiple projects, and so results can be effectively combined and disseminated;
• Include multiple approaches to answering the challenging questions about Head Start, including basic and applied research activities, demonstrations of innovative approaches, description and documentation of key elements of service delivery, and evaluations of program effectiveness;
• Include strategies for anticipating and responding to new and emerging issues, such as the effects of the changing conditions of poverty (including exposure to violence) on Head Start families and on the program; and
• Better link research findings to policy decisions.

The Advisory Committee calls for the targeting of additional resources to implement these recommendations in order to better inform the policy decisions of the next generation of Head Start programs.


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