Preliminary findings of a two-year study of the Head Start Community Partnership Program, Full Start, confirms that Head Start can be used as a catalyst to create a high quality, seamless child care system that leaves no child behind.
KCMC Child Development Corporation sought assistance from Kansas City's Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which contracted with the Families and Work Institute of New York to conduct a two-year outcome study of the Full Start program. The study addressed the effects of Full Start in four areas: (1) the overall quality of classroom environments; (2) the behavior of child care center staff; (3) the quality of teacher-child relationships; and (4) children's behavior.
Preliminary findings from the Families and Work Institute's study indicate that Full Start has demonstrated two important and far-reaching principles:
- It is possible for Head Start and community-based child care centers to collaborate without sacrificing the quality and standards
of a strong Head Start program.
- It is possible for Full Start to produce positive outcomes for children and centers in a relatively short period of time (
e.g., one year).
The study employed a quasi- experimental design that estimated effects by examining changes over time.
The study compared the following program variations:
- A Full Start program in operation for two years at the beginning of the study.
- A Full Start program in operation for one year at the beginning of the study.
- A Full Start program that began operation after the first year of the study.
- A full-day, full-year traditional Head Start program.
The study looked at 146 three and four-year-olds enrolled in three centers in 1995, and 182 four-year-olds enrolled in four centers revealed
no significant differences based on age, racial or ethnic background, family income, maternal education and employment status, or single-parent status.
A total of 13 measures were used to assess program outcomes, including standardized questionnaires and rating scales; extensive on-site observations of children and teacher-child interactions; and interviews with center administrators and parents.
Interim findings from most of the 13 measures indicated that Full Start offers a viable approach to improving the quality of existing child care programs in low-income communities. The findings suggested that a Full Start partnership had no adverse effect on Head Start quality and performance standards.
Moreover, Full Start appeared to have positive impacts on teacher behavior, teacher-child attachment, child activity and behavior, and quality of the global classroom and center environments. Findings at the end of year two confirmed these positive impacts.
When the two Full Start centers operating in the spring of 1995 were compared with a third center scheduled for Full Start conversion in the fall of 1995, the existing Full Start centers had higher ratings of global quality than the yet-to-be converted center. This finding suggested that Full Start provides a higher quality of education and care that many child care centers in low-income neighborhoods.
The Full Start evaluation also used the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS) to measure some specific indicators of overall classroom and center quality. ECERS found that during the first nine months of program implementation, the quality of the third center increased significantly . This suggested that the Full Start approach can improve the quality of a substandard center quickly.
Finally, when average quality ratings of the three Full Start centers in the spring of 1996 were compared to ratings of a local full-day, full-year Head Start center, no statistically significant differences were found. This leads to the conclusion that the Full Start seamless child care system can help existing low-quality, neighborhood child care centers to achieve the high quality of a comprehensive child development program, such as Head Start.
For more information, contact:
KCMC Child Development Corporation,
2104 East 18th Street,
Kansas City, MO 64127.
T: 816/474-3751, F:816/474-1818