CSP Head Start services are customized to the individual child's developmental level including children with disabilities. The Head Start Child Development and Early Learning Framework provide Head Start with a description of the developmental building blocks that are most important for a child’s school and long-term success. Head Start children, 3 to 5 years old, are expected to progress in all areas of child development and early learning outlined by the Framework. Children have the opportunity to express themselves through art, music, movement and storytelling. They learn about books, words, numbers and the world around them. Children develop self-confidence and socialization skills. Head Start also works with children and parents to make a successful transition to kindergarten.
(Promoting Alternative THinking Strategies) PATHS
PATHS is a universal, classroom-based curriculum that increases children's social-emotional competence and self-regulatory skills, leading to long-term social, behavioral and academic gains. The Power PATH program incorporates both parent and child interventions, and includes opportunities for the children to teach their parents the social and emotional skills they are learning in the classroom, to promote skill-generalization and transfer these elements to the home environment.
(Quality Rating and Improvement System) QRIS
The State of Alabama is working to improve the availability and quality of early and school-age care and education programs. The Alabama Quality STARS will recognize and provide incentives to providers that reach higher levels of quality. Five stars will indicate the highest level of quality. QRIS is a systemic approach to assess, improve, and communicate the level of quality in early and school-age care and education programs. Similar to rating systems for restaurants and hotels, QRIS awards quality ratings to early and school-age care and education programs that meet a set of defined program standards. By participating in their State’s QRIS, early and school-age care providers embark on a path of continuous quality improvement. Even providers that have met the standards of the lowest QRIS levels have achieved a level of quality that is beyond the minimum requirements to operate.
Literacy
CSP Head Start/Early Head Start, and the partners noted below, provided new books to each child in every classroom at all of our centers. Research tells us that language and literacy are interrelated. Literacy includes the domain elements of phonological awareness, book knowledge/ appreciation, print awareness and concepts, early writing, and alphabet knowledge. CSP Head Start teachers practice effective strategies that help children acquire necessary skills that promote the development of successful readers and writers.
Educational Assessments
CSP Head Start uses a valid and reliable assessment tool called Teaching Strategies GOLD. The starting point for the assessment is 38 research-based objectives, including many predictors of future school success. Teaching Strategies GOLD describes the pathway, or progression, of how children develop and learn. We use the documentation collected to determine each child’s progress related to these objectives.
CLASS is the only observational teacher-assessment tool that captures teacher behaviors linked to student gains. This assessment has been proven to work in thousands of classrooms, from preschool to high school and beyond. CSP Head Start received the highest CLASS scores in the State of Alabama during the 2013-2014 academic year (based on a 7.0 scale).
