Sharing Web Resources: National Head Start Association

I selected to research the National Head Start Association. Head Start is an association that aims to meet the needs of every child and family, through health, nutrition, and education services. Through researching the organization I found that they have four major components: education, health, parent involvement, and social services. These combined components work to provide a well-rounded and supportive community for young children so they can prepare for school.

To receive their newsletter you must pay to be a member of the association, so instead I found a current issue through their site. The National Head Start Association works to meet the needs of all students, but since demographics continue to change in this country, they had to revise their standards and recommendations. In 2014 they released the draft of their standards and recommendations, and included in their philosophy was, "early childhood education should provide an environment of acceptance, support, and respect for gender, culture, language, ethnicity, and family composition" (National Head Start Association, 2014, p. 3). Through more research, I found the finalized Head Start Performance Standards at the Federal Register, which included comments and responses on the standards and recommendations. The commenters recommended that culturally and linguistically diverse children should be prioritized for involvement. Head Start responded that they already research the "eligible population in their service area, including race, ethnicity, and languages spoken" so they feel they do not need to explicitly prioritize culturally and linguistically diverse children (Federal Register, 2016, p. 61311). The Head Start Association supports the individual child and believes in parent involvement, which also supports the culture. However, I believe as the demographics continue to change, they should do more than simply provide an environment of acceptance and support, but should also incorporate and assimilate the respective cultures into the programs themselves.

Organizations take time to adapt to change in demographics, because they have to continuously tweak their policies and standards based on the current issues/trends. This produces a lag between policy change and implementation, and organzations have difficulty keeping up with the country's rapidly changing demographics.

Reference

Federal Register. (2016). Head start performance standards. Retrieved from https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/09/06/2016-19748/head-start-performance-standards

National Head Start Association. (2018). https://www.nhsa.org/

National Head Start Association. (2014). Recommendations for revisions to the head start program performance standards. Retrieved from https://www.nhsa.org/files/resources/standards_recommendations.pdf