Head Start
Data Tools
Solutions for Driving Quality
Telling your head start data story
Your Head Start program collects valuable data that could deeply inform your work with children and families. Traditionally, programs have used their data to track deadlines and create reports. With the right data management tools, however, you can do so much more. The Head Start Performance Standards have introduced a new expectation that data be incorporated into decision making. This requires moving beyond traditional reports, incorporating new data sources and using better tools.
Using Head Start Data Tools to connect Silos
The three dimensionality of linked data enables staff to see the patterns and relationships to identify, diagnose and solve problems. This can be accomplished quickly and easily.
Your team simply exports designated reports to us and we will provide the data warehouse, link the various data sets and create interactive visualizations and benchmarks for your team. This outsourced solution exponentially increases the value of your data.
Disconnected Head Start data sets are a lost opportunity, preventing you from linking child data with classroom data, with parent needs and outcomes, etc. The solution is data integration.
Our Head Start data tools link the following data sets:
- NChild Assessments
- NCLASS Scores
- NFamily Needs
- NFamily Outcomes
- NAttendance
- NFamily Demographics
- NHealth Data
Using Head Start Data Tools to connect Silos
The three dimensionality of linked data enables staff to see the patterns and relationships to identify, diagnose and solve problems. This can be accomplished quickly and easily.
Your team simply exports designated reports to us and we will provide the data warehouse, link the various data sets and create interactive visualizations and benchmarks for your team. This outsourced solution exponentially increases the value of your data.
Disconnected Head Start data sets are a lost opportunity, preventing you from linking child data with classroom data, with parent needs and outcomes, etc. The solution is data integration.
- NChild Assessments
- NCLASS Scores
- NFamily Needs
- NFamily Outcomes
- NAttendance
- NFamily Demographics
- NHealth Data
Benchmarking —
Gaining Perspective
Knowing how your program is performing in relation to others is a key lever for improving performance. Most early childhood programs, however, lack this perspective — they have no way of knowing how their child assessments, family needs, chronic absence or health data compare to their peers.
As a Network of Head Start programs using standardized dashboards, however, we’re able to integrate this information into our dashboards, enabling programs to quickly see where they excel and where they can improve. We’re also able to identify “bright spots,” so that we can find high performers and learn from their experience.
Head Start Data Tools
With Interactive Access
Head Start programs have traditionally relied on static reports from their MIS (ChildPlus, COPA, GoEngage, etc.) to track program data. Static reports are useful for things like deadlines or to get a general sense of program performance. If you want to dig deeper, however, to explore trends, patterns and relationships in your data, a static report has limited value.
Today, many community-based organizations and schools have begun using interactive visualization software to better understand their data. This user-friendly software enables program managers to click on particular data sets of interest and better understand the underlying dynamics, relationships and meaning. The interactive elements of our dashboards is part of what distinguishes our dashboards from traditional, static reports.
Examples of interactive data uses:
- Sort teacher and child performance relationships
- Prioritize attention to families, based on education level and literacy
- Identify children early in the school year who are at greatest risk
- Segment chronically absent children for effective intervention
- Benchmark outcomes against other programs
Head Start PIR – Analytics
Think about your annual self-assessment. Whether your team is assessing teacher turnover, numbers of homeless children served, or hundreds of other performance metrics, a robust, interactive PIR tool offers critical insight. When a program purchases our Head Start PIR analytics, they also receive four sessions with a Data Coach. While the dashboard is intuitive for users, our coach will guide your team in the dialogue and reflection process, to ensure maximum insight and value applied to your self-assessment.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
Human beings are hardwired to digest information visually. It’s just more efficient to find trends and patterns in colored graphs than rows of numbers.
Our data partner, CCR Analytics, produces an array of renderings with your data from the full program level down to the classroom and individual child and family. Interactive dashboards have multiple pages displayed in an array of bar and pie charts, run charts, heat maps and lists that offer users tremendous flexibility for searching and sorting.
They’re built on Microsoft’s Power B.I. platform, an easy to use software that enables insightful presentations to Policy Councils, Governing Boards and other stakeholders.
Master your data and drive quality.
There are plenty of obstacles for ECE leaders attempting to master data management. Success requires the right Head Start data tools, the right improvement methods, and the right internal processes. We can sort out the tools and strategies to move your team forward. Contact us to explore your options.