[Federal Register Volume 82, Number 235 (Friday, December 8, 2017)]
[Proposed Rules]
[Pages 57905-57906]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2017-26483]
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DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Administration for Children and Families
45 CFR Part 1304
RIN 0970-AC63
CLASS Condition of the Head Start Designation Renewal System
AGENCY: Office of Head Start (OHS), Administration for Children and
Families (ACF), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
ACTION: Request for comments.
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SUMMARY: OHS invites public comment on several specific changes being
considered for the CLASS condition of the Designation Renewal System
(DRS) as outlined in the Head Start Program Performance Standards. We
are considering changes to the CLASS condition with a goal of improving
implementation and transparency of the DRS. Changes being considered
include removal of the ``lowest 10 percent'' provision of the CLASS
condition, an increase of the minimum thresholds for the Emotional
Support and Classroom Organization domains to a score of 5, removal of
the minimum threshold for the Instructional Support domain, and
establishment of authority for the Secretary to set an absolute minimum
threshold for the Instructional Support domain prior to the start of
each fiscal year to be applied for DRS CLASS reviews in the same fiscal
year. OHS requests feedback on these possible changes as well as
alternative changes to the CLASS condition, particularly ways the
Instructional Support threshold could be set and/or adjusted that would
incentivize program improvement while acknowledging the current state
of the field. OHS also invites feedback on other conditions of the DRS.
DATES: Submit comments by February 6, 2018.
ADDRESSES: You may send comments, identified by [docket number and/or
RIN number], by either of the following methods:
Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov.
Follow instructions for sending comments. We prefer to receive comments
via this method.
Mail: Office of Head Start, Attention: Colleen Rathgeb,
Director, Division of Planning, Oversight and Policy, 330 C Street SW.,
Washington, DC 20024.
Instructions: All submissions received must include our agency name
and the docket number or Regulatory Information Number (RIN) for this
notice. All comments will be posted without change to https://www.regulations.gov, including any personal information provided. We
accept anonymous comments. If you wish to remain anonymous, enter ``N/
A'' in the required fields.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Colleen Rathgeb, Director, Division of
Planning, Oversight and Policy, Office of Head Start,
[[email protected]], (202) 358-3263 (not a toll-free call).
Deaf and hearing impaired individuals may call the Federal Dual Party
Relay Service at 1-800-877-8339 between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. Eastern
Standard Time.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
Background Information
The Head Start program provides grants to local public and private
non-profit and for-profit agencies to provide comprehensive education
and child development services to economically disadvantaged children,
from birth to age five, and families and to help young children develop
the skills they need to be successful in school. Our agencies provide
these families comprehensive services to support children's cognitive,
social, and emotional development. In addition to education services,
agencies provide children and their families with health, nutrition,
social, and other services.
To drive program quality improvement, the Improving Head Start for
School Readiness Act of 2007, Pub. L. 110-134, (the Act) required HHS
to develop a system to facilitate designation of Head Start grantees
delivering a high-quality and comprehensive program for a period of
five years and required grantees not delivering high-quality and
comprehensive services to enter open competition for continued funding.
Prior to the Act, when HHS designated a Head Start agency, it remained
a Head Start grantee indefinitely unless the grantee either
relinquished funding or HHS terminated its grant.
To meet the requirement in the Act, HHS established the DRS, which
is described in 45 CFR 1304.10 through 16. The DRS includes seven
conditions. If an agency meets any of the seven conditions, it must
compete with other providers in the community for renewed grant
funding. The seven conditions are: (1) A deficiency under section
641A(c)(1)(A), (C), or (D) of the Act; (2) failure to establish,
utilize, and analyze children's progress on agency-established School
Readiness goals; (3) scores below minimum thresholds in the Classroom
Assessment Scoring System: Pre-K (CLASS) domains or in the lowest 10
percent in any of the three domains of the agencies monitored in a
given year unless the average score is equal to or above the standard
of excellence; (4) revocation of a license to operate a center or
program; (5) suspension from the program; (6) debarment from receiving
federal or state funds or disqualified from the Child and Adult Care
Food Program; or (7) an audit finding of at risk for failing to
continue as ``a going concern.'' The Act also requires HHS to
periodically evaluate whether or not the DRS criteria are applied in a
manner that is transparent, reliable, and valid.
Section 641(c)(1)(D) of the Act requires the DRS to be based in
part on classroom quality as measured under section 641A(c)(2)(F),
which refers to a valid and reliable research-based observational
instrument, implemented by qualified individuals with demonstrated
reliability, that assesses classroom quality, including assessing
multiple dimensions of teacher-child interactions that are linked to
positive child development and later achievement. The third condition
of the DRS is based on use of the CLASS, which is an observational
measurement tool for assessing the quality of teacher-
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child interactions and classroom processes in three broad domains that
support children's learning and development: Emotional Support,
Classroom Organization, and Instructional Support.
Changes to CLASS Condition Under Consideration
Since HHS established the DRS, all grantees that had indefinite
project periods have completed the DRS process. Based on CLASS data,
observations collected throughout these cohorts, results of a recent
evaluation, and feedback from the community, we are considering changes
to the CLASS condition of the DRS in order to better improve
implementation of the system. There are concerns about some aspects of
the CLASS condition of the DRS that have been raised by Head Start
grantees as well as in the recent evaluation. First, the requirement
for grantees with the lowest 10 percent of scores on any of the three
CLASS domains to compete may not be optimally targeting the grantees
for competition with the lowest measures of classroom quality. For
example, grantees have been required to compete due to an Emotional
Support score of 5.69, which is very close to the Standard of
Excellence (a 6--which developers of the CLASS deem the highest
quality), while grantees very close to the minimum threshold in
Instructional Support (e.g., score of 2.3) do not have to compete. We
are considering an approach to establish higher specific thresholds
that demonstrate an established acceptable level of quality in
Emotional Support and Classroom Organization and an adjustable
threshold for the Instructional Support domain where there is the
greatest potential and need for program improvement.
Second, we understand that the delay between completion of the
CLASS review and grantees knowing their DRS designation status, due to
the need to collect and analyze a full monitoring year's CLASS scores
to determine the lowest 10 percent, creates uncertainty, stress, and
concern among grantees, grantee staff, and families. Because classroom
quality in Head Start programs is improving, as demonstrated by recent
analysis of data from the 2006, 2009, and 2014 cohorts of the Head
Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES),\1\ we are exploring
options for the CLASS condition that would better balance an ability to
drive quality improvement over time with an approach that would be more
transparent, timely, and less burdensome for programs.
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\1\ Aikens, N., Bush, C., Gleason, P., Malone, L., & Tarullo, L.
(2016). Tracking Quality in Head Start Classrooms: FACES 2006 to
FACES 2014. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services.
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To inform our development of a notice of proposed rulemaking to
change the DRS CLASS condition to meet the objectives described above,
we are requesting public comments on several specific changes being
considered. The changes under consideration are as follows:
1. Remove the ``lowest 10 percent'' provision of the CLASS
condition described in 45 CFR 1304.11(c)(2).
2. Increase the minimum threshold described in 45 CFR
1304.11(c)(1)(i) for the Emotional Support domain from 4 to 5.
3. Increase the minimum threshold described in 45 CFR
1304.11(c)(1)(ii) for Classroom Organization from 3 to 5.
4. Remove the minimum threshold for the Instructional Support
domain described in 45 CFR 1304.11(c)(1)(iii) and instead provide
authority for the Secretary to set an absolute minimum threshold for
the Instructional Support domain, considering the most recent CLASS
data, by August 1 of each year to be used for CLASS Reviews conducted
in the following fiscal year (October 1 through September 30).
Together, these changes would allow grantees to know by August 1,
before CLASS Reviews are conducted for the coming fiscal year, the
exact threshold of classroom quality in each of the three domains that
will be used to determine which grantees will be subject to an open
competition for funding and which grantees will receive renewed funding
non-competitively. Grantees would no longer have to wait until several
months following the conclusion of the CLASS reviews for the fiscal
year (September 30) to learn the lowest 10 percent cutoff in each of
the 3 domains. Setting minimum thresholds of 5 in the Emotional Support
and Classroom Organization domains would set a clear and consistent
expectation of quality for all Head Start programs. Allowing the
Secretary to set the minimum threshold in the Instructional Support
domain prior to the start of each program year and monitoring year
would allow for consideration of the most recent CLASS data for Head
Start grantees while still supporting continuous quality improvement
across the program as a whole.
What We Are Looking for in Public Comments
We invite comments about the specific changes being considered for
the DRS CLASS condition. We also invite comments about any unintended
consequences of removing the lowest 10 percent condition and whether an
absolute threshold could influence scores. We are particularly
interested in recommendations related to how the Secretary would
consider establishing the minimum threshold for Instructional Support
each year. For example, the regulation could establish an initial
Instructional Support threshold (e.g., 2.3 or 2.5) that could be raised
in increments of 0.1 based on certain criteria related to the available
CLASS data from all prior years of Head Start monitoring, or the
threshold could be set one standard deviation below the mean
Instructional Support score over the 3 or 5 previous fiscal years. We
are interested in other ideas of ways the Instructional Support
threshold could be set and/or adjusted that would incentivize program
improvement while acknowledging the current state of the field. We are
also interested in feedback on another potential change to establish or
maintain a minimum absolute threshold (such as a 2) that would require
competition and a higher threshold (such as 2.5 or 3) and require
grantees to focus on quality improvement before they were reevaluated
to see if their Instructional Support score has improved. Only grantees
without improvement or still below the threshold would then have to
compete. We are interested in feedback on each of these possible
approaches as well as others suggested by the field.
If commenters do not support the changes being considered, comments
offering alternative proposals to the CLASS condition or to other
conditions of the DRS would be particularly helpful.
Dated: December 5, 2017.
Ann Linehan,
Acting Director, Office of Head Start.
[FR Doc. 2017-26483 Filed 12-7-17; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4184-01-P