Podcast: An Inside Look at the Head Start Review Process

Every three years, every Head Start program in the country must undergo a top-to-bottom review from federal monitors in regional Head Start offices who examine files, observe classrooms and interview parents. The process, known as the triennial review, typically takes a week and can be a nerve-wracking moment for grantees who worry whether they will be deemed “out of compliance” with federal regulations.

For this podcast, we talked with Karen Hughes, president and chief executive officer of The Campagna Center, a non-profit organization in Alexandria, Va., that runs the city’s Head Start and Early Head Start programs. Last year, Hughes invited Early Ed Watch to witness her organization go through its review — a week that showed us just how many regulations these programs must observe and document on a daily basis. We thought our listeners could learn from Hughes as well as she talks about why these reviews matter for quality control and what they mean to Head Start programs.

(Early Ed Watch is also interested in how this review process may change under forthcoming “re-compete” rules that are supposed to require grantees to compete against other non-profits for their federal grant if they are not meeting new guidelines. We’ve been awaiting the publication of a draft of those new rules; we’ll keep you posted.)

Early Ed Watch podcast — April 19, 2010

An Inside Look at the Head Start Review Process

With our guest Karen Hughes, CEO of the Campagna Center in Alexandria, Va.