Page 39 - PROGRAM IMPACT AND SATIFACTION AS SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF HEAD START PARENTS

PARENTS’ EXPERIENCES IN THE HEAD START PROGRAM PARENTS’ EXPERIENCES
To understand their overall experiences in the program parents were asked about the Head Start program, Head Start staff, and observations of how the program affected them or their children. Using a four-point Likert scale, parents provided responses ranging from strongly disagree, disagree, agree, and strongly agree.
Parents on average answered agree or strongly agree to all of the statements. Because there were no significant differences between strongly disagree and disagree or strongly agree and agree, the categories were collapsed and recoded into two categories: disagree and agree. This allowed for a better analysis of differences between statements that parents disagreed with and those with which they agreed.
The Head Start Program
Parents were presented with statements regarding the Head Start program and aspects of the program that the staff implements as part of its goals. The statement rated the highest in this respect was: The Head Start Program provided a clean and safe learning environment for my child. Of 877 parents who responded to this question, 99.4% agreed with this statement. Further analyses revealed that both English (99.7%) and Spanish-speaking parents (99.2%) agreed the most with this statement compared to all other statements.
Parents least agreed with the statement: The Head Start program shared information with me to continue or advance my career or educational goals. Of 852 parents who answered this question, 88.3% agreed. English (85.6%) and Spanish-speaking (90.3%) parents agreed the least with this statement. This was also the statement that parents least agreed with in the 2012-2013 End-of- the-Year Parent Survey. Table 5 on the following page presents the difference in percentage between English and Spanish-Speaking parents for each statement about the Head Start Program.
There were several statements with which 100% of parents from at least one Head Start Center agreed. The statement the Head Start program shared information with me to continue or advance my career or educational goals was the only one in which there was not at least one center with 100% of all parents agreeing. See Table 14 in the Appendix for more details.
What I liked the BEST about my Head Start program was:
Parent involvement and the sense that you make children and parents a priority. Thank you for making us feel that our voices matter and actually listen to our concerns. Amazing teachers! Awesome program!
- Head Start Parent at Cohasset
CCRC’s Head Start Parents Page | 36 December 2014