There is an easier way to gather quantitative data about family engagement: the parent self assessment.
If you work in a Head Start program, you are surely familiar with conducting an annual self assessment. You know well that it is done every year in accordance with the Head Start Program Performance Standards, that the information collected is important for your growth, and also that there are challenges in collecting the information your program can use to best support your families.
A critical piece of the self assessment—and the entire Head Start model—is family engagement. But, how do you incorporate family engagement into the self assessment? What data can you collect? Parent Gauge is a research-based, valid, and reliable tool to systematically learn from your most important partners: Head Start parents. Not only does Parent Gauge use the power of conversation to hear your families’ stories, it also allows you to gather quantitative data about family engagement in your self assessment.
School Readiness
Has your program set a school-readiness goal that all children are regularly reading at home? Parent Gauge question 9 asks parents about whether they set aside time to read with their child. Parent responses measure the extent to which you’ve succeeded in this specific reading goal.
Parent Support
Is your program concerned with supporting parents in setting goals for themselves and their families? Question 14 will let you hear from the parents themselves about whether or not they have such goals.
Support Children with Disabilities
Want to know about your program’s efforts to support children with disabilities? Parent Gauge can tell you how well you’ve done in connecting parents of children with disabilities to available resources and tools that they can use to support their child’s development.
Instead of going through the pains of recreating your own survey, consider using Parent Gauge to have a conversation with your families.
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