Head Start Graduate Student Research Grantees

Using assessments to provide program-level accountability and to guide improvement is growing. The most notable and unprecedented example is the Head Start National Reporting System (NRS). Extensive controversy has broken out within the Head Start community and the early childhood field regarding what the NRS assesses (National Head Start Association, 2004; Meisels & Atkins-Burnett, 2004; Government Accounting Office, 2005; Raver & Zigler, 2004). Most notably, the NRS does not assess children’s social and emotional development. Linn (2001, 2004) argues that one of the issues that the development and use of assessment systems ought to explicitly address is what should be assessed. Such choices result in assumptions about ‘what matters.’