AN EXAMINATION OF FACTORS IMPACTING HOME-SCHOOL COLLABORATION IN HEAD START POPULATIONS

Two essential pillars in a preschool-age student’s life include their caregiver and their teacher. In turn, it is unsurprising that a more cohesive relationship between these two figures can promote better wellbeing, academic skills, and overall developmental growth in young children. Unfortunately, a multitude of barriers impede home-school collaboration, such as socioeconomic status, non-English speaking households, and caregiver mental health, just to name a few. Head Start, a federally funded preschool program, targets underserved populations who often relate to these named barriers. Head Start works out of the Parent, Family, and Community Engagement (PFCE) Framework, a framework specifically geared toward minimizing these recognized barriers. This dissertation is a secondary analysis of the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES, 2014-2018). The main purpose of this study was to better understand caregiver and teacher reports of home-school collaboration and to uncover factors that influence home-school collaboration within this given population. Findings indicate that caregivers’ and teachers’ answers on a questionnaire measuring home-school collaboration were significantly correlated, indicating high levels of agreement among respondents. For both groups of respondents, scores remained stable across racial identities. However, when caregivers indicated that English was not the primary language spoken within the home, their responses on the measure were markedly lower. Teacher responses contradicted this finding. They indicated higher levels of home-school collaboration with non-English speaking households. Child factors that were positively correlated with reports of home-school collaboration for caregivers included receptive language skills and academic achievement scores. All other child factors analyzed (disability status, gender) were not significant indicators at this time