Creating Technology to Promote Learning
Accurate information on children's abilities and progress is a central precursor to effective management and the provision of high‐quality services.
This interconnection between management systems, information on children's learning, and program services is reflected in the review process. There are five critical management activities related to the delivery of results‐based, high‐quality early education: record keeping and reporting, ongoing monitoring, self‐assessment, individualization, and curriculum implementation and assessment.
The linking of these management activities helps to ensure that:
Galileo facilitates the gathering, organizing, aggregating, analyzing, and reporting of data on children's learning and those factors influencing learning because it electronically links these functions quickly, accurately, and efficiently. Ongoing data collection provides information that can be used throughout the year to set goals, make and implement plans, evaluate outcomes, and modify plans as needed
While federal legislation requires that data collection on child outcomes occurs a minimum of three times a year, programs benefit when they have access to information for decision-making throughout the entire program year.
For instance, program administrators can use Galileo reports documenting learning that has occurred in each classroom to quickly and easily determine where additional resources, guidance, and attention is needed to achieve goals that support the developmental needs of children.
Galileo expands the team by incorporating technology. It is an educational management software that is changing the way teachers teach and the way teachers assess accomplishment by providing information valuable in planning and decision making.
As stated in the ACYF-IM-HS-00-18 Information Memorandum, Head Start programs that serve children three to five years of age are now required to connect their current systems, tools, and procedures to accomplish three objectives:
Objectives Required by Head Start |
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Objective 1: Improve the content, quality, consistency, and credibility of ongoing assessment of children |
Galileo Alignment |
Content and Quality Grantees should collect data in each of the eight domain areas of children's learning
and development:
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Consistency and Credibility Grantees must ensure that assessment tools are age-appropriate, sensitive to language and culture, and quality‐controlled. |
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Ongoing Assessment |
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Objective 2: Design an approach to analyze data on children's progress and accomplishments |
Galileo Alignment |
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Grantees must develop a system to analyze data on child outcomes that centers on patterns of progress for groups of children as they receive services through the program year. At a minimum, data analysis should compare progress beginning when children enter Head Start, at a mid-point in the program year and when they complete the program year. In Galileo‐speak, we call these segments of time "Observation Periods." |
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Objective 3: Incorporate child outcome data into program self-assessment and continuous program improvement |
Galileo Alignment |
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Data on outcomes should be considered in conjunction with overall program self-assessment findings in planning for program improvements. |
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Galileo electronically links these domain areas to the ongoing assessment, planning, and
reporting of children's progress. This unique linking provides programs with immediate access
to information about children's learning progress and development. As a result, programs can
easily aggregate and document child outcomes and incorporate
outcome data in program self-assessment and program improvement.