Designed for San Diego County Head Start staff, we provided college courses, a training program, academic counseling, and tutoring that developed and implemented models of Latino cultural competency development.

The Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES Survey, U.S. Dept of Health & Human Services, June, 2000) found that nationwide, Head Start Centers rated in "insufficient multicultural awareness (75 percent rated lower)." "The Secretary [of the DHHS] shall ensure that not later than Sept. 30, 2003, at least 50 percent of Head Start teachers...have an associate, baccalaureate, or advanced degree in early childhood education [or related field]" (1998 Head Start Act, Sec 648A1A). To address both issues, I headed grant 90-YP-0003 at California State University San Marcos (2000-2004) to develop Latino cultural competency skills that led to concrete steps for Head Start teacher degree completion. The training program is directly relevant to childcare providers who work directly with Latino children. We are also publishing our work in scholarly journals to address the dearth of scholarly knowledge on Latinos in pre-K education. Publications based on the research were accepted by two sources (forthcoming 2006) and one was published in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latino/as in the United States (2005).

Focus Group Data Collection was completed and we feel we have a good sense of the barriers that impede Head Start teaching staff progress towards degree completion. Most, if not all, are external to their own self-imposed limitations. Scheduling, course offerings, changing degree requirements, impacted programs, cost, and other familial and personal obligations are all major factors that impede degree completion. We offered Sociology 486 and Sociology 345 a total of 11 times. The total course enrollment is 162 staff. Three Proyecto Informar (Project to Inform) training sessions were conducted in the summers of 2002 to 2004. A total of 200 Head Start staff participated in five areas of San Diego County. We conducted six mini-Proyectos to a total of 120 participants. In sum, we trained 384 Head Start staff in Latino cultural competencies via Proyecto Informar. Total number of Head Start staff counseled (515). Total number of counseling sessions estimated between 850-1250. We have twelve students who have earned their AA, two with a BA, and fourteen who are within one semester of graduating with an AA and seven with a BA. Due to attrition, we've lost approximately ten college graduates to other positions outside of Head Start. We fulfilled requests for on-going tutoring services in the form of writing workshops (112) and 14 intensive tutoring sessions in basic writing skills.

Changes include the development of Latino cultural competencies among Head Start staff in San Diego County. We had smaller but key impacts on assisting Head Start teachers reach their educational goals and meet the Head Start mandate that fifty percent of teachers have a college degree in a childhood education field. Head Start in San Diego County is well over the fifty percent mark but our efforts have both identified sources of attrition among the degreed staff as well as the barriers that teachers are meeting when they attempt to meet their educational goals. We see our impact twofold in the classroom where Latino children are directly impacted by a training program that generates proficiencies in cultural awareness and competencies as well as ensuring a Head Start staff is adequately trained to fulfill the mission of Head Start. These positive results are now finding their way into the scholarly literature on the sociology of Latina/o education.

Latino Cultural Competency and Head Start

DHHS-ACYF (Grant completed in 2004)