Head Start Program CLASS Implementation Date Delay

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES <SUBAGY>Administration for Children and Families</SUBAGY> <CFR>45 CFR Part 1304</CFR> <RIN>RIN 0970-AD09</RIN> <SUBJECT>Head Start Program CLASS Implementation Date Delay</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Head Start (OHS), Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule; delay of implementation date. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This final rule describes how the Office of Head Start officially delays the date for programs to meet the new competitive threshold for the Instructional Support domain of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS®) used to determine whether a Head Start agency will be subject to an open competition under the Designation Renewal System (DRS). The implementation date in the Head Start Program Performance Standards that raises the CLASS® Instructional Support competitive threshold from 2.3 to 2.5 was August 1, 2025. This final rule officially delays this implementation date to August 1, 2027. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> <E T="03">Effective date:</E> This final rule is effective on November 6, 2024. <E T="03">Implementation date:</E> The implementation date for the increased CLASS® Instructional Support competitive threshold of 2.5 as described in 45 CFR 1304.11(c)(1)(iii) is delayed until August 1, 2027. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Jessica Bialecki, Office of Head Start, 202-240-3901 or <E T="03">Jessica.Bialecki@acf.hhs.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Table of Abbreviations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Executive Summary</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Background and Purpose</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Background and History</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Authority</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Basis and Purpose of Regulatory Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Discussion of Elements of the Final Rule</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Waiver of Notice and Comment Process</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Regulatory Process Matters</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VII. Regulatory Impact Analysis</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Table of Abbreviations</HD> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">ACF—Administration for Children and Families</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">CLASS®—Classroom Assessment Scoring System</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">DRS—Designation Renewal System</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">HHS—U.S. Department of Health and Human Services</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">HSPPS—Head Start Program Performance Standards</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">OHS—Office of Head Start</FP> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Executive Summary</HD> This final rule describes how the Office of Head Start (OHS) officially delays the date for programs to meet the new competitive threshold for the Instructional Support domain of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS®) used to determine whether a Head Start agency will be subject to an open competition under the Designation Renewal System (DRS). The implementation date in the Head Start Program Performance Standards (HSPPS) that raises the CLASS® Instructional Support competitive threshold from 2.3 to 2.5 was August 1, 2025. This final rule officially delays this implementation date to August 1, 2027. The 2.3 competitive threshold that was established through regulation in 2020 has not yet been fully implemented due to a pause in CLASS® observations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the fiscal year 2024 (FY24) OHS monitoring cycle (2023-2024 program year) was the first time the 2.3 competitive threshold is fully implemented. The graduated approach established by the 2020 rule was put in place to allow sufficient time for grant recipients to make necessary quality improvements. However, the unexpected pause in CLASS® observations due to the pandemic shortened the 5-year implementation time frame to less than 2 years. This decision to delay the Instructional Support competitive threshold increase is also based on OHS' anticipated timeline for adopting an updated CLASS® tool—CLASS® 2nd Edition—and the associated training, technical assistance, and certification procedures required for both OHS and Head Start programs to implement this revised tool. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Background and Purpose</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Background and History</HD> OHS provides grant awards to local public and private non-profit and for-profit agencies to provide comprehensive education and child development services to economically disadvantaged children, birth to age five, and their families, to help young children develop the skills they need to be successful in school. The HSPPS define requirements grant recipients must meet to operate high quality Head Start programs. The HSPPS also provide a structure for OHS to monitor and enforce quality standards. One of these requirements is that programs meet or exceed a threshold score on each of three domains measured by the CLASS®. The CLASS® is an observation instrument that assesses the quality of teacher-child interactions in center-based preschool classrooms. The three domains of the CLASS® include: Emotional Support, Classroom Organization, and Instructional Support. A grant recipient is subject to an open competition if their average score across all classrooms observed is below the competitive threshold on any of these three domains. In 2020, OHS published a final rule establishing an increased competitive threshold of 2.3 for the Instructional Support domain through July 31, 2025. However, this threshold is being fully implemented for the first time during the FY24 monitoring cycle, due to delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. As described in 45 CFR 1304.11(c)(1)(iii), the competitive threshold for this domain would have further increased to 2.5 on August 1, 2025. This timeline was initially developed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, to allow programs more time to ramp up the Instructional Support threshold for accountability. This notification officially extends the implementation deadline for the increased Instructional Support competitive threshold of 2.5 to August 1, 2027. Accordingly, the lower competitive threshold of 2.3 will be in place for CLASS® observations collected as part of monitoring reviews that occur through July 31, 2027. The HSPPS requires that programs are observed using the CLASS® as part of the Head Start DRS (outlined in § 1304.11), and programs are required to meet specific thresholds for non-competitive grant renewal. While individual classrooms are observed and scored, OHS averages scores across all classrooms observed for a given program and calculates a program-level average score, which is used for competition determination. Through at least the fiscal year 2025 (FY25) monitoring cycle, OHS is using the 2008 version of the CLASS®, which consists of three domains: Emotional Support, Classroom Organization, and Instructional Support. The current thresholds for competition are 5, 5, and 2.3, respectively. Since OHS did not conduct CLASS® reviews for two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 final rule that established the new Instructional Support threshold of 2.3 was implemented for the first time in FY24. This final rule provides an extended timeframe for increasing the Instructional Support competitive threshold and gives OHS sufficient time to fully implement the 2.3 threshold before it increases to 2.5. Further, in 2022, Teachstone, the company that owns the CLASS® tool, published CLASS® 2nd Edition. The second edition of the CLASS® tool is described as a more inclusive and equitable approach to observing adult-child interactions in the classroom. As a result, several, but not all, Head Start programs are opting to re-train program staff members on CLASS® 2nd Edition for their own professional development and classroom quality tracking purposes. This process requires additional time, as well as training and technical assistance support materials, to take the new certification test. However, for OHS to shift its entire oversight and technical assistance systems to CLASS® 2nd Edition, there needs to be a substantial scale-up of the training and certification processes that Teachstone and the Head Start technical assistance network provide. A number of these training supports have not yet been available at the capacity needed for a universal shift by OHS and the Head Start community to the updated measure. OHS understands the urgency with which its oversight system must adapt to CLASS® 2nd Edition. However, due to lack of adequate supports in place to train the entire Head Start system of observers and trainers, it will not be possible for OHS to transition to CLASS® 2nd Edition prior to the date originally set by the 2020 final rule for the increase in the Instructional Support competitive threshold (August 1, 2025). <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Authority</HD> We publish this final rule under the authority granted to the Secretary of Health and Human Services by section 641 (42 U.S.C. 9836) as amended by the Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act of 2007 (Pub. L. 110-134). Under this section, the Secretary is required to develop a system for designation renewal Specifically, the Act requires the Secretary to “. . . modify, as necessary, program performance standards by regulation applicable to Head Start agencies and programs . . .”  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> This rule meets the statutory requirements Congress put forth in its 2007 bipartisan reauthorization of the Head Start and addresses Congress's mandate that called for the Secretary to review and revise the performance standards. The Secretary has determined that the modifications to performance standards contained in this regulation are appropriate and needed to effectuate the goals of ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 32k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━