Opportunities for Professional Growth and Family Engagement During Hispanic Heritage Month and Beyond

Hispanic culture is rich and diverse across the United States and around the world! What began in the United States in 1968 as a week-long celebration of the histories, cultures, and contributions of Americans whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America has grown into a month-long celebration acknowledged from September 15 to October 15.

During Hispanic Heritage Month, early childhood program administrators and leaders can highlight and celebrate the cultures and contributions of the groups and individuals with whom they work: community members, children and families, and colleagues. Additionally, Hispanic Heritage Month provides an opportunity to highlight the need to meet cultural needs, such as enhancing educators’ preparedness to build on children’s linguistic and cultural strengths. Finally, it offers a chance to develop partnerships or solidify relationships with other organizations focused on providing equitable educational environments.

The Hispanic community is expansive and varied, and the Hispanic population in the United States has grown by 23% from 2010 to 2020. Researching the historical and current impact of Hispanic community members on the field of early childhood education yields a wealth of information, from ideas about supporting the use of children’s home language to celebrating to ways to prioritize family engagement, from supporting educators as they begin their careers to enhancing the skills of those who have worked in the field extensively. Books for children can help guide classroom activities, families can contribute knowledge about Hispanic festivals, and leaders can connect staff and families to supportive resources about the benefits of bilingualism and celebrating ethnic identities.

Developing cultural understanding of your program’s Hispanic families and staff members is an ongoing process for program administrators. Every enrolled family and staff member needs to be provided a sense of belonging, community, and interpersonal inclusion. Educators who can share their backgrounds, talents, and ideas are most able to provide the same support for their students. Wise administrators build time for sharing and collaboration into daily interactions with and among staff; they also consider individual backgrounds and strengths as they plan professional development to ensure expertise and culture are honored.

One of the most powerful ways to celebrate everything that children bring to their classrooms is to support and encourage the use of home languages in centers and schools. Teachers demonstrate they honor a child’s culture when they foster their home languages within the classroom. Teachers show this respect by reading stories, singing songs, and leading activities in children’s home languages. If they are unable due to limited language knowledge, other Spanish-speaking members can take the lead. Parent participation within the classroom serves as a language model for students and a means to integrate the child’s culture within the classroom community.

It is also essential to intentionally begin English as a second language instruction using researched-based instructional strategies during the preschool years. As children acquire English as a second language, there are often misunderstandings around proficiency. Although a child may speak English fluently, it does not correlate to academic learning in their second language. Children can use English as a second language within a social text within a year or two; however, it takes four to nine years to acquire an academic second language.

There are many benefits to fostering home language use with English as a second language supports in the classroom over time. Children who develop a strong foundation in their home language can more easily transfer their knowledge and understanding while learning English. Learning a second language builds connections in the brain and flexibility, leading to cognitive gains. Bilingual children have opportunities to access information in two languages and, therefore, are likely to make gains cognitively, linguistically, culturally, and academically, which may lead to greater economic opportunities. Read more here: Early Language and Literacy Development Critical to Academic Achievement. When home language use is supported, it cultivates a relationship between school and home, a positive sense of self and culture within children, and stronger family bonds.

It’s essential to support teachers’ understanding of individual histories and beliefs about education and to help them learn about cultural patterns and beliefs of groups. This can help them understand the students and families they work with and select the best teaching strategies to meet their needs. You can find more about this in the resource How to Develop a Cultural Understanding Within Your Program.

Classroom assistants may sometimes be the main point of contact with enrolled families and students, especially when they share the same home language or cultural background. This may mean that they learn essential information about families’ wishes for their children; they also have the opportunity to reassure families that their children’s needs, especially for social-emotional learning, are being met in the classroom.

Program administrators can regularly evaluate whether their staff members are able to meet the needs of enrolled children and their families. How have they been supported to learn about cultural practices and develop skills for communication? Do language barriers exist that are limiting participation? Families whose backgrounds differ from those of the staff may feel intimidated or uncertain about interacting with those they see as professionals and “in charge” in center- or school-based settings.

Partnering with community organizations to provide supports for families with these concerns and using online resources can help programs to prioritize family engagement that is culturally and linguistically responsive. In Chicagoland, one of these community organizations is Latino Policy Forum. Online resources can be found in the Head Start Early Childhood Knowledge and Learning Center here and here. As the school year opens, celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month can be a great way to begin intentionally supporting colleagues, children, and families year-round.

Links to additional resources are provided below:

The Children’s Equity Project at The Center for Child and Family Success at Arizona State University
Illinois English Learner Handbook from the Latino Policy Forum
Quality for Whom? Supporting Diverse Children and Workers in Early Childhood Quality Rating and Improvement Systemsfrom the Migration Policy Institute
Discussion with Luis Hernandez, Silvia Juarez-Marazzo, and Yvette Rodriguez on how to support young Latino children in early care and education presented by the CAYL Institute
How to Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month With Kids from Parents®

Winonah LaGrande is an Assessor and Training Specialist and a member of the McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force. Over her 15 years in the Early Childhood Education field, Winonah has worked in Chicago Public Schools as well as private early childhood programs with diverse populations.

Katie Gaul is an Assessor and Training Specialist and a member of the McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force. Katie has 30+ years of experience working with children, families, and teachers in various educational settings. She holds an ESL certificate and spent eight years working in Hispanic communities.

Erin Cetera is an Assessor and Training Specialist and a member of the McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force. She has 25 years of experience directing early childhood programs in a variety of settings and communities.

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Measuring Organizational Conditions for Improving Quality

By McCormick Center • May 13, 2025

Leaders, policymakers, and systems developers seek to improve early childhood programs through data-driven decision-making. Data can be useful for informing continuous quality improvement efforts at the classroom and program level and for creating support for workforce development at the system level. Early childhood program leaders use assessments to help them understand their programs’ strengths and to draw attention to where supports are needed. Assessment data is particularly useful in understanding the complexity of organizational climate and the organizational conditions that lead to successful outcomes for children and families. Several tools are available for program leaders to assess organizational structures, processes, and workplace conditions, including: Preschool Program Quality Assessment (PQA) 1 Program Administration Scale (PAS) 2 Child Care Worker Job Stress Inventory (ECWJSI) 3 Early Childhood Job Satisfaction Survey (ECJSS) 4 Early Childhood Work Environment Survey (ECWES) 5 Supportive Environmental Quality Underlying Adult Learning (SEQUAL) 6 The Early Education Essentials is a recently developed tool to examine program conditions that affect early childhood education instructional and emotional quality. It is patterned after the Five Essentials Framework, 7 which is widely used to measure instructional supports in K-12 schools. The Early Education Essentials measures six dimensions of quality in early childhood programs: Effective instructional leaders Collaborative teachers Supportive environment Ambitious instruction Involved families Parent voice A recently published validation study for the Early Education Essentials 8 demonstrates that it is a valid and reliable instrument that can be used to assess early childhood programs to improve teaching and learning outcomes. METHODOLOGY For this validation study, two sets of surveys were administered in one Midwestern city; one for teachers/staff in early childhood settings and one for parents/guardians of preschool-aged children. A stratified random sampling method was used to select sites with an oversampling for the percentage of children who spoke Spanish. The teacher surveys included 164 items within 26 scales and were made available online for a three-month period in the public schools. In community-based sites, data collectors administered the surveys to staff. Data collectors also administered the parent surveys in all sites. The parent survey was shorter, with 54 items within nine scales. Rasch analyses was used to combine items into scales. In addition to the surveys, administrative data were analyzed regarding school attendance. Classroom observational assessments were performed to measure teacher-child interactions. The Classroom Assessment Scoring System TM (CLASS) 9 was used to assess the interactions. Early Education Essentials surveys were analyzed from 81 early childhood program sites (41 school-based programs and 40 community-based programs), serving 3- and 4-year old children. Only publicly funded programs (e.g., state-funded preschool and/or Head Start) were included in the study. The average enrollment for the programs was 109 (sd = 64); 91% of the children were from minority backgrounds; and 38% came from non-English speaking homes. Of the 746 teacher surveys collected, 451 (61%) were from school-based sites and 294 (39%) were from community-based sites. There were 2,464 parent surveys collected (59% school; 41% community). About one-third of the parent surveys were conducted in Spanish. Data were analyzed to determine reliability, internal validity, group differences, and sensitivity across sites. Child outcome results were used to examine if positive scores on the surveys were related to desirable outcomes for children (attendance and teacher-child interactions). Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to compute average site-level CLASS scores to account for the shared variance among classrooms within the same school. Exploratory factor analysis was performed to group the scales. RESULTS The surveys performed well in the measurement characteristics of scale reliability, internal validity, differential item functioning, and sensitivity across sites . Reliability was measured for 25 scales with Rasch Person Reliability scores ranging from .73 to .92; with only two scales falling below the preferred .80 threshold. The Rasch analysis also provided assessment of internal validity showing that 97% of the items fell in an acceptable range of >0.7 to <1.3 (infit mean squares). The Teacher/Staff survey could detect differences across sites, however the Parent Survey was less effective in detecting differences across sites. Differential item functioning (DIF) was used to compare if individual responses differed for school- versus community-based settings and primary language (English versus Spanish speakers). Results showed that 18 scales had no or only one large DIF on the Teacher/Staff Survey related to setting. There were no large DIFs found related to setting on the Parent Survey and only one scale that had more than one large DIF related to primary language. The authors decided to leave the large DIF items in the scale because the number of large DIFs were minimal and they fit well with the various groups. The factor analysis aligned closely with the five essentials in the K-12 model . However, researchers also identified a sixth factor—parent voice—which factored differently from involved families on the Parent Survey. Therefore, the Early Education Essentials have an additional dimension in contrast to the K-12 Five Essentials Framework. Outcomes related to CLASS scores were found for two of the six essential supports . Positive associations were found for Effective Instructional Leaders and Collaborative Teachers and all three of the CLASS domains (Emotional Support, Classroom Organization, and Instructional Support). Significant associations with CLASS scores were not found for the Supportive Environment, Involved Families, or Parent Voice essentials. Ambitious Instruction was not associated with any of the three domains of the CLASS scores. Table 1. HLM Coefficients Relating Essential Scores to CLASS Scores (Model 1) shows the results of the analysis showing these associations. Outcomes related to student attendance were found for four of the six essential supports . Effective Instructional Leaders, Collaborative Teachers, Supportive Environment, and Involved Families were positively associated with student attendance. Ambitious Instruction and Parent Voice were not found to be associated with student attendance. The authors are continuing to examine and improve the tool to better measure developmentally appropriate instruction and to adapt the Parent Survey so that it will perform across sites. There are a few limitations to this study that should be considered. Since the research is based on correlations, the direction of the relationship between factors and organizational conditions is not evident. It is unknown whether the Early Education Essentials survey is detecting factors that affect outcomes (e.g., engaged families or positive teacher-child interactions) or whether the organizational conditions predict these outcomes. This study was limited to one large city and a specific set of early childhood education settings. It has not been tested with early childhood centers that do not receive Head Start or state pre-K funding. DISCUSSION The Early Education Essentials survey expands the capacity of early childhood program leaders, policymakers, systems developers, and researchers to assess organizational conditions that specifically affect instructional quality. It is likely to be a useful tool for administrators seeking to evaluate the effects of their pedagogical leadership—one of the three domains of whole leadership. 10 When used with additional measures to assess whole leadership—administrative leadership, leadership essentials, as well as pedagogical leadership—stakeholders will be able to understand the organizational conditions and supports that positively impact child and family outcomes. Many quality initiatives focus on assessment at the classroom level, but examining quality with a wider lens at the site level expands the opportunity for sustainable change and improvement. The availability of valid and reliable instruments to assess the organizational structures, processes, and conditions within early childhood programs is necessary for data-driven improvement of programs as well as systems development and applied research. Findings from this validation study confirm that strong instructional leadership and teacher collaboration are good predictors of effective teaching and learning practices, evidenced in supportive teacher-child interactions and student attendance. 11 This evidence is an important contribution to the growing body of knowledge to inform embedded continuous quality improvement efforts. It also suggests that leadership to support teacher collaboration like professional learning communities (PLCs) and communities of practice (CoPs) may have an effect on outcomes for children. This study raises questions for future research. The addition of the “parent voice” essential support should be further explored. If parent voice is an essential support why was it not related to CLASS scores or student attendance? With the introduction of the Early Education Essentials survey to the existing battery of program assessment tools (PQA, PAS, ECWJSI, ECWES, ECJSS and SEQUAL), a concurrent validity study is needed to determine how these tools are related and how they can best be used to examine early childhood leadership from a whole leadership perspective. ENDNOTES 1 High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, 2003 2 Talan & Bloom, 2011 3 Curbow, Spratt, Ungaretti, McDonnell, & Breckler, 2000 4 Bloom, 2016 5 Bloom, 2016 6 Whitebook & Ryan, 2012 7 Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Luppescu, & Easton, 2010 8 Ehrlich, Pacchiano, Stein, Wagner, Park, Frank, et al., 2018 9 Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2008 10 Abel, Talan, & Masterson, 2017 11 Bloom, 2016; Lower & Cassidy, 2007 REFERENCES Abel, M. B., Talan, T. N., & Masterson, M. (2017, Jan/Feb). Whole leadership: A framework for early childhood programs. Exchange(19460406), 39(233), 22-25. Bloom, P. J. (2016). Measuring work attitudes in early childhood settings: Technical manual for the Early Childhood Job Satisfaction Survey (ECJSS) and the Early Childhood Work Environment Survey (ECWES), (3rd ed.). Lake Forest, IL: New Horizons. Bryk, A. S., Sebring, P. B., Allensworth, E., Luppescu, S., & Easton, J. Q. (2010). Organizing schools for improvement: Lessons from Chicago. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Curbow, B., Spratt, K., Ungaretti, A., McDonnell, K., & Breckler, S. (2000). Development of the Child Care Worker Job Stress Inventory. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 15, 515-536. DOI: 10.1016/S0885-2006(01)00068-0 Ehrlich, S. B., Pacchiano, D., Stein, A. G., Wagner, M. R., Park, S., Frank, E., et al., (in press). Early Education Essentials: Validation of a new survey tool of early education organizational conditions. Early Education and Development. High/Scope Educational Research Foundation (2003). Preschool Program Quality Assessment, 2nd Edition (PQA) administration manual. Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope Press. Lower, J. K. & Cassidy, D. J. (2007). Child care work environments: The relationship with learning environments. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 22(2), 189-204. DOI: 10.1080/02568540709594621 Pianta, R. C., La Paro, K. M., & Hamre, B. K. (2008). Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS). Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. Talan, T. N., & Bloom, P. J. (2011). Program Administration Scale: Measuring early childhood leadership and management (2 nd ed.). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Whitebook, M., & Ryan, S. (2012). Supportive Environmental Quality Underlying Adult Learning (SEQUAL). Berkeley, CA: Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, University of California.