Showcase Past Performance In Your Recompetition Grant
The Past Performance section of the Designation Renewal System’s (DRS) evaluation criteria requires careful planning regarding how to best describe how your key staff are qualified to administer a Head Start and/or Early Head Start program because it’s worth 20 points and only has a few questions to answer. There’s not a lot of room for error if you wish to receive the full points for this section.
Demonstrate Quality Performance
As you think about how to demonstrate your history and experience, remember that the evaluation criteria states that you can also describe your experience and past performance as it relates to early education or other “related programs.”
Therefore, you may want to consider:
- Highlighting your previous accomplishments and explaining how that has given you experience and skills necessary to administer a complex Head Start and/or Early Head Start program
- Describing how specifically you are prepared to lead a comprehensive HS or EHS program
- Explaining how the scope of your previous experience relates to the work you’d be doing if you won the award. Help draw the connection for the Reviewer
- Discussing your State’s Quality Rating and Improving System (QRIS) and your specific rating. If for some reason your State doesn’t participate, be sure to explain that in your response
- Identifying other accreditations you might have or awards that you have received. For example, some States don’t have the QRIS, but it is still possible to become accredited through the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)
Provide Evidence of Performance
Remember to substantiate your responses with evidence.
For example, when describing your teacher-child interaction rating system, you may want to include evidence about how it’s improved the quality of your teacher’s or children’s experiences.
- What have you seen that’s changed?
- How are staff better this year than last year?
- How has the instruction quality enhanced children’s experiences?
- How do you know your process/system is working—what evidence do you have?
The same thing applies when answering how your program has improved family self-sufficiency or how your staff development system has led to highly qualified staff. Just stating that it has doesn’t provide EVIDENCE that you’ve been successful.
You want to substantiate your claims; prove through examples, data, and other information that you’re accomplishing goals and outcomes you’ve identified.
These examples are meant only to help you start thinking about providing a very explanatory description—one that is easy to follow and meets all the required Performance Standards and regulations. Each program must assess the best way to respond to the Office of Head Start evaluation criteria.
Need Help? Gain an Advantage Over Your Competitors!
As an OHS vetted, trained, and experienced recompetition reviewer, I can help you assess your response to the evaluation criteria before you submit it to OHS.
I will evaluate your responses line-by-line against the evaluation criteria so that you can strengthen your grant before you submit it.
I can assess whether you’ve answered the questions thoroughly, as well as answer questions you may have about the process. Please don’t hesitate to contact me.
To your success,
Kimberley
About the Author
Kimberley Seitz, Ph.D, is an experienced, OHS vetted, recompetition grant reviewer with a 12-year history of supporting Head Start and Early Head Start programs. Whether it was working as a Deputy Director in an Early Head Start program, providing Program Design and Management Training & Technical Assistance, or consulting, coaching, and training staff, Kimberley is committed to quality improvement and program success!
Selection Tips for Head Start/Early Head Start DRS Applicants
In the Demonstration of Need section, the Office of Head Start asks Head Start and/or Early Head Start applicants competing in the Designation Renewal System (DRS) to describe both their recruitment and selection processes in order to ensure that they enroll children/pregnant women with the highest needs.
In an earlier blog, I provided several tips for you to consider as you describe your recruitment strategies. In today’s blog, I highlight some tips that may be helpful to you as you describe your selection process.
Selection Tips to Consider:
Be sure that you answer the evaluation criteria fully by describing your selection process. It’s not enough to just say you select the applicant with the highest need.
You need to describe how your selection practices work. This is especially relevant given the recent change in eligibility regulations (HSPS 1305) .
For example, you might want to consider discussing:
- How you decide who is the neediest and will be enrolled first
- Your practices for ensuring that only eligible children receive services, including how you determine income and categorical eligibility
- Selection priorities that were established for the program year, and whether they were approved by Policy Council
- Your enrollment forms and procedures that help guide your selection process as well as the length of time you keep eligibility documentation
- How often you select children. For example, HS children may only be selected one time per year (or in the event of a child leaving the program), but EHS children/pregnant women may be selected year-round
How you prioritize selection of categorically eligible children, for example:
- How do you give preference to homeless children?
- What practices are in place to select children with disabilities to ensure you meet the 10% enrollment requirement?
- Do you track these numbers, so you understand your population(s)?
Whether you have selection procedures
- Would it be helpful to describe them or include them in the appendix?
- Were staff trained on them?
- How do you ensure ERSEA staff remain up to date with current regulations or changes, such as a new Information Memorandum or Program Instruction?
I hope these selection tips are helpful. If you’d like to discuss more ways to be successful in your recompetition grant, please contact me for additional information.
These examples are meant only to help you start thinking about providing a very explanatory description—one that is easy to follow and meets all the required Performance Standards and regulations. Each program must assess the best way to respond to the Office of Head Start evaluation criteria.
Need Help? Gain an Advantage Over Your Competitors!
As an OHS vetted, trained, and experienced recompetition reviewer, I can help you assess your response to the evaluation criteria before you submit it to OHS.
I will evaluate your responses line-by-line against the evaluation criteria so that you can strengthen your grant before you submit it.
I can assess whether you’ve answered the questions thoroughly, as well as answer questions you may have about the process.
Please don’t hesitate to contact me.
To your success,
Kimberley
About the Author
Kimberley Seitz, Ph.D, is an experienced, OHS vetted, recompetition grant reviewer with a 12-year history of supporting Head Start and Early Head Start programs. Whether it was working as a Deputy Director in an Early Head Start program, providing Program Design and Management Training & Technical Assistance, or consulting, coaching, and training staff, Kimberley is committed to quality improvement and program success!
DRS Tips from Cohort 3–Part 3
If you’re following this group, you know that I’ve previously posted two other blogs from Head Start and/or Early Head Start recompetition applicants where I highlighted tips they provided for Round 4 cohorts preparing to enter the Designation Renewal System (DRS) and compete. If you missed them, check out: http://www.kcoachconsult.com/?p=1946 & http://www.kcoachconsult.com/?p=1950
In this post, I continue to share their generous ideas in the hope that it will help those of you who are competing in this next round.
DRS Tips:
1. Always use your FOA as your resource guide. Meet with your team weekly and use the FOA as the basis for your conversation. Don’t try to talk about it from memory. Modeling that behavior will ensure your team uses the FOA
2. Don’t start before you have your team assigned to different roles. Use their expertise and skills and create cross disciplinary teams to help you. Some of them might be better at gathering data, so let them do that instead of writing. There’s a place for everyone to contribute, and you need the entire team to be successful
3. Pay attention to the rules listed in the FOA. We had to cut a lot of pages because we realized we didn’t start the draft with the right font size and type
4. Don’t procrastinate. The closer it gets to the time your FOA is released, the more stressed staff become. The more stressed everyone gets, the harder it is for them to think clearly and concisely
5. Identify ways ahead of time to show your appreciation for when your staff are exhausted and stressed because you’ve asked them to stay late, prioritize the grant, and work weekends
6. Don’t count on having more funds in the FOA than your current budget allows. You may be one of the lucky ones that can write for more but you may also end up like us and have the same budget
7. Look for the positive aspects of being in DRS. Think of it like this: when we are chosen again, we’ve earned our right to be the designated grantee. Do something worth of being selected
Need Help? Gain an Advantage Over Your Competitors!
As an OHS vetted, trained, and experienced recompetition reviewer, I can help you assess your response to the evaluation criteria before you submit it to OHS.
I will evaluate your responses line-by-line against the evaluation criteria so that you can strengthen your grant before you submit it.
I can assess whether you’ve answered the questions thoroughly, as well as answer questions you may have about the process. Please don’t hesitate to contact me.
To your success,
Kimberley
Kimberley@kcoachconsult.com
About the Author
Kimberley Seitz, Ph.D, is an experienced, OHS vetted, recompetition grant reviewer with a 12-year history of supporting Head Start and Early Head Start programs. Whether it was working as a Deputy Director in an Early Head Start program, providing Program Design and Management Training & Technical Assistance, or consulting, coaching, and training staff, Kimberley is committed to quality improvement and program success!
Address Disabilities in Your Head Start/Early Head Start DRS Grant
One of the challenges that Head Start and/or Early Head Start recompetition applicants face in writing their application as part of the Designation Renewal System (DRS) is deciding how much information is enough to adequately describe and substantiate their claims.
It’s surprising how many recompetition applicants do not clearly describe how they will meet the needs of children with disabilities in their recompetition grant.
For example, they say things like:
- We will work with our local schools to identify children with disabilities,
- We will prioritize children with disabilities during enrollment periods, or
- We will collaborate with Part B & Part C agencies serving children who have disabilities
Two Common Problems:
The first problem with these statements, is that they do NOT describe how you will meet the needs of children with disabilities.
- For example, what will you do? Who will do it? How will you ensure it gets done? What types of accommodations will you make? How will you help ensure meaningful progress?
The second concern, is that they do not adequately describe the plan to serve children who have a disability (plan being the operative word). Simply put, there’s just not enough detail to substantiate their claims.
Tips On Answering the Evaluation Criteria: Meeting the Needs of Children With Disabilities
· The word “plan” requires you to address the logistics (i.e. who, what, where, when, why, how). 
- Don’t just say what you’re doing or what you propose to do. Be specific, so that Reviewers who are unfamiliar with your program can assess whether your plan meets OHS regulations
- If you see the word “procedure” that means you need to be very specific in describing your process. For example, walk us through it, step-by-step, or provide a narrative description. You might even consider submitting your procedure in the appendix as validation or evidence
- Identify your partners
- For example, which agencies will you collaborate with to identify children who might have special needs?
- What types of resources are available to your program to help children with specific disabilities?
- How will you coordinate with local education and early intervention programs to help children and families get access to services?
- How will you identify children throughout the year—not just at the beginning of the school year?
- Remember that you must have different partnerships in place if you’re a Head Start program than you’ll have if you’re an Early Head Start program, but they both have the same focus: to provide services to children with disabilities without duplication.
Need Help? Gain an Advantage Over Your Competitors!
I can assess whether you’ve answered the evaluation criteria thoroughly before you submit your grant to OHS, which may help you gain a competitive advantage over others applying for the same grant(s) as you are.
I can also answer questions you may have about the recompetition process. Please don’t hesitate to contact me.
To your success,
Kimberley
About the Author
Kimberley Seitz, Ph.D, is an experienced, OHS vetted, recompetition grant reviewer with a 12-year history of supporting Head Start and Early Head Start programs. Whether it was working as a Deputy Director in an Early Head Start program, providing Program Design and Management Training & Technical Assistance, or consulting, coaching, and training staff, Kimberley is committed to quality improvement and program success!
5 Mistakes DRS Applicants Make in their HS/EHS Grant
If you’re a Head Start and/or Early Head Start grantee or delegate required to compete as part of the Office of Head Start’s Designation Renewal System (DRS), there’s no doubt that you have experienced a full range of emotions since finding out you triggered one of the seven DRS benchmarks. For most applicants I’ve worked with, this process usually starts with disbelief and frustration and eventually ends with acceptance that it’s your turn to “get it over with.”
If you’re ready to move forward, you might be interested in the following tips designed to help you maximize the time you have now—before your Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is released:
4 Tips for DRS Success
1. Read through the FOA with your team; take the time to answer any questions that come up
2. Assign team members specific roles and responsibilities
3. Establish “hard” deadlines for gathering materials needed to develop each section, as well as time to analyze and develop a comprehensive outline for each section
4. Begin writing your rough drafts. These can be fully developed bullets or you can string together your paragraphs using the previous Round’s evaluation criteria. Remember, it’s much easier to revise your drafts than start from scratch once your FOA is released
I’ve been fortunate to be involved with DRS since the inception, and I have witnessed numerous grantees go astray because they don’t use this window of opportunity to get a running start on their grant.
5 Common Mistakes in DRS Preparation:
1. Not collecting all the statistics, research, and internal data needed per section before the FOA is released
2. Letting current activities detract from making progress on DRS. You may think you’re too busy now, but how will 
you feel when you have to run your program AND the clock for submission is ticking? Believe it or not, now is the easiest time to get it done because you don’t have your submission deadline looming before you providing increased pressure, stress, and distraction
3. Not sticking to internal timelines established for collecting, analyzing, developing outlines, and completing rough drafts
4. Not having discussion about how you will establish priorities once the FOA is released. It’s easy to say now that the grant will be a priority, but how will that shake out when you’re confronted with conferences, previous commitments to attend events, collaboration meetings, vacations, internal commitments/demands, etc.
5. Not reading through both the overview and the evaluation criteria before you start writing your responses
For those of you who have participated in one of the first 3 Rounds of DRS, what other suggestions would you share with Round 4 cohorts?
These examples are meant only to help you start thinking about providing a very explanatory description—one that is easy to follow and meets all the required Performance Standards and regulations. Each program must assess the best way to respond to the Office of Head Start evaluation criteria.
Need Help? Gain an Advantage Over Your Competitors!
As an OHS vetted, trained, and experienced recompetition reviewer, I can help you assess your response to the evaluation criteria before you submit it to OHS.
I will evaluate your responses line-by-line against the evaluation criteria so that you can strengthen your grant before you submit it.
I can assess whether you’ve answered the questions thoroughly, as well as answer questions you may have about the process. Please don’t hesitate to contact me.
To your success,
Kimberley
Kimberley@kcoachconsult.com
About the Author
Kimberley Seitz, Ph.D, is an experienced, OHS vetted, recompetition grant reviewer with a 12-year history of supporting Head Start and Early Head Start programs. Whether it was working as a Deputy Director in an Early Head Start program, providing Program Design and Management Training & Technical Assistance, or consulting, coaching, and training staff, Kimberley is committed to quality improvement and program success!
