One of the core principles of New York State Even Start Family Literacy is to ensure the availability of high-quality services to help children and parents attain literacy goals. Even Start Family Literacy programs analyze performance data and use local evaluations to determine program strengths and weaknesses. From this, programs propose and implement changes to improve educational outcomes for children and parents. This process is called "continuous improvement."

Careful and timely collection of data is essential to the continuous improvement process. It is important for the program to make a detailed plan for collecting and entering data required by ES-Star as soon as possible. As described below, there are several federal and state tools to enable programs to review participant outcomes and program performance. The program is also required to submit an independent local evaluation every year.

During the course of the year, questions arise concerning Performance Indicators and ES-Star. Please refer to Performance Indicators and ES-Star - Questions and Answers for the latest information.