Early education's growing prominence in the era of accountability
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Discover what's behind the "Educalization" of early childhood programs in this excerpt on "Integration and Alignment in Early Education Policy" by Sharon Lynn Kagan and Kristie Kauerz |
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Less than 10 years ago, when The Transition to Kindergarten was published, not even the experts at the forefront of early education would have predicted that all children in Head Start would be tested (against the Head Start Outcomes Framework) or that there would be standards for preschool. But rapid changes in the field fueled by family expectations and accountability mandates such as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) have the community and regulators looking to early education to increase its focus on academic and social readiness for school.
In the follow-up book, School Readiness and the Transition to Kindergarten in the Era of Accountability, Robert Pianta and his colleagues noted the changes that have taken place even more rapidly than they'd predicted:
• The expansion of publicly funded prekindergarten programs and the inclusion of developmental and educational research in early childhood education have given rise to widespread support for universal prekindergarten in many states .
• The increasing diversity of America’s families and school population has raised the issue of how to educate a population made up of many cultures, languages, family backgrounds, and differences in the ways families view school.
• Accountability is firmly entrenched in early childhood policy and practice.
• The K–12 establishment now counts on early childhood programs to gird against lagging achievement in the era of NCLB.
Early education in transition
In an analysis of the current state of the field, Pianta observes there is no longer any question that providing early learning experiences intended to contribute to children’s academic, social, and task-oriented skill development is a goal of educational policy today.
The central challenge of the field has expanded from providing safe, organized preschool programs to selected groups of children to offering effective early educational experiences aligned with state K–12 standards and reform efforts to all children.
Pianta suggests that researchers and policy makers must now consider
• how to construct delivery systems for the equitable distribution of such experiences
• how to ensure necessary training and expertise, and
• how to evaluate the extent to which the delivery systems are responsible for growth in children’s skills.
In his opinion, meeting these challenges calls for a complete reconceptualization and redefinition of the loosely regulated, poorly aligned, and chaotically funded collection of opportunities for learning that are offered to children from ages 3 to 8.
Pianta sees center-based and family child care, Head Start, publicly funded prekindergarten programs, kindergarten, and the primary grades of elementary school being slowly merged within a new system of early education and care that will be increasingly publicly funded and more highly regulated.
Although the informal system of early learning and care—Head Start, child care, family day care, and public preschool—has functioned like school for many years, the pressures of accountability will no doubt force increasing inclusion and formalization.
Since the early 1990s, the informal, unintentional nature of learning that takes place in early learning and child care settings has been challenged by the expectation of families and governments that children meet a set of performance standards, by third grade if not sooner.
In every way that K–12 education is pressured by accountability, early learning and care opportunities are now under the same set of expectations to intentionally contribute to children’s skill growth in ways that are measurable.
Early education and care programs are under pressure from the K–12 establishment and from politicians and regulators to deliver children to kindergarten who are more ready and are, as a consequence, applying standards, accountability assessments, regulation of teacher training, and an assortment of incentives in an effort to ramp up the productivity of this sector of educational services.
Like it or not, Pianta asserts, child care, preschool, home learning environments, and programs for 4-year-olds are being asked to do the same things K–12 does. These settings may not be physically housed in school buildings, but they are school. The debate is no longer whether children should be exposed to early education opportunities but rather how best to leverage these resources in ways that contribute positively both to children’s development and to society.
*Adapted from School Readiness and the Transition to Kindergarten in the Era of Accountability.
