In the era of accountability, the notion of getting the child ready for kindergarten becomes a trend and has an impact on the early care and education programs. What would be the impact?
Module 6 Poetry, Drama, Film, Response
13 years ago
Saturday, July 5, 2008
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Because of the interest in scientific child study and the belief that the earlier the work is started, the more effective it would be. Therefore, healthy child development is highly emphasized in the preschool period, the first five years of a child’s life. The purpose of child care is to protect the child’s safety and well-being, especially the child whose parents were physically or mentally unable to care for him/her. In order to meet the physical, emotional, social and intellectual needs of the child, child care quality would be the major concern (Lascarides & Hinitz, 2000). Recent research has found that high-quality child care has great influence on the child’s healthy development and his/her later success in school (Fontaine, Torre, & Grafwallner, 2006; McCartney, Dearing, Taylor, & Bub, 2007).
In the era of accountability, the child in early care and education programs is required to reach certain levels of social and emotional development, cognition and general knowledge, language development, and physical well-being and motor development. Therefore, the child is ready for kindergarten and his/her later school success. High-quality child care is associated with supportive and positive interactions with caregivers and peers and with opportunities for cognitively stimulating activities (Vandell, 2004). Based on the research carried by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Early Child Care Research Network (1993), the findings has indicated that when the early care and education programs provide developmentally appropriate learning opportunities and have emotionally supportive caregivers respond to the child’s needs, the child perform better on standardized cognitive and language tests (Fontaine, Torre, & Grafwallner, 2006).
In order to ensure the child is ready for the kindergarten and later school life, several measures are developed to assess the child care quality and child development outcomes (Vandell, 2004). For instance, in 1995, the Head Start Program Performance Measures Initiative was developed to respond to school readiness, to promote accountability, and to satisfy the objective of results-oriented evaluation (Lascarides & Hinitz, 2000).
Fontaine, N., Torre, D. L., & Grafwallner, R. (2006). Effects of quality early care on school readiness skills of children at risk. Early Child Development and Care, 176, 99-109.
McCartney, K., Dearing, E., Taylor, B. A., & Bub, K. L. (2007). Quality child care supports the achievement of low-income children: Direct and indirect pathways through caregiving and the home environment. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 28, 411-426.
Vandell, D. L. (2004). Early child car: The known and the unknown. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 50, 387-414.
The findings from the Head Start Performance Initiative 2001-2003 found on their website stated. "the quality of the average Head Start classroom is good, with no programs scoring below the minimal quality range.
Head Start children demonstrate many of the skills and abilities indicative of readiness to learn in kindergarten. Perhaps most importantly, the higher the observed quality of the Head Start program, the better children performed on school readiness tasks.
Finally, Head Start parents were both involved in and satisfied with the program, even when faced with major challenges to program participation." This report came from a survey called "FACES" .
(Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey). The idea behind the study was accountability. The interest in getting the child ready for school now has to be proven. Is he/she more ready for school because of attending HS?
The impact might include: less funding for social programs such as Head Strt, if the findings showed no progress, no quality classrooms, untrained teachers, and safety issues such as poor equipment, poorly designed classrooms, or generally not following Head Start guidelines. Thousands of children may not have access to quality free services if the program is not funded, or funds are cut.
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