|
This section includes information about:
Increasingly, early childhood programs across the country have developed or
are developing Early Learning Guidelines or Standards to articulate expectations
for children's development and learning.
National/General Resources
Good Start, Grow Smart: The State of the States Early Learning Guidelines
is available through The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
Administration for Children and Families, National Child Care Information
Center.
Where
We Stand on Early Learning Standards (PDF: 62kb) outlines
NAEYC's position on defining the desired outcomes and content of young children's education.
Child Outcome Standards
in Pre-K Programs: What Are Standards; What Is Needed To Make Them Work?
(PDF: 1,196kb) by R. Shore, E. Bodrova and D. Leong in NIEER's
Preschool Policy Matters (March 2004) provides an overview of how the standards
movement is being extended to preschool programs; describes child outcomes
standards in relation to other types of standards and quality indicators;
describes nine keys to effective standards; and provides recommendations for
policy makers and educators.
Head Start Program Performance Measures,
available through The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children
and Families, National Child Care Information Center, are designed to support continuous program
improvement efforts of individual programs. The framework, depicted by a pyramid, includes
measures for management systems, program services, and family and child outcomes, and can guide
the development of plans for data collection to provide program staff with important information
on program strengths and weaknesses.
Head
Start: Further Development Could Allow Results of New Test To Be Used for Decision
Making, (May 2005) (PDF: 958kb) is the GAO report that
examines the quality of the information garnered from the National Reporting
System (NRS), as well as how the Head Start Bureau has responded to concerns
raised by grantees and experts in the field. Issues raised by the authors
include: the validity and reliability of the assessment, the narrow scope of
Head Start requirements tested, a lack of definition as to how the results
will be used for program improvement, and the feasibility of conducting the
assessment with all children enrolled in Head Start.
State Specific Resources
Selected State Early Learning Guidelines on the Web
is hosted by The National Child Care Information Center (NCCIC) and includes a
collection of links to current state learning standards for infants, toddlers,
and preschool children.
The State Standards Database,
created by Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) for the
National Institute of Early Education Research (NIEER), illustrates the
specific knowledge and skills identified by states as important for
prekindergarten education. Content from states' standards documents are
organized within a hierarchical structure of domains, standards, and benchmarks
which can be compared across states.
Inside
the Content: The Breadth and Depth of Early Learning Standards,
(PDF: 1,905kb) authored by C. Scott-Little, S. L. Kagan, V.S. Frelow
(March 2005) is a summary of Early Learning Standards collected from 36
states that were analyzed to determine to what extent they addressed various
dimensions, (i.e., cognition and general knowledge, language and
communication, social emotional development, and approaches to learning) and
indicators of child development and early learning. Findings indicate that
standards vary greatly across states, as does the degree to which these
standards address important elements of learning and development.
Links on this site are verified monthly. This page content was last updated on 10/17/2007 CF.
|