What is the current a course in miracles state of knowledge about the impact of early childhood programs on learning and development of young children? What works? Who benefits most? What are the limits of our knowledge? What contributes to effective implementation and how is a high degree of implementation sustained? What conditions increase the quality of program implementation and effectiveness?
– What are the implications for policy and program development, modification, and expansion? How can the best or most promising practices be disseminated to scale up implementation of quality early childcare and education programs, particularly for children from educationally and economically disadvantaged circumstances?
– Access to public-supported daycare and preschool programs should be universal regardless of family income, social status, or ethnic and racial backgrounds. These programs should be full-day, full-year programs that do not distinguish between childcare and education. Universal access to daycare and preschool.
Education would attract greater numbers of middle and lower socioeconomic status families to early childhood programs, which would lead to increased diversity and ultimately to better quality programs. The current “you get what you pay for” mentality that exists would be eliminated and all children would begin their education on a level playing field.
– Universal access to daycare and preschool programs should be seamless, creating a continuity of learning for children. Curriculum and assessment standards must be aligned and services should be comprehensive and aimed at intellectual, physical, and social development of children and their readiness to achieve learning success in elementary schools.
– High-quality, well-trained, well compensated educators and staff are key to student achievement at all levels of education. Professional development for early childhood educators and staff must be improved and focus on early childhood development, curriculum design, best practices and pedagogy, and parental involvement.
– A balance of focus in preservice and inservice professional development programs must be maintained. The issue of maintaining a substantive balance of pedagogy versus subject matter mastery in teacher preparation and inservice professional development programs has been a persistent debate among educators. Teacher education programs often emphasize subject matter knowledge and offer little training in developing a great understanding of the learning of young children.
It was generally agreed that teaching, teacher development, and curriculum delivery needs to focus on what has the greatest impact on healthy development and life-long learning of each child. Professional development should not only strengthen staff and teachers’ knowledge of subject matter and curricular issues, but should emphasize methods for recognizing and addressing children’s developmental and learning needs.
– Parental involvement is crucial to the success of early childhood programs. Involving parents at all levels of decision making, including curriculum design and professional development, increases parents’ sense of ownership of these programs and encourages collaboration between schools and the communities.
Most parents want to be involved in every aspect of their children’s education. By including parents in the early childhood equation, learning that begins in the classroom is reinforced at home. A critical element of this reinforcement is the development of a common vocabulary that teachers and parents can use to discuss a child’s progress and methods for improvement.
– Parents should receive information on relevant research on effective practices in readable and useful forms. Parents should not only be informed, but also should be involved in providing input and making programming decisions about the education of their children.
In addition to the broad-based issues of universal daycare, professional development, and parental involvement, we have the following specific recommendations for moving forward with an advocacy action agenda for universal quality childcare and preschool education.