Research That Benefits Children and Families

My passion in early childhood education is that quality programs are available to all children, and their families, no matter what their economic level, race, religion, culture or beliefs may be. Unfortunately quality in early childhood programs does not have the same meaning in everyone’s eyes.

Maryland Family Network is an organization that I have been associated with for the past 6 years. I received a Facebook update from them the other day about with a link to an article titled Savings Now, Savings Later: Smart Early Childhood Programs Pay Off Right Away and for the Long Term (www.readynation.org), it was a summary of different ways investing in early childhood education now will benefit children and families in the future so I decided to check out the website even further.

I came across an in depth article titled Why America Needs High-Quality Early Care and Education. Overall this article focuses on the importance of quality education for children between birth and five years old and why it is important to school readiness skills. High-quality early care and education that focuses on children’s social, emotional, cognitive, and physical development provides the foundation that children need to enter school ready to learn (www.readynation.org, 2009). The principles behind this statement are:
• Learning
• Standards
• Teachers
• Parents
• Accountability
• Partnerships
A successful early childhood education system views children’s learning as the central mission (www.readynation.org, 2009).

To develop children’s learning, standards need to be set in place that align with their states learning standards, teachers need to have the skills and knowledge to help children enter school ready to succeed, parents know that they are their child’s first interaction with education are provided the skills needed to help them succeed, state education systems need to have accountability systems in place that measure results, and each states education system needs to build partnerships to help govern, finance, and improve the system. If each state can look at these standards and implement ways to improve them I feel the percentage of children entering kindergarten ready to learn would greatly increase.

I am excited to explore www.readynation.org in further and would encourage my colleagues to do the same. From what I have seen it has a lot of information that is beneficial to early childhood educators.

References:
Why America Needs High-Quality Early Care and Education, 2009 , retrieved from the worldwide web www.readynation.org