Early Learning and Development Standards
An Elixir for Early Childhood Systems Reform
Sharon Lynn Kagan
I want to share some important information from this chapter.
“The chapter suggests that early learning and development standards can and should be used to create an integrated pedagogical subsystem that forms the basis for a comprehensive, well-articulated early childhood system”.
The ubiquity and utility of standards
The standards determine adequacy or quality, secure agreement of importance, and according to the level reached give you a category or status. They can not be only found in K-12 grades, but they are included in our lives too such as the economic, health, social values,… Standards can also help us improve the processes and ensure protection and safety. Standards, in essence, provide a means of understanding and expressing commonalities. However, standards can reduce liberties and impose constraints, retraining creativity and limiting variations.
K-12 Educational Standards
During the 20th century the standards became entrenched and imposed, its purpose to guarantee professionalism and effectiveness, influenced by economy and industry (productivity standards for employee performance and for product outputs). As a response for the lack of creativity and other educational levels, some pedagogics tried to establish a curriculum that focused on creative thinking that could cover the content area of the subjects as well as the learning skills, processing and application of knowledge.
In its process of implementation of standards, they became very important in dealing with equity and quality. During the late 1980s and 1990s the US government established national goals for American students, but later its controversy came up regarding its meaning.
Advantages of Educational Standards
One of the biggest advantages that we can find in educational standards are:
- their clarity of what is taught and learned (Jennings, 1995) with content and higher order thinking skills.
- Creation of platform for more equitable approaches to education, they ensure that all students have access to challenging content promoting equity.
Disadvantages of Educational Standards
Some concerns are that they can promote inequity since they can undercut the potential of the education system. Besides, high standards can cause underachievement and as a consequence student drop out exacerbating the equity divide. Even the standards for assessment cannot help reducing the equity gap.
Some concerns about its setting and control (Darling-Hammond, 1994) depending on the ideals and concepts of education can be difficult in determining standards, others define them as the representation of the canons of the professions set by those most familiar with the disciplines. Controversy exists when dealing with the establishment of standards: national versus state, politicians versus education professionals.
Some concerns regarding teachers, administrators, schools, districts, and governments (Darling-Hammond, 1994), for example the selection of standards by teachers and the teachers´ decision to teach for a test (drill and kill pedagogy). Standards help organize pedagogy, teachers needs professional development.
Some fiscal concerns, since standards need funds to be established, implemented and monitored. And according to school performances they get more or less money with the consequently effect on resources.
Early Childhood Standards
From the pedagogical perspective, early educators have long been taught to take their instructional and curricular cues from young children. Children´s interests serving as the basis for eliciting motivation and a natural inclination toward learning.
From the policy perspective, an equally persuasive position prevailed. Considered as a private affair involving those closest to the children who understood their needs best. Besides, most of EC programs functioned as almost autonomous entities. The idea of governments creating a set of standards on early education directly opposed early childhood principles of localism, autonomy, and privatization.
Pedagogical History
Explicit early learning standards did no exist.
- Rousseau (1762), his goal of early education was to preserve the natural state of the child through play.
- Pestalozzi, opponent of memorization, advanced the “standard” that the best learning happened through doing.
- Froebel (mixing Rousseau and Pestalozzi) father of kindergarten movement, respected the role of children in constructing their learning, promoting hands-on learning activities.
- Owen and Malaguizzi (with Froebel) strong believers of child-play instruction (Wolfe, 2002)
Policy History
Never seen before from a policy perspective, early education has always been related to social needs, and political, social and economic challenges. As a result, American early education appeared as a two-track system, with one approach for serving the poor and one for middle/upper-class children (Cahan, 1989; Tank, 1980). Consequently, due to the disparity in resources, the concept of intention of learning varied as well. It is translated into an incoherent approach to early education, diversity of local programs with their own characteristics.
K-12 grades Standards are used in all 50 states and accepted component of education. No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) – funds to test grades 3, 8 and 10. Controversy: the next reauthorization of ESEA – recommendations for reform are numerous and range from complete abolition to modification (Finn, Julian, & Petrilli, 2006) – Federal government impose standards on the states and these be used for accountability (Barton, 2009).
Common standards for K-12 are surging forward (Klein, 2009) By establishing them, the education system in the US could deal with and help diversity, an immense challenge. Two issues regarding standards:
- Philosophical, it´s responsible for student achievement. Institution: standards and testing regimes make schools responsible. Learning takes place beyond the schoolhouse doors.
- Implementation of standards and concerns the accommodation of differing approaches to instruction, the nature and ability of assessments to capture higher order skills, and the development and implementation of incentives that will improve outcomes, not simply punish poor-performing students or schools.
EC standards
Every state has EC standards or guidelines for preschool-aged children (Scott-Little, Kagan, Frelow, & Reid, 2009). Language and math are the two main domains – covering a single age group (36-48 months), nowadays they embrace birth to 5.
Another standard movement – the alignment of preschool standards with other EC documents (Scott-Little, Kagan, Frelow, & Reid, 2009). States are aligning their standards with those that exist in K, and in grades 1 through 3, thus promoting continuity through the primary years of schooling. To ensure linkages between those developed for infants and toddlers and those developed for preschoolers. Some states ensure that multiple sets of standards for a single age group are aligned. Standards also are being aligned with curriculum and assessments. Some consideration is being given to the desirability and feasibility of developing common standards.
A suggested approach
Should standards become national and how can standards be used most effectively to improve student performance?
These preoccupations about EC standards implementation are somewhat ill-placed. They have to consider the multiple dimensions and uses of standards, as well as their potential to bring EC pedagogy and early learning systems into alignment.
UNICEF developed an integrated approach to standards implemented globally with some success (Kagan & Britto, 2009). Conceptually, the work advances the understanding that what children should know and be able to do is at the core of the early childhood enterprise.
Based on clear definitions or standards:
a) Teachers can be taught what and how to teach, thereby forming the basis of teacher education and, consequently, certification;
b) Parents can be guided in what to expect from their children at particular ages, thereby guiding the development of parenting support and education efforts;
c) The public can be made aware of appropriate expectations for children, forming the basis for public information efforts;
d) Curricula that are age and content appropriate can be developed, thereby guiding content developers and textbook publishers, along with local curriculum design efforts;
e) Checklists that chronicle children´s progress can be developed, thereby improving the individualization of teacher practice;
f) Items from the standards, once subjected to item analysis, can be selected for state or national monitoring
g) Data can be used for program evaluation and for the planning of inservice technical support for teachers.
Standards may be used to align disparate elements of early care and education and other systems (Kagan & Kauerz, 2007; O´Day & Smith, 1993).
Standards have the potential to align what is expected of students and what is taught by their teachers.
Standards serve as the basis for assessment, aligning what is expected, what is taught, and what is assessed (Egertson, 2008; Kagan & Britto, 2009; Schultz, 2008). Summing up, STANDARDS can serve as the PIVOT around which early childhood pedagogy rotates. By using standards for these multiple purposes, and integrated approach to early ECE and development, one that unites what children are expected to know and be able to do, and what their parents and teachers can and should do to support their development. – Integrated approach also links what children are taught to the content of the assessment and to the national reports that give evidence of progress.
Using the consensually developed standards as the base, all these elements are integrated so that what children are taught comports with what they are tested on, how their teachers are trained, and how their programs and policies are evaluated and monitored.
The process puts children and their needs at the center of policy efforts. By impacting teacher training, parenting education, instruction, curriculum, and even national monitoring and evaluation, early learning standards can be the glue that integrates diverse activities and aspects of the field.
The Utility of the Approach
Seeing other countries, it highlights the potential of standards to enhance multiple components of EC development, and thereby shifts the conversation regarding standards, that are regarded as useful to creating an integrated approach to EC pedagogy. The multiple-use approach to standards is grounded in the mores of those who create them, so that they reflect the goals, values, and desires that adults hold for their children.
Some successful examples in the world of its implementation: Ghana where the standards have been used as the basis for curriculum development as well as teacher training and credentialing. In Fiji and Mongolia supplied a foundation for the development of parenting education curricula, and in Romania, the basis for public information campaign.
Standards = guidelines, because standards are seemed as “government imposition of rules”.
Concerns regarding the use of standards with highly diverse in the form of variability in ethnicity, religion, geography, tribe, language, and ability populations within a giving country. Accommodations have been made to embrace all children. Some countries prioritize the uses within a plan for near-term and more long-term implementation.
Implications of the Approach for System Building
They need to have all the pieces of the puzzle to work to render a system whole. While attention has been accorded pedagogy, less has been accorded the development of a pedagogical subsystem, that´s why it´s so important to develop a subsystem with early learning and standards at is core. They will be the intellectual foundation for curriculum, teacher PDs…
American early education is missing the boat in terms of how we use standards. Pedagogically integrated systems are not only within our reach but must sit at the core of all systems development efforts. Implemented well and widely, they are the essential systems elixir.
Kagan, S. & Kauerz, K. (eds.) (2012). Early Childhood
Systems: Transforming EarlyLearning. New York: Teachers College Press.
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