Featured on the NAEYC website this week is an article titled
“10 NAEYC Program Standards and Accreditation.” This relates to the topic of
Equity and Excellence in a couple of different ways. First it explains the
standards that the NAEYC created to promote quality in child care programs for
accreditation. “The standards define what NAEYC—the world’s largest
organization of early childhood professionals—believes all early childhood
programs should provide” (NAEYC, 2014). The article explains the ten standards
to parents so that they better understand what a high quality child care
program, preschool or kindergarten should look and feel like. The standard
categories are: relationships, curriculum, teaching, assessment of child
progress, health, teachers, families, community relationships, physical
environment, and leadership and management (NAEYC, 2014). By educating parents
on what quality should look like, parents are more likely to expect programs to
meet the standards and select a program that is of higher quality.
On the position statements link, the position statements on
diversity and assessing English Language Learners in the early years address
the topic of equity and excellence as well. I also found a whole new section of
the website specifically geared toward families by clicking on the “For
Families” link at the top of the home page. NAEYC For Families webpage offers
parents a variety of resources including advice from other parents on a blog,
music, a newsletter to learn more information about a specific age group and
more. There are a wide variety of articles written by T. Berry Brazelton, M.D.
and Joshua Sparrow, M.D. that offer parents advice on many different topics
including mealtime and having an only child. Under the “Topics” tab at the top of the home page, there are
even more articles on topics related to promoting your child’s development.
Another page on the website allows families to search for local NAEYC
accredited child care programs and offers many different articles about selecting
quality child care. The NAEYC For Families web page seems to be an excellent
resource to share with families.
Reference:
NAEYC For Families website. Retrieved from http://families.naeyc.org/
NAEYC. (2014). The ten NAEYC program standards. Retrieved
from http://families.naeyc.org/accredited-article/10-naeyc-program-standards#sthash.MPqzJHa9.dpuf
Thanks for the additional information about NAEYC. The section "For Families" looks very interesting. I briefly looked at this section and I found the article "12 Teacher Terms Demystified". I think this would be a good article to give to my preschool parents to make sure they understand some of the terms they might hear throughout their child's education.
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