Massachusetts Gets 50 Million To Improve Early Childhood Ed: What Should We Do With It?
http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2011/12/16/mass_wins_federal_grant_for_early_education/
I will be interested to see how we end up using these funds; as I understand it, the majority will go into developing assessment measures to see where children are at, and professional development. That sounds good on the surface, but the devil will be in the details of what types of assessments and professional development programs are created. In terms of assessment, I think many of the assessment tools that are already in vogue like “Ages and Stages” or “AISNE Forms” are kind of limited. In addition, I think have many friend who work in Preschools/Day Cares and in Elementary Schools in the early grades and from my experiences and stories I hear from my friends there is a paucity of communication between the teacher’s at Preschools and Day Cares and Kindergarten and First Grade teachers at Elementary Schools. I would like to see some sort of apparatus (most likely a secure website) where a child’s parents, preschool teacher, and elementary school teacher’s could all communicate. For example, there may be a child who responds to a certain type of learning style or a certain style of discipline and currently there are not many mechanisms for a preschool teacher to convey that information to a child’s kindergarten teacher which most likely makes the kindergarten teacher’s job more difficult and less effective. This is especially difficult because of the variety or early childhood education experiences children might have such as Preschools attached to Elementary Schools, Head Starts, private preschool, home day care and many more. Parent’s input would of course also be an important aspect of this system as they know their children best. Obviously a system like where there was more communication between teachers this would create more work for the teachers; thus, I would like to see some of the money used for tuition reimbursement for Early Childhood Educators as most people who teach preschool make between 20 thousand and 40 thousand dollars. What is the motivation for one to get a degree and stay in ECE if there a chance that your salary won’t cover your college loans and basic life costs? I think the money issue is why many people leave ECE and scares many other caring and talented people from pursuing a career in ECE.
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