National
Association for the Education of Young Children or NAEYC is the nation’s
leading voice for high quality early childhood education for children birth to
8. I see my role in early childhood as a voice for children and their families.
As I reviewed this site they have numerous articles that depict what is
happening in early childhood programming today or current public policies that
are worth investigating not only for me as an educator but also for parents and
policymakers.
On
November 13, 2013 - Start Strong
for America’s Children Act
was introduced by Senator Harkin from Iowa, George Miller, California and
Richard Hanna of New York. They
introduced legislation
that would hasten the existing commitment of federal, state and local programs
for young children’s early development and learning from birth to
kindergarten.
This legislation has three main parts:
- Grants to states to expand quality early childhood education
- Grants to create Early Head Start/child care partnerships to improve the quality of and expand access to high-quality child care for infants and toddlers.
- Expansion of the voluntary home visiting program for infants and toddlers.
NAEYC will promote
this legislation because there will be high quality researched based standards
while staying away from inappropriate testing. The preschool programming will build on
existing settings. There will be insurances that supports for families
are provided. High quality teachers are
retained and helped with gaining higher quality of early childhood
knowledge. There will be greater access to
infant and toddler care in Early Head Start/child care partnerships. Home
visiting options will be available for strengthening families (NAEYC, 2013)
This
statement shows in detail what Start
Strong for America’s Children Act has to offer. At the bottom of the policy information they want you to
sign a petition in favor of this bill. So I see this organization as one that has some power, that
has an agenda to back legislation that is going to improve the life’s of young
children. I guess I never really thought of the NAEYC as an organization with a
political voice.
Reference
http://www.naeyc.org/policy/federal/11_13_13
Many preschool and preK programs look to NAEYC policies as the foundation of their programs. Many will be watching to see if states take an active role in pushing the Start Strong for America's Children Act to their communities.
ReplyDeleteReading and school readiness, are now major federal priorities to ensure that all children succeed in school and life. Schools also receive block grants, which is a sum of money given to states to provide services. The states control the way the money is spent and the nature of the programs that are funded.
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