I am by nature a skeptic. I don’t believe whatever I read. I want proof or confirming sources. In the past few years, I have heard that Common Core pressure has created bizarre demands on children and teachers. A reader posted the following comment. Is it true? I don’t know.
“I have a friend who does Head Start…her “class” is birth to 14 months and she has to write lesson plans and kids have to meet “benchmarks”….got to be college and career ready from the womb.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It is true. The daycare my child attends has to write lesson plans. Her teacher told me that they do. She is 10 months now, but was 4 months when we had that conversation.
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The next thing you know parents will have to write lesson plans as well!
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That was at our first daycare. The daycare we attend now has their lesson plans posted by the door. I am ashamed to say that I have not read them.
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Why should you be ashamed. If your daycare is anything like the one my grandchildren attend, their parents TALK to the provider on a daily basis.
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Drunk with the power of their own wealth and their control of govt., media, and the economy, these dreadful reformsters have moved into that phase of domination called “going too far.” This ridiculous development of lesson plans for babes can become another boomerang against them as is the extreme standardized testing for kids banging back on their heads via Opt-Out.
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Opt-Out of Post Apgar Mania Benchmarks for BABIES.
Cut those Billionaire white-knuckle Sickos off our children.
Let them use their own children and leave ours alone.
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Unstructured play is more important to infant brain development than Common Core-laced lessons written by daycare providers. That’s just f***ed up on so many levels. Jesus, why is our government ruining our education system even further?
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Exactly…all the studies show that infants and young children need creative, UNSTRUCTURED, individual, and then group, play while their brains are developing. Developing their imaginations is prime to their mental health and future structured learning.
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Unfortunate, anything is possible.
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It’s true, but it’s not a CCSS issue, I don’t think. Private daycares also do lesson plans and assessments and have for years. Parent demand.
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Reblogged this on Creative Delaware and commented:
How creatively crushed can children get?
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(That said, both my daughter’s private preschool and my son’s publicly funded special education preschool have used the same “curriculum”–Creative Curriculum–and the “lesson plans” are things like Theme of the Week: Summer! and there are projects, songs, and stories focused on the theme.)
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Well said, Cristina. Most books I’ve read indicate that the all important “critical thinking skills” are mostly developed in the first 18-24 months of life and after that it’s refining and expanding to meet experiences. The failure to allow toddlers and young children exquisite unstructured play time is, perhaps the most serious mistake that the faux educators have made and as you know, they’ve made an encyclopedia of errors in judgement and practice.
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Why do we need summer “themes”? What ever happened to experience, explore and enjoy. Learning is not the acquisition of facts it is developing the joy and enthusiasm for inquisitiveness, expanding interests, integrating experiences and always having the desire to search for more.
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I watched a friend write her lesson book for 4 year old head start class. Daily curriculum with themes, small group lesson and which child would get individual help and on what topic that help would cover. This was for many months into the future. She had to submit it to her supervisor to make sure she was covering all the requirements of Head Start. How does any teacher know which child will need one on one extra help 3 months from now?
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I asked my Head Start teacher friend who exactly was demanding lesson plans…she said it was federal regulations….I was just in shock that she had to do that for babies.
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It won’t be long before teachers are held responsible for the childrens’ heights. At least the data won’t be subject to the idiocies of standardized testing.
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Not CCSS, but Project Fit America grants require this kind of data…pre and post data of student weight, how fast they can run, etc.
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Yes, this is indeed true. Scary, ain’t it? This is why I am against the FEDs’ involvement in any pre-k education. There are far too many parallels re: history. Again, scary! I am skeptical of congress and big money. Their evil claws are everywhere.
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More than you wanted to know from HHS, federal funder of Head Start.
See PDF version: EHS Tip Sheet No. 10: Can an EHS Program Have a Written Curriculum With Lesson Plans and Still Follow the Baby’s Lead as He/She Creates His/Her Own Curriculum? [PDF, 40KB]
A written curriculum does not preclude the recommended practices of reciprocal and responsive interactions between teachers and babies. The written curriculum plan defined in the Performance Standards provides a framework within which a local EHS program can articulate their beliefs about what infants and toddlers need to learn and how they learn those things. The local program’s curriculum plan provides guidance for how the environment is created, what materials are needed and how they can be used, and how the adults help facilitate learning. A thoughtful curriculum plan that is understood by the entire staff as well as the families will provide consistency in how staff follow the baby’s lead and in how well they understand and support the learning of the baby’s own curriculum.
Providing intentional and purposeful learning moments within the curriculum plan means using the knowledge of the child and his/her development to provide experiences and materials the child needs to ensure on-going development. The Performance Standards specifically uses the word “experiences” rather than “activities” within the definition of curriculum. Experiences are the specific and intentional focus of potential learning within activities. An activity may provide a variety of learning experiences for different children depending on where they are developmentally. For example, the activity of reading may provide a two-month-old child the private, cuddling time needed to establish and maintain a trusting relationship with the adult whereas with an eighteen-month-old, reading may provide the opportunity to repeat familiar words and/or to imitate approximate sounds for new ones.
Considerations:
0. How does the curriculum plan describe the approach each staff member is expected to take with the infants and toddlers? This approach may be a description of what “following the baby’s lead” actually looks like and what the adults are doing to promote learning while following the baby’s lead.
0. How does the written curriculum plan help to remind caregivers and home visitors to include all of the areas required by the Performance Standards in their planning such as: the development of trust and secure relationships, opportunities to explore sensory and motor experiences, and social and emotional development, and communication?
0. How does the curriculum plan describe the process for incorporating information from the child’s assessment and the Family Partnership Agreement into individualized planning and documentation?
0. How does the development of the curriculum plan ensure opportunities for parents to contribute ideas concerning their goals for their children’s learning and how they intend to promote that learning?
0. How does the curriculum plan ensure full participation of families in the child’s learning? How is respect of individual family values and beliefs embedded in the learning experience of the child?
0. How does the curriculum plan ensure that the activities and environment are responsive to the varying temperaments, learning styles, languages, and cultural background of the children and families; and support the inclusion of children with disabilities, consistent with their IFSP?
0. How does the curriculum plan address the intentionality of the learning experiences? Does the curriculum plan include a description of how learning experiences happen rather than a list of pre-set activities to use? Does it include the goals along with the experiences, roles of the adults, and the use of materials? Are they based on sound child development practice?
Performance Standards, Title 45, Code of Federal Regulations:
0. 1304.3(a)(5) The curriculum is consistent with the Head Start Program Performance Standards and is based on sound child development principles about how children grow and learn. Curriculum means a written plan that includes:
the goals for children’s development and learning;
the experiences through which they will achieve these goals;
what staff and parents do to help children achieve these goals; and
the materials needed to support the implementation of the curriculum
0. 1304.21(a)(1)(i & ii) In order to help children gain the social competence, skills and confidence necessary to be prepared to succeed in their present environment and later responsibilities in school and life, grantee and delegate agencies’ approach to child development and education must:
be linguistically appropriate, recognizing that children have individual rates of development as well as individual interests, temperaments, languages, cultural backgrounds, and learning styles;
be inclusive of children with disabilities, consistent with their Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP) or Individualized Education Plan (IEP) (see 45 CFR 1308.19).
0. 1304.21(a)(2)(i)(ii)&(iii) Parents must be:
invited to become integrally involved in the development of the program’s curriculum and approach to child development and education;
provided opportunities to increase their child observation skills and to share assessments with staff that will help the learning experiences; and
(iii) encouraged to participate in staff-parent conferences and home visits to discuss their
child’s development and education.
0. 1304.21(b)(1)(i)(ii)&(iii) Child development and educational approach for infants and toddlers. Grantee and delegate agencies’ program of services for infants and toddlers must encourage (see 45 CFR 1304.3(a)(5) for a definition of curriculum):
the development of secure relationships in out-of-home care settings for infants and toddlers by having a limited number of consistent teachers over an extended period of time. Teachers must demonstrate an understanding of the child’s culture and, whenever possible, speak the child’s language;
Trust and emotional security so that each child can explore the environment according to his or her developmental level; and
Opportunities for each child to explore a variety of sensory and motor experiences with support and stimulation from teachers and family members.
0. 1304.21(b)(2)(i)&(ii) Grantee and delegate agencies must support the social and emotional development of infants and toddlers by promoting an environment that:
Encourages the development of self-awareness, autonomy, and self-experience; and
Supports the emerging communication skills of infants and toddlers by providing daily opportunities for each child to interact with others and to express himself or herself freely.
0. 1304.21(b)(3)(i)&(ii) Grantee and delegate agencies must promote the physical development of infants and toddlers by:
Supporting the development of the physical skills of infants and toddlers including gross motor skills, such as grasping, pulling, pushing, crawling, walking, and climbing; and
Creating opportunities for fine motor development that encourage the control and coordination of small specialized motions, using the eyes, mouth, hands, and feet.
Source of all of the above is http://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc/tta-system/ehsnrc/cde/curriculum/intodd_fts_00010_070805.html
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Thank you for the information. It was not more than I wanted to know.
It sounds like the emphasis in planning is meant to facilitate the creation of a rich environment and that there is an expectation that teachers and day care providers who work with very young children understand the developmental stages of children.
I spent a few years teaching in a college ‘Lab pre-school’ many years ago. My responsibility was two-fold. I set up activities and created programs for the two, three, and four year olds, and I supervised college students who were earning an associates degree in Early Childhood Education. The children that attended the preschool were mostly the children of professionals in the community. They were the children of professors, doctors, lawyers, teachers, business leaders….
Creating a rich learning environment for preschool age children while teaching college level students about child development was a winning combination. Parents in the area chose the lab preschool over other daycare facilities because they knew that their children would be in a stimulating and loving environment. There was an excellent adult to child ratio because there were always college students doing practicum and student teaching.
I am not opposed to there being an expectation of excellence and professionalism for early childhood programs.
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CRADLE to GRAVE. What part has been unclear?
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WTF???
How is it possible to
make a four month old college ready?
All children should be doing free play and games to help them learn letters, numbers, and work on gross and fine motor skills. None of these things should be graded.
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This is also a time when kids need to learn “leadership” skills – how to get along, what is required to lead a group, etc. This is what’s wrong in public schools – they have done away with recess which is where kids learned these skills along with the motor skills.
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Dee,
If I had a one-year-old child, I would certainly want him/her to learn leadership skills. You can never start too soon!
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The is directly from Steven Covey’s ” The Seven Habits of Effective People”‘. “Begin with the end in mind”. If all children are to be”college & career ready” we have to “backward engineer” their learning requirements. Soon pregnant mother’s will be directed what foods to eat, what music to listen to and what tv shows to watch. Mussolini & Hitler tried this crap in their countries and we all know how successful they were!
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Diane, I am just completing my 10th consecutive year teaching Kindergarten. I began the first year of the NCLB standardized testing. I previously taught grades 3-5, 10 years prior and strongly objected to the tests at that time. My principal who always praised the way I taught reading told me that I would have to restructure my program to include more workbooks and test prep. Luckily a position in K opened up and to get away from the testing and enjoying being able to teach in a creative way again with thematic units and high interest books. But slowly, ever slowly that began to change. For the past 4 years I have been forced to use a “CC aligned” curriculum that I hate and must use the assessments from the program that is extremely developmentally inappropriate. And there are A LOT of benchmark tests at least one every 2 weeks that have as many as 65 multiple choice questions like on the final ELA benchmark I gave just this week….. So now of course they would come for the babies next, not surprised, this is the trickle down effect of the poison of back mapping.
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The pressure to do these lesson plans mostly comes from companies trying to please parents. I think a lot of parents couldn’t care less about the detailed lesson plans, just that you have a sense of what their child needs. The federal government doesn’t requires specific types of lesson plans, that’s just a case of “they” told me to do it so I have to (NOTE: Head Start and state agencies have requirements, but they are often interpreted by preschools to mean detailed lesson plans).
A good preschool plans for children to have many different experiences that will lay the foundation for academic learning later. Planning those experiences makes them more intentional. For example, when I wanted to expose my students to things that would help them develop their fine motor skills, my lesson plan would include experiences that would help them do that–what do I have on the shelves for them to discover, what’s in the sensory table, what things do I want to make sure they can find outside an so forth. I made notes on each child’s progress so that I could provide that to parents who wanted to know, but it’s nothing like the traditional lesson plan that most people think of (and that I occasionally write now as a middle school teacher).
If preschool teachers are being forced to write these plans, it is not because of CCSS directly. It’s been going on for decades.
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Just remember that these lesson plans are only good for other people’s fetuses . . . .
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An appropriate “lesson plan” (more appropriately called an individual activity plan) for infants and toddlers is basically a listing of what developmental milestones the teacher expects to see the child reaching in the upcoming couple of months-for example 8-12 months, 12-18 months, and what the teacher is going to do (materials offered, adaptations to physical space, scaffolding techniques,etc) to facilitate the child’s development. This is especially helpful when there is a head teacher working with assistants as it provides guidance about appropriate practice for them.
A group plan would be as previously described in a prior post- what theme the teacher might want to focus on as a way of choosing storybooks, sensory materials that give the toddlers a chance to have in-depth experiences with specific content in all domains. This is for the purpose of the teacher organizing her materials and having them ready, and creating a flexible coherence and focus to the children’s learning experiences.
Many programs now follow ITERS (Infant-Toddler Environment Rating Scale)
guidelines that dictate every aspect of a high quality infant-toddler program from room arrangement, required #s and types of toys available, stipulating that 2/3 of the day be free play (when you factor in meals and nap that’s pretty much the rest of the day). So,pretty much any activity a teacher plans and offers is optional. ITERS will send out raters to programs and provide administrations with scores on every component of the program. What is interesting is there is really no mention of lesson plans or assessments- only guidance that staff observe the children, use those observations to guide their interactions with them, and ensure individual needs are met. The standards are certainly appropriate, but extremely rigid and not always achievable due to space, materials, and staffing limitations.
Collecting anecdotal observations, monitoring development and a possible need for early intervention has always been part of best practice in quality infant-toddler programs. What has changed is the “standardization” of how specific developmental skills are entered into a data base and “rated” to determine if a child is meeting “widely held expectations”, and the expectation that teachers will use the data to plan activities to either get data on “objectives” the child has not elicited evidence of yet, or ones where he is not meeting “those widely held expectations.” The GOLD system can generate activities to target specific developmental skills, but they are not really anything a good teacher would not already be doing.
This change I attribute to the data fetish/career and college ready craze which has misguidedly tried to “back-track” skills to infancy in an attempt to control the rate and diversity of human development-instead of looking at the wide variation of development and accepting some kids will plateau in certain skills way before they graduate high school, or smaller classes would give kids more attention, or some kids just need more time to master skills. There is no magic bullet that is going to make every child capable of getting the SAT scores the CCSS requires to be called “proficient”-one size does not fit all!
Unfortunately, Teaching Strategies, which produced the appropriate, ITERS compliant Creative Curriculum has jumped on the CCSS aligned bandwagon with their GOLD assessment system. Most good infant-toddler teachers have used an ASQ or similar screening tool and their own keen observations to determine when a child needed further evaluation and might need intervention to reach expected milestones within a reasonable time. This is after they have used ever technique in their tool box. Not sure what, if anything a system like GOLD adds. For an articulate critique of GOLD, at the pre-k level, Google Peg With Pen- Do Not Go For the Gold.
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Once you establish the so-called “fact” that standards are not only helpful, but needful for “good” education why would anyone be surprised that those standards bloom out into inappropriate areas like ECE?
The whole standards movement is, was, and ever will be a fallacy. Fordham and C. Finn saw to that, along with Diane. You will still see many educational leaders assume that standards are the default starting point of any discussion about learning today.
This is probably the most effective snow job ever perpetrated upon the American public and the entire world. After all of these years of “standards-based” education, nothing has improved, children in poverty are still poor and more have joined their ranks, the average worker’s pay has decreased consistently and constantly, and we are worse off than we’ve ever been before as a society and our educational system is in shambles yet we continue with “standards-based” everything.
Now, the “no true Scotsman fallacy” is applied in full force regarding standards-based education; it can NEVER fail — it can only be FAILED through lack of “fidelity”, another tired, worn-out, meaningless edubabble phrase that needs to join “rigor” and “data” in the graveyard of history.
The whole “standards” mythology remains firmly entrenched. I guess you can’t put the proverbial toothpaste back into the tube.
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Chris…so many educators observe that this “standards” based education creates cogs in the machine of industry. Unquestioning cogs at that. Yes, this mythology serves only the corporate instigators. Beware who you vote into office.
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Here is a link to Peg With Pen’s illuminating description of the assessment system known as GOLD:
http://www.pegwithpen.com/2013/09/do-not-go-for-gold-teaching-strategies.html
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http://www.excelby5.com/
Especially check out the Resources (Shared Documents and Early Care & Education Providers) section.
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Please don’t demonize the concept of the lesson plan or confuse plans with standardized testing. Plans are the stock-and-trade of the great teacher who examines the needs of her students, at whatever level, and plans days that fill the child’s world with wonder. When I taught pre-school, my lesson plans noted the interests and struggles of each child and the songs, stories and games I thought might help her use to find solutions to the challenges she was striving to solve. My lesson plans included the songs I wanted to practice on my autoharp over the weekend, the puppets I wanted to pack in my bag, and the art supplies I needed to order through bookkeeping to meet each child’s individual needs. Is that so nefarious? You and I might agree to question the horrific standardized tests that are being forced on young children, but don’t confuse true teaching with “college-and-career-prep testing.”
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Excellent! Agreed!!!!!
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Smart lady…got it right. It is easy to be confused when the marketers take over,
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Becca.. you make good points but must realize there are regions that dictate a boiler plate format for lesson plans which require teachers to completely “fill in the blanks” in a cookie cutter format with lots of jargon that is truly meaningless to the lesson a teacher plans to teach. Creating true lesson plans is so wonderful and rewarding… a teacher finds just the right materials, hems and haws over the details that will bring that learning alive for the students and then delivers with so many caveats because he/she is looking at the questions and needs of the actual students before him/her and lots of changes happen naturally.
But when teachers are forced to create “lesson plans” in the fashion I first described, it totally deadens the whole experience for both teacher and student. These lesson plans must even include the minutes for each section in this jargon-laden boiler plate format. If a teacher wants to teach in a socratic style… forget it. If a student asks a question not on the highly formatted and minute-by-minute detailed lesson plan… forget it. If a perfect teachable moment occurs (not connected to the actual lesson plan) forget it. There are some regions that require these cookie cutter lesson plans to be fully completed for each segment of the day each day and placed in an area where anyone visiting the room can reference them. If a teacher is 20 minutes into a class and not on the correct section of the lesson plan as referenced by his/her own filling in of the template… he/she can be reprimanded. This style of lesson plan is sadly nothing like the one you mention above and only benefits administrators outside of a school who make this kind of policy sitting at their desks figuring out ways to hold teachers “accountable” and figuring out how to make the learning experience into quantifiable data points for bureaucrats even above them.
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Those kinds of ridiculous lesson plan templates are alive and well here in Florida. The state Department of Education has “suggested” templates available online that run up to 11 pages.
If a school is rated “F” or “D” the state often requires teachers at that school to compete these lengthy, laborious, and soul-killing “lesson plans” for every minute of every day. Teacher often work many hours every night and on weekends to complete these “lesson plans” and have little time for anything else.
The theory is that by planning for every single detail and being constrained by the latest edubabble/jargon and standards the lessons will become “teacher-proof” and, therefore, successful.
I have worked a great deal with lesson planning and love to plan lessons the old-fashioned way described above but those days have been gone for years now in my school system.
When I was observed this year (I received a “highly effective, by the way) my Danielson lesson plan exceeded 8 pages for one lesson. The template was provided by my administrator and we were required to “prove” that we were meeting as many of the Danielson rubric points as possible in the lesson. Ridiculous doesn’t even cover it.
Those who are defending lesson planning here have perhaps not experience the killjoys of modern, reformist “lesson planning” that constrains, prevents, controls, standardizes, and blocks all spontaneity and creativity. Hope you never have to, either.
For those who wish to divorce this madness from the CCSS, good luck with that. The reforms are all part and parcel of the reformist playbook and lesson planning must now reflect what the CCSS are interpreted to stress as important and the kind of lesson planning you describe as good is not acceptable anymore in many, many places.
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I whole heartedly agree. However, many administrators and others in education do not understand the nuanced differences between your lesson plans and the “rigorous” nonsense that pervades education today. Meeting a child where they are developmentally is so overlooked!
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Becca,
The kind of lesson plan your are talking about is really a preparation plan for you. The idea is for you to have the materials and activities ready to offer the children based on your observations of their needs and interests, and perhaps some content you feel is relevant to their lives or of general merit you want to expose them to by offering appropriate experiences in all of the developmental areas.
When lesson plans only serve as accountability measures to prove to TPTB that a teacher is teaching to isolated standards, which may not even be appropriate expectations for that child, and administrators are reading over lesson plans instead of observing teachers work with and respond to children-especially very young ones, they are a waste of time. When teachers spend hours on lesson plans for those reasons, instead of creating meaningful experiences to offer children, they are a waste of time and energy. I assume that was the sort of lesson plans coming under question here.
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Great reply!
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Good principals recognize the ridiculousness of it and ease up. But there are many a principal who try to enforce “the fear of god” holding over teachers these numerous-paged “plans” for each and every lesson be out there and THERE IS NO REQUIREMENT OF FAILURE OF A SCHOOL OR TEACHER… it sadly has become part of the “accountability mission”. If a union does not fight this, a vindictive principal definitely could use this! And yes like Chris in Florida mentions, these “lesson plans” are alive and well!
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This nation is all about “selling”, so nothing surprises me… however, reading the commentary here, and knowing little about what’s afoot, I agree that it is not a terrible ting for parents to plan to have age appropriate materials and activities that actually enhance learning. The brain is in an incredible growth, and listening/ speaking gets them ready to read and write (yeah…whole language where it applies, because this is how language is acquired and the brain learns… and it is ALL about LEARNING… not teaching.
BTW… I was the granny-nanny, for my two year old grandson when his mom went back to work, twice a week.
It did not take me long to make plans for each visit, because he could speak full sentences at 18 months, and began to read the signs I put up around the house, like window, door, on, off, up, down, etc. when he was 2.
I planned many activities around music and art, so he had FUN, but he learned to listen , and even to perceive the story in the music as we watched Fantasia together; he mastered control of some tools… the paintbrush or crayon, to do fun textures….like the bark on a tree ,or clouds.
Of course, I had no idea that he would be able to hum all the parts in ‘Peter And The Wolf’ or read all my second grade books when he was only three. He loved to read, and this was before video games and iPads.
Would he have been reading well by third grade, and enjoying books…if I had never done this… probably. His parents loved to read, and the house was filled with books.
But early exposure gave him a chance to fly… and he could — because by third grade, he could actually read on a high school level, but was not pushed to do advance work. He did read voraciously, and loved Tolkien’s world.
BUT… and THIS is the lesson…. he didn’t like Lemony Snicket –which he told me was “too dark”. And it was,– for his emotional level. Age appropriate is the order of the day, and planning “lessons” comes naturally to me, as a teacher… so why not share the methodology… and give these ‘poor’ corporations yet a younger audience to which they can peddle their goods.
FYI: He just turned 16, and is (naturally) in a private academy (mommy & daddy are both doctors) and he is wrestling, playing football, skiing, and is a major fishing expert, and ENJOYING all his academics. Genes and environment together! and a modicum o f good luck!!!!
He is a lucky boy, but he does not realize this, yet!
Personally, I am glad he is athletic, because with his abilities it would be easy to be an outlier… a nerd.
and I am very lucky too, because I was privileged to observe such a mind as it matured.
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Common Core incorporated in CT Early Learning Standards.
Really early learning…real, real early: “For example, according to the standards, if a 5-month-old child reaches for a desired toy, this is seen as evidence of problem solving.”
http://ncadvertiser.com/41851/how-kids-learn-in-preschool-isnt-simple/
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If you live here in Hong Kong, or actually around this area, then it is a normal practice to start academics from a very very early age. Insane but true.
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Control has become an end in itself.
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“Reform out of Control”
Control of teachers
Control of schools
Control of features
Control of rules
Control of students
Control of thoughts
Control of dollars
Lots and lots
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Jonathan… succinct and right on target!
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Early Childhood Education (ECE) teachers have long created developmentally appropriate lesson plans for infants and toddlers, which must be very flexible since babies are on their own schedules and developmental trajectories, but I believe this IS related to the Common Core (CC). That’s because Arne Duncan previously collaborated with Kathleen Sebelius, then Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Head Start.
I believe they worked on coordinating Head Start with other ECE programs, such as State PreK, as part of the initiative of Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge (RttT-ELC). The RttT-ELC requires states that are awarded the grants to coordinate ECE agencies, programs and services, as well as to create early learning standards that are aligned with the Common Core (amongst other things, like mandating a Quality Rating System). As a result, a lot of changes were made in states, as well as in Head Start. You can get the gist of the collaboration here:
“The Accountability Revolution Comes to Head Start” http://www.nationaljournal.com/next-america/early-childhood/the-accountability-revolution-comes-to-head-start-20140423
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I should warn that I think the article I linked to above is skewed.
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The accountability system for Head Start is real, and very threatening. The example was set just recently when all HS programs were subject to a serious review and the bottom 20% were mandated to loose their grant funding to be replaced by a new grantee. Feds were a bit surprised when very few new grantees applied. I wouldn’t touch Head Start with a 10 foot pole – I support accountability but the copious regulations are prohibitive to developing a quality program that truly gives children and families a “head start”/
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Yes, I know accountability is very real. I think the author in the National Journal article, Quintin, went out of her way to promote the “reform” agenda, including the glory of competition, and went over the top in trashing ECE programs, while never mentioning the minimal qualifications required for Head Start teachers in private settings over the past 50 years.
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This is Pre-K in NYS and NYC:
Click to access InterdisciplinaryUnitRubric.pdf
Every assessment tool requires teachers to put student data and work samples online. Three, four and young five year old children are now labeled from the time they set foot in the schoolhouse door!
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Here are two blogs I have written re: TS Gold, an assessment used in Pre-K and Kindergarten. http://www.pegwithpen.com/2013/09/do-not-go-for-gold-teaching-strategies.html and http://www.pegwithpen.com/2013/10/teaching-strategies-gold-parent-refusal.html . I highly recommend every parent refuse to allow their child to participate in TS Gold.
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Here’s my lesson plan: Play. Nap. Eat. Play some more.
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The age range mentioned is Early Head Start(EHS), not Head Start(HS). The Important difference between EHS/HS and the corporate based pritizatation movement of public preschool is EHS/HS focuses on human develpmentally appropriate stages of life and pritization focuses on college and profits.
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The regs for Head Start/Early Head Start were changed in 1998 so that they could be run by private for-profit centers: http://hechingerreport.org/a-for-profit-approach-to-head-start/
Head Start hasn’t grown as much as anticipated in for-profits, but they are there. America’s largest child care center chain, KinderCare, which is owned by junk bond felon and billionaire Mike Milken, has Head Start, but not many. There’s usually more money to be had in states with Universal Preschool, since teachers in those programs typically have to meet state education requirements (which are higher than for Head Start) and pay more, so the funding is higher, thus many private centers prefer to get in on that. That’s also why charters want Universal PreK and not Head Start.
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I don’t know if it is true either
but
it would the net logical step. The “slippery slope”.
When such humongous ignorance is given power, who knows the end result.
We should probably teach quantum mechanics in kindergarten. THAT would prove how smart our children are.
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Isn’t Head Start just for ages 3 through 5?
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It is, but Early Head Start is for ages six weeks to 3.
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“Benchmarks for Babies”
Benchmarks for babies
Tick-marks for Tykes
Reformers with rabies
And billionaire bites
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Indiana’s Governor Frank O’Bannon implemented the “Bright Beginnings” program to provide new parents a guide to build and gauge their child’s cognitive development from 0 to age 5 when 90% of brain development occurs. Talking and reading and singing to children, playing simple games like peek-a-boo and patty-cake, providing colorful visual stimulation, providing blocks and other simple toys to build motor skills and hand-eye coordination, etc. were easy to implement and hugely important.
Some parents already did much of this without knowing the impact on child development, but they appreciated learning the importance of such activities, what was appropriate at what age ranges, and where their own activities left gaps. However, many other parents were much more in need of these helpful guides.
Guides were printed in English and other languages and also in DVR-ready videos for parents who could not read. Maternity wards and physicians were given the materials to distribute to new parents.
In the efforts to expand Head Start and to provide child care and pre-school, we should never forget that parents are a child’s first and most important teachers.
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