Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 A Unifying Foundation (2015) / Chapter Skim
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10 Qualification Requirements, Evaluation Systems, and Quality Assurance Systems
10 Qualification Requirements, Evaluation Systems, and Quality Assurance Systems
Pages 421-460
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From page 421... ...
STANDARDIZING QUALITY: REQUIREMENTS TO QUALIFY FOR PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE Standards for requirements to be qualified to practice are one tool for contributing to the quality of professional practice among those responsible for the care and education of young children. These standards typically are set through systems that establish and administer either legal licenses to practice or credentials, certificates, or endorsements that may be a legal require ent, a condition for funding, or voluntarily adopted by an em m ployer as a condition of employment or augmentation of baseline qualifications.
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From page 422... ...
sets its own qualifications for public school teachers, as well as for teachers, assistant teachers, and directors in licensed early childhood programs and for regulated family childcare centers and home-based childcare providers. Table 10-1 provides an overview of the typical differences in qualification expectations across professional roles and settings.
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From page 423... ...
All public school teachers are required Each state sets its own teacher qualifications for early care and education to have at least a bachelor's degree and (ECE) programs, with the exception of Head Start and Military Child Care, provisional or actual certification before for which teacher qualifications are set by the federal government.
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elementary and middle school teachers Prekindergartend Head Start Center-Based Programse held at least a bachelor's degree in 2012 • 8 percent of 5 • t least 50 percent of A • 7 states require 1 (Department for Professional Employees programs require Head Start teachers less than a high and AFL-CIO, 2013) .c Among those, nearly a bachelor's degree nationwide must school diploma or 48 percent held a master's degree or greater for all lead teachers have a bachelor's General Educational (Department for Professional Employees (Barnett et al., 2012, or advanced degree Development (GED)
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g Twenty-seven percent of Early Head Start teachers working with infants and toddlers held at least a bachelor's degree in 2013 (Whitebook, 2014)
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. As of summer 2014, 27 states and the District of Columbia offered public school teachers' licenses beginning at birth, with some states offering more than one such license.
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In the 2009 scan, Alabama was listed as offering an early childhood certificate covering prekindergarten to grade 3; today the state offers an early childhood education license that covers birth through age 8. New Jersey now offers an early childhood education license that covers birth through third grade, while in 2009 it offered a prekindergarten through third grade certificate.
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From page 428... ...
Few states have systems set up in such a way that prospective educators wishing to teach in prekindergarten through third grade only have the option of acquiring a license that is inclusive of early childhood. Because the earliest age span covered in some states ends at or before kindergarten, kindergarten teachers typically obtain a license that extends to the upper elementary grades instead of one focused specifically on the early grades.
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Teachers in infant and toddler centers, as well as many in preschools, are paid far less than public school teachers.
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However, when it comes to more specialized competencies, educators planning to work in most public school systems will not be working with infants and toddlers, while those interested in working with infants and toddlers will not be working with children in the early e lementary grades. Thus there is a rationale for a license that matches age span to setting, with reform not so much in the age span as in the content of the requirement to ensure that expectations for knowledge and competencies are more consistent across roles and settings and align more fully with research on child development and instruction for young children.
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The CDA credential may contribute to some aspects of quality and may be beneficial for child outcomes. Specifically, professionals with the credential and with limited formal education may act more positively with children and make more opportunities to engage in play with language than those without knowledge and previous coursework in early childhood education.
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and high school students enrolled in an early childhood education technical program are eligible to apply for the CDA credential. Candidates must complete 120 hours of child development courses at any time prior to submitting the application, as well as 480 hours of direct experience working with children.
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This landscape is dissonant with what the science of child development and early learning reveals about the core competen cies that all care and education professionals need and the importance of consistency in learning experiences for children in this age range. Greater coherence in the content of and processes for meeting qualifica
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Early and colleagues (2007) analyzed data from seven previous studies of prekindergarten programs and found null or contradictory associations between the bachelor's degree or other features of teachers' education attainment and classroom quality or child outcomes.
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Vu and colleagues (2008) conducted an analysis of California's state-funded preschool programs to examine the relationship between teachers' education and classroom quality in the context of other variables, such as program setting (i.e., childcare centers, Head Start, public schools)
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. In addition, as noted by the researchers themselves and others, the available studies were not able to take into account factors that affect teacher education and teaching environments, such as the quality and content of the college degree or early childhood major; working conditions that the educators experience, such as access to ongoing professional learning, adequate instructional materials and facilities, effective leadership, and commensurate compensation; the educator's years of experience; and state and local policies that could promote or hinder effective practice (Early et al., 2007; Hyson et al., 2009; NRC and IOM, 2012; Whitebook and Ryan, 2011)
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Lower educational expectations for early childhood educators than for elementary school teachers perpetuates the perception -- and policies that reflect the perception -- that educating children before kindergarten requires less expertise than educating K-3 students, which makes it difficult to maximize the potential of young children through the early learning programs that serve them. Furthermore, there is also now considerable variation among professional roles working with younger children because a degree is increasingly being required in some early childhood settings as a result of requirements in Head Start and other settings and because more states and municipalities now have publicly funded prekindergarten programs that require educators to obtain preschool through early elementary certification.
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Conclusions About Degree Requirements Challenges to interpreting the existing research about the relationship between the education level of educators and the quality of instruction and children's learning and development arise from variability in their design and purpose and the extent to which other variables -- such as the quality of the degree-granting program; state and local policies; and features of the practice setting, such as the work environment, curricu lum, educator supports, ongoing professional learning opportunities, collaboration among educators, and compensation -- can be taken into account in interpreting the findings. The available studies alone are insufficient to enable conclusions as to whether a bachelor's degree improves the quality and effectiveness of educators, whether for early childhood settings or for K-12 schools.
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. In 10 states, an individual with a high school diploma or lower educational attainment, with no coursework in early childhood education, can become a center director (Child Care Aware of America, 2013)
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1 some teaching experience • 3 states require a Child Development Associate 1 (Whitebook et al., 2009)
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Current expectations and policies for education and certification of elementary school principals are not well aligned with the interests of early elementary educators and students and the need to understand childhood development research and best practices in instruction in preschool and the primary grades. Current education and certification requirements and expectations for directors in early childhood settings outside of school systems are inconsistent across states, credentialing is largely voluntary, and the current standards do not adequately reflect the knowledge and competencies needed to lead in learning envi onments for young children.
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. Outside of federally funded Head Start programs or school-based programs, structured systems for evaluation are nearly absent in early childhood settings, with evaluation policies being set program by program.
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Nor do the policies apply to Head Start programs unless those programs are administered by school districts that consider their Head Start teachers to be public school employees. In other words, these policies, where applied, affect all educators of children who are aged 5-8 and some educators of children who are aged 3-4 and in some cases, even younger.
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. Increasing emphasis on educator performance related to child outcomes in prekindergarten and Head Start is complicated by issues of assessing young children, the collaborative nature of early childhood teaching, and recruitment and retention challenges (LeMoine, 2009; Meisels, 2006; Regenstein and Romero-Jurado, 2014)
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. Prekindergarten Head Start Center-Based Programs • 0 states and the District of Columbia use 4 • chool-sponsored: S • ead Start, not H • aries by state and program; V student achievement on standardized tests as a most prekindergarten school sponsored: the typically, there are no teacher factor in teacher evaluation (NCTQ, 2013)
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More specifically, tying their evaluation results primarily to student performance and observations of instructional practice requires different strategies from doing so with educators of older children. Because of the variable nature of learning and development during these years, triangulating assessment data with other sources of evidence from multiple methods and at multiple times may help educator evaluation systems derive a more reliable and valid measure of student achievement or growth during this age span (Epstein et al., 2004; Goe et al., 2011; Snow, 2011)
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Indeed, the lack of consensus in state and local education systems on the appropriate assessments and outcome data to use as part of the evaluation of preschool and K-3 educators suggests that implementers of evaluation reforms continue to struggle with the issues raised by the National Education Goals Panel and need more research on which guidance can be based. Because of these challenges, children at these ages commonly are assessed through everyday observation and documentation of their behaviors and performance against clear performance benchmarks or indicators or through one-on-one assessments of specific skills, both of which require the educator to interact with students in small groups or individually (National Early Childhood Accountability Task Force, 2007; NEGP, 1998; Snow, 4 Some states or districts measure student growth by comparing their end-of-year performance on state tests with the previous year's results.
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. Yet measures of student achievement used in educator evaluation systems tend not to take these skills into account for children of any age, potentially missing a significant aspect of educators' competencies as professionals.
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According to the group, teacher evaluations should not be based on student assessments "without also knowing about access to resources, to professional development, to mental health consultation, to supervision, and so on" (NRC, 2008b, p.
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. A few states allow districts and schools to use such observation tools that were designed and validated for earlychildhood classrooms for evaluating prekindergarten through grade 3 edu 6 For broader discussions of the need to train and support principals to conduct teacher evaluations effectively, see Grossman (2011)
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From page 451... ...
In addition, evaluation systems do not consistently capture important educator competencies such as assessment, trauma-informed practice, family engagement, and interprofessional practice. As a result, current evaluation policies and systems may reinforce and reward a narrow view of "effectiveness" while missing best practices that should be fostered and recognized in the early learning profession.
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. Professional learning can be incorporated in the context of quality assurance systems such as QRISs if their scope and intent are extended to include rating standards that are linked more comprehensively and closely to instructional practices and child outcomes and coordinated with efforts to improve the quality of professional practice.
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. Accreditation for Family Childcare To receive accreditation from the National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC)
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. An investigation of available public school teaching licenses beginning at birth in the United States in 2014.
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Child Development 78:558-580. Educational Policy Improvement Center.
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2009. Early childhood public school teacher li censure for the fifty states and Washington, D.C.: An inquiry to ascertain student age ranges for public school licensure.
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2003. Early childhood curriculum, assessment, and program evaluation: Building an effective, accountable system in programs for children birth through age 8.
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in Head Start. W ashington, DC: Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation; Administration for Children and Families; U.S.
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Executive summary. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley, Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.
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