Sharing Web Resources

The Center for the Child Care Workforce offers many interesting articles as well as useful information. Under public policy, the website offers an overview of the state compensation initiatives for early childhood educators. “Mentoring Programs” in one of the initiatives listed on the website. These programs offer “experienced early care and education professionals an opportunity to share their skills with others, grow in the profession, and receive improved compensation”. It also offers beginner caregivers a supportive way to learn and overcome the hurdles of the critical first years on the job. Thanks to The California Early Childhood Mentor Program, co-founded by the Center for the Child Care Workforce, I am able to work with a director mentor who is helping me establish the new preschool and gain the knowledge I need as a new director.

As I read through the organization’s May/June newsletter, the words of AFT president, Randi Weingarten, caught my attention when she said “if high-quality early childhood education were a stock or commodity, investors would be racing to invest in these programs that routinely yield a high rate of return”. Her comments were in response to the recent approval by congress to provide $700 million in additional funding for the federal “Race to the top program” that is intended to improve early education and childcare programs for disadvantaged children. The article provoked my curiosity to learn more about the federal program and its implications. According to program’s website, the grant money is awarded to states “that are leading the way with ambitious yet achievable plans for implementing coherent, compelling, and comprehensive early learning education reform”. Nine states were the competition winners and the recipients of the federal grant money. I agree with Weingarten that it is a step in the right direction, yet I have mixed feelings about the consequences of such competition on young children and whether it would lead to developmentally inappropriate practices such as “Standards” implemented at the early childhood programs, as it is the case with the current grade school education.

In relation to this week’s reflection on how economist, neuroscientists, and politicians support the EC field, the website offers a great article titled “The Economics of Inequality” by James Heckman where he addresses the logic behind investing in early childhood education from an economic standpoint. Heckman states that “Each of us is born into circumstances in which we have no control. Our parents their genes, education, health status, economic resources and environment are passed onto us through our families and neighborhoods”. These circumstances shape our lives. Therefore, Heckman suggests that while we can’t completely change the picture, we can at least change part of it by addressing the inequality in resources available to certain families to properly develop their children’s potential. Furthermore, Heckman states that since inequality starts at or before birth, it should be corrected at or before birth “with the resource of early childhood and parental education”.

The more I explore the CCW website, the more informed as an Early Childhood educator I become. The previous was an overview of some of the information  n the website and there is more yet to come.