Politics, Government, and Early Childhood Curriculum
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Trends in early childhood curriculum can be significantly affected by public policy and government intervention, innovations in technology and media, and the infrastructure of teacher education programs. Early childhood professionals need a solid grounding and awareness of the context in which they will be working, as any of these factors has the potential to significantly impact their professional lives.
Policy and its impact on early childhood curriculum are driven in large part by politics, and support for early childhood education can be inconsistent. Today, the adoption and implementation of early learning standards, accountability systems, and funding mechanisms are the government initiatives that most affect curriculum.
Head Start
The national Head Start program was launched in 1964 under the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Its primary goal was to help reduce or eliminate the effects of poverty by providing comprehensive support and education to young children and their families.
Today Head Start early childhood preschool programsand the companion Early Head Start program for infants, toddlers, and pregnant women that was authorized in 1994serve close to a million at-risk American children annually. Head Start must be reauthorized every five years by the U.S. Congress. Each time the legislation comes up for review, new rules can be applied that affect the way in which Head Start programs select, implement, and evaluate curricula for use in Head Start classrooms.
No Child Left Behind
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Critical Thinking Question
- Why do you think having a research based curriculum is considered so important?
In 2001, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act included a mandate to develop early learning standards in each state, but it did not dictate what those standards should be. A NCLB task force developed a set of standards known as Good Start, Grow Smart (GSGS) for children aged 3 to 5 as a voluntary model for states (Scott-Little, Lesko, Martella & Milburn, 2007). GSGS blended an academic content focus in sections on math, language, and literacy with developmentally focused sections devoted to approaches to learning, physical growth and health, and social/emotional growth.
Popular early curriculum models currently in widespread use, such as High Scope and the Creative Curriculum, subsequently matched their goals, objectives, and concept frameworks with the standards for each state, some based on GSGS and others not. The purpose of this effort was to help teachers account for how their curriculum and assessments match standards while still maintaining the intentions and integrity of the model they use. In sum, one of the biggest issues in early childhood today is the extent to which standards should drive or dictate curriculum.
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