Early Learning Standards
In 1990, the president and fifty governors created the National Education Goals Panel (NEGP) to formulate goals for education in the twenty-first century. Subsequently, in 1995, the NEGP endorsed recommendations from the early childhood education field to write learning standards for young children from a developmental perspective, encouraging the use of common language and terminology to promote clarity in five areas of development (Kagan, 2003; Kagan, Moore, & Bredekamp, 1995):
- Approaches to Learning
- Physical Well-Being and Health
- Social and Emotional Development
- Language Development
- Cognition and General Knowledge
By 2008, more than twenty states and several territories had produced guidelines for infants and toddlers that addressed these five domain areas (Petersen, Jones, & McGinley, 2008; Scott-Little, Kagan, Frelow, & Reid, 2008). By 2010 more than forty states had also either adopted or adapted the Good Start Grow Smart early learning standards template proposed with the 2001 No Child Left Behind initiative or used the NEGP recommendations to address the five domains in their early learning standards for preschool children (aged 3 to 5) (NIEER, 2012). As of 2017, more than 40 states adopted or have adapted early learning and development standards (NIEER, 2018).