Expectations for Children
Demographic statistics can certainly provide a general image of American children, especially if you look beyond national reporting to your state or local level (see www.KidsCount.org). Teachers know, however, that certain policies and conditions also affect the ways in which children are described and how they, in turn, experience curriculum. In early childhood, three things that affect how children are viewed are the concept of school readiness, learning standards, and the achievement gap.
Readiness and Developmentally Appropriate Practice
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One way in which children are described is in terms of readiness, most notably kindergarten readiness, but also at any age level or in other terms whereby children may be excluded from an age/class group based on a judgment that they do not have the prerequisite knowledge or skills to meet expectations. Readiness means that a child has mastered certain skills and dispositions towards learning in order to be considered “typical” and eligible for entry. Readiness criteria can be anything from being toilet-trained and thus ready for entry to a 3-year-old class to being able to sit still and pay attention for a specified period of time for kindergarten. Currently at least thirty-four states continue to require testing for entry to kindergarten (Education Commission of the States, 2018).
Long-term research findings show, however, that readiness tests in terms of predictive value are largely unreliable (Ackerman & Barnett, 2005). Hence the image of children as “ready” or “not ready” has been a big issue in early childhood education. The National Association for the Education of Young Children asserts that the schools or programs and the curriculum in use should be “ready” and responsive to children rather than the other way around (NAEYC, 1995). One of the primary features of all the major early childhood curriculum approaches and models previewed in Chapter 2 is an image of the child that isn’t dependent on externally imposed readiness criteria.
Learning Standards
Closely related to readiness is increasing use of early learning standards and explicit expectations about what a child should know and be able to do at a particular point in time. Because of the developmental orientation of early childhood as a field, advocates work with states to ensure that expectations are framed to accommodate individual variations among children. Otherwise the image of a “typical” child might be defined too narrowly.
Standards are used not only to describe what children should learn but also to guide the development of state-by-state standardized tests used to assess the effectiveness of teachers and curriculum. Curriculum developers refer to standards in order to design content and activities that align with their stated expectations. You will see in later chapters how teachers use standards to plan and evaluate curriculum activities with individual children in mind.
As explained in Chapter 1, the language of standards expresses both broad outcomes and more detailed descriptions of expectations. However, early educators take care not to interpret standards as suggesting an ideal image of what a child should be like but rather try to use them to support the learning of each child as a unique individual. As you look at the examples in Table 3.3, which contains sample statements from the Infant/Toddler Guidelines and Early Learning Standards for 35 Year Olds, used in South Carolina, you can see that the language can be interpreted broadly and inclusively.