As a scholar practitioner,
my responsibilities for leading evaluation initiatives would be to make sure
that early learning standards are being met with validity and reliability. It would be of great importance to provide
the materials necessary for teachers to teach the standards. Professional development would be a major
responsibility making sure that educators have up to date credentials. It would help teachers and program managers
administer assessments, interpret data, and use child and program assessment
data for program improvement (National Early Childhood Accountability Task
Force, 2013). Another aspect that I would be responsible for would be informing
appropriate stakeholders with the successes of the program. Parents, families, teachers, staff, and
community leaders need to be appropriately informed of what is taking place in
the early childhood program.
Just as mentioned by the
Task Force, when establishing a system in early childhood education, there can
be several challenges- structural, conceptual, technical, and resource. During my tenure in education the greatest
challenge has been with resources. This
is related to limitations and inequities in funding for early childhood programs
and infrastructure efforts (National Early Childhood Accountability Task Force,
2013). Funding is adversely effected by
federal, state, and local governments. Another
challenge would be to providing meetings to discuss data with
stakeholders. There is never enough time
to discuss the data and plan for improvement.
In order to ensure that
the evaluation is appropriate, I will create a calendar of monthly data
meetings with staff. During these
meetings we will discuss data and ways to improve the program quality and how
to reach every student. I will also plan
quarterly data meetings with parents and families. These meetings will be held at the end of
each grading period and will be used to discuss test data and the effectiveness
of the program.
The guidelines that will
be used for engaging stakeholders are:
·
The staff must take
the lead to provide stakeholders the data and other information they need to be
productive partners around student achievement.
·
Partnership
activities must be directly aligned with student achievement goals.
·
Efforts must be
collaborative and genuine. There are meaningful roles for each party to play
and these must be clearly articulated.
·
Information sharing
must be transparent. Achievement data must be clear, accurate, and meaningful.
·
All parties must
operate from common values and a common vision for student achievement.
·
All efforts must be
mission-oriented and data-driven (Sustaining Reading First, 2009).
References:
National Early Childhood
Accountability Task Force. (2013). The report of the National Early
Childhood Accountability Task Force: Taking stock: Assessing and improving
early childhood learning and program quality. Retrieved from
http://policyforchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Taking-Stock.pdf
·
Chapter 2, “Framing
a New Approach”
·
Chapter 5, “A Call
to Action”
Sustaining Reading First.
(2009). Engaging Stakeholders. Number 6. Retrieved from: https://www2.ed.gov/notclamped/programs/readingfirst/support/stakeholderlores.pdf
