Standards
At the Heart of Educational Equity
by Barbara T. Bowman
This article is an edited version of Barbara Bowman's keynote address to the NAEYC 15th
National Institute for Early Childhood Professional Development in San Antonio, June 2006.
STANDARDS. What is their relevance to early childhood education? This is an important discussion, I believe,
for standards are at the heart of educational equity.
In our field, there are different kinds of standards: for programs, content, learning or
performance, and professional development. Here is my definition of each of these four kinds
of standards.
1. Program standards
are what I call input standards; they define what we need to put into the learning environment
for children to flourish. These standards may include such things as the number of children in
a group, the kind of activities the program provides for children, and the credential
requirements for teachers and directors. They are designed to set the organizational structure
for programs.
2. Content standards
are also input standards and define the knowledge, concepts, and skills to be taught at each
age or grade level. Curriculum is aligned with content standards and sets forth the activities
into which the standards are embedded. For example, for preschool the standards might list the
alphabet, fine motor coordination, and following directions as content to be included in the
curriculum. Content standards are structured so that each level builds on the prior one, and
they typically include academic knowledge as well as physical and social skills.
3. Learning or performance standards
are outcome oriented. While content standards guide the curriculum, learning standards detail
what children should know and be able to do. They are the proof of the pudding. They are
necessary because, although the program may put in all the right things, they may not be
organized or presented in a way that allows children to learn. Therefore, it is essential to know
what outcomes educators and families want so that learning can be assessed. To have learning
standards does not mean all children must achieve them at the same time in the same way. It
just means we know what we want children to learn.
4. Standards for professional development
specify the skills and knowledge teachers should have if they are to be effective. Professional
development standards are generally tied to accreditation and often designate organizational
structures for the institution providing training (another kind of program standards) as well as
the learning goals and objectives upon which assessment will be based.
Where do standards come from?
The answer to this question may seem obvious. We make them up, we being researchers,
NAEYC panels, school administrators, curriculum authors and publishers, parents, and even
politicians.
In early childhood education the sources of our beliefs about standards are varied. As
educators we base our thinking on our own past experiences—as children, parents, or teachers.
We form our opinions from research in psychology and/or education, and we also try to project
into the future to imagine what children will need to know and be able to do when they grow
up. We usually propose standards with children's best interests at heart, even if we don't
always agree about what these standards ought to be.
My version of what standards should be is based on a unique blend of research, personal
experience, and my vision of the future. My colleagues may agree or disagree, as will some of
you. But a discussion on standards is essential for all of us as early childhood educators, and I
present some of my ideas here for your critique.
No standards?
Not all agree on what the standards should be, and many contend there shouldn't be any
standards at all. In statehouses and school districts, taxpayers and parents jealously guard
their right to decide how children should be cared for and educated and don't want other
groups to tell them what to do. In the United States of America we don't easily accept
interference with the rights of people to choose what they want.
Many early childhood educators are not big fans of standards. We know how different are
individual children and families, and we hesitate to suggest that one size can fit all. It is true
that people need different approaches and programs, and teachers need to do different things
to respond to them. But, it is not true that programs that say they have no standards actually
have no standards. What it means is that standards are implicit, embedded in the particular
biases of a teacher, parent, or whatever other adults are making decisions.
When a program has no standards it really means that everyone gets to use their own
standards without subjecting them to scrutiny. Expectations are hidden behind such statements
as "We teach what is best for each individual" and "We use the teachable moment, so you
can't plan ahead or predict what children will learn." The result here is that it is difficult to determine
what teachers are teaching and what children are learning.
In my view this is an ethical problem. Informed consent demands that teachers and programs
advertise and be accountable for the education they offer children and what they expect them
to learn. Even when we think teachers reflect the biases of families and/or the community,
without a conscious examination, we find surprises in what we thought was said and done.
Since young children cannot give informed consent, parents and the community must.
Another criticism of standards is that they are not culturally sensitive. That is, they do not
encode the specific behavior and beliefs of different groups. Indeed, in most instances, those
who set standards work hard to be inclusive and not to value one group's childrearing goals
and preferences over another's. But, of course, this is not possible. Just as with teachers
whose standards are implicit, standards also have implicit biases. The difference is that
standards are explicit, and people can judge their biases. The presence of standards will not
free parents from the constant need to monitor their children's education to ensure they have
opportunities to learn. Standards do provide parents with a guide to what they should expect
teachers to teach and children to learn.
Yes, standards do have shortcomings. Yet despite the shortcomings, I begin with the
assumption that explicit standards are a good idea and that they can form the basis for
informed consent for parents, teachers, programs, and the community.
Program standards: Who decides?
Do we need program standards? Some people criticize program standards because different
children and families need and want different things, while program standards are a template
for what everyone gets. Take teacher credentials, which are often a part of program standards.
In Illinois, teachers in state pre-K programs must have a four-year degree and a teaching
certificate.
Some parents and community groups would prefer that a teacher speak the child's home
language rather than have a teaching credential. Both criteria—credential and home-language
proficiency—have something to recommend them. How should we decide which to encode into
a standard?
I can give scores of examples of licensing, Head Start, and state pre-K program standards
that evoke annoyance, disgust, and downright outrage. If program standards bother or offend
so many, why are they necessary? I think the answer is simple: without program standards
children's health, safety, education, or general well-being might be compromised.
In the United States, people give up some individual liberties for the sake of the common
good. But who defines that good? Are all voices equal when considering program standards?
Do or should some have entitlement to a greater voice than others? As early childhood
professionals, we believe our voice carries such privilege, hence the dissemination of a
position on developmentally appropriate practice in early childhood programs (NAEYC 1996)
and the recently released NAEYC Early Childhood Program Standards and Accreditation
Criteria (NAEYC 2005), for example. These initiatives give NAEYC considerable power to
influence, as they become the gold standard for parent selections, state standards, and
reimbursement rates for child care services.
NAEYC should not shrink from advocating program standards; but I do think we need to be
sure that our program standards are based on the best knowledge available. Standards should
acknowledge cultural diversity in practice and approach. For example, I remember Lily Wong
Fillmore being outraged that Head Start requirements would call for large paintbrushes, when
Chinese children prefer small ones and no research evidence indicates that one brush size is
better than others for young children. NAEYC is correct to give a range for group size since
we know children do better in small groups, but we don't know exactly how small these groups need
to be. When setting program standards, we must not unnecessarily compromise family and
community preferences.
Alternative perspectives are important in standards, and I see four areas in which as early
childhood educators we need to give special attention:
• supporting meaningful relationships of children with teachers and children with one another
• providing an organizational framework and schedules so that everyone knows what to expect
• delineating content that will lead children toward success in school
• rewarding child participation and involvement in learning
I believe that we should have as few discrete standards as possible and permit programs to
explain how they will meet the more general ones.
Content and learning standards
Some early childhood educators say standards are fine for programs but inappropriate for
young children. They ask, "Why is it necessary to have standards, especially for
prekindergarten and kindergarten?" Even first-, second-, and third-graders do not need specific
lists of what should be taught and learned. Many teachers talk about standards being the same
as scripts, preventing them from using personal and professional knowledge and limiting what
children can be taught and can learn.
Part of the reluctance of teachers to specify what young children should learn, I believe, is
the tendency to focus on development at the expense of culture and social learning. The
developmental perspective, articulated by Rousseau maturationists and Piagetians, focuses
attention on the developmental blueprint, children's inner drive to develop, to make sense of
their world and learn from it. This is an inborn capacity to learn certain things, and young
children are really quite good at it. Take language, for instance. If children live in a language
community, they will naturally acquire sounds, babble, say words, make complex sentences.
All are developmental achievements and usually accomplished relatively easily. With little
direct instruction, children break the meaning code of their home language.
Some teachers assume that children can learn everything in this way. Just give them lots of
toys and opportunities to play, and they will learn all the other important lessons, including
reading, writing, and arithmetic. For these teachers, developmentally appropriate means the
child is learning from his or her own efforts, preferably from self-selected activities, and
protected from the influence of adult-imposed activities. They are forgetting that the
developmental blueprint is just one side of learning. The other side of learning is determined
by children's sociocultural experiences and what they learn from these.
To return to the language analogy, learning language is a developmental accomplishment, but
the family and community determine what language children learn, what they speak about,
what kind of vocabulary they use, with what kind of assistance from older children and adults,
and so on. The culture decides what children should learn and sets up experiences to support
children's learning.
Developmental learning and cultural learning are inextricably joined. While developmental
capabilities are inborn potential, adults structure and organize the experiences children have
so that they learn a particular culture's way of representing them. There is no such thing as
developmental competence outside of a cultural context. And, given the diversity around the
world, there are obviously many different ways to achieve developmental competence.
Some educators assume that it is natural for all children to learn the same things in the same
way, and they take White, middle-class, typically developing children in the United States as a
model. This is not true. One student of mine learned this lesson when she decided to set up a
literacy-rich environment in an inner-city classroom of African American children. She
thought the only developmentally appropriate way to teach so that the children would learn
literacy skills was simply to provide the materials and resources, without any direct
instruction. Instead of literacy learning, the children threw the crayons, tore the books, and
showed little interest in reading or writing.
The children in this classroom had not learned to be interested in or how to make use of these
literacy tools and consequently learned little from them. Were the children developmentally
able to learn? Absolutely. Could they learn the way the teacher thought was developmentally
appropriate? Absolutely not.
Failure to fully appreciate the role of culture in children's development has led some
teachers to take an either/or perspective about developmentally appropriate practice.
According to this view, learning is either child directed, play based, and appropriate, or it is
forced on children by teachers with direct instruction and mindless drill, and therefore
inappropriate.
Would standards help this problem? Yes. First, standards recognize the importance of
culture, and as social constructions they ideally represent a community compromise on what
children should know and be able to do. In a multicultural world, we must compromise to
arrive at common expectations. Second, standards say clearly that teachers are responsible for
organizing the learning environment so that children learn.
Prior experience
What my student, who wanted children to learn in a literacy-rich classroom, missed was
knowing that children have to have the necessary foundation—both developmental and
cultural—if they are to learn well. It is not enough for teachers to say, "I taught in a particular
way and children should have learned" or, conversely, say, "There is no point in teaching that
because children cannot learn it." Teachers are responsible for knowing general developmental
guidelines but also for knowing what particular children's prior experiences have been and
organizing new experiences so that they can learn from them.
Too narrow a focus
Some educators criticize learning/performance standards as having too narrow a focus. They
contend that children know and can do so much more than we can ever encode into standards.
They point out that learning standards tend to focus on school-related skills and knowledge
and omit other important learning, like getting along with others, asserting oneself, and using
divergent thinking. The solution to this problem is not to get rid of standards but rather to
broaden the standards to include a wider range of teaching and learning outcomes.
This solution, however, can present a problem. Too many standards and too many separate
things to teach can overwhelm even the most conscientious teacher. I am reminded of another
student of mine. She decided to build her early childhood curriculum by planning activities to
go with each of the learning standards—until she discovered there are 332 items in her state's
standards. Similarly many teachers complain that quarterly Head Start assessments based on
the Head Start Child Outcomes Framework (Head Start Bureau 2003) take so much time that
teachers don't have time to teach the children.
My solution isn't to forgo standards but to use them more judiciously. One popular
instrument for use by kindergarten teachers suggests doing a weekly assessment, since it
would be so easy with computer technology. Some standards don't need to be assessed every
week, no matter how good the technology is.
Too frequent assessment of different standards is a problem educators need to address. Some
teachers are required to fill in laundry lists of items three times a year, rather than thinking
carefully about assessing different learning at different times and in different ways. For
example, teachers spend hours writing anecdotal notes on skills that could be readily assessed
in a monthly activity and a checklist, saving teacher time for those standards that do not lend
themselves to quick and easy assessment. Rather than discarding standards, we need to rethink
how we use standards in assessment.
School learning
Another concern is the high academic expectations that standards encompass, which some
children cannot meet. From my current work in a public school system, I am very aware of
how different teacher beliefs affect children's learning. I hear all kinds of reasons, for
example, why No Child Left Behind standards are at best unfair and unobtainable and at worst
destructive to children. Some teachers believe that children of color growing up in families
with low incomes can't learn the curriculum because of developmental failures. They think
that what's wrong is that the children and their families' background, race, or language
prevents them from learning and they don't know what to do to help. Whatever the reasons,
the end result is the same: some teachers don't teach and many children don't learn.
None of these reasons are a good argument against standards. First, most children in low-
income, ethnically and culturally diverse groups are developmentally typical. There is no
reason they cannot master the school curriculum, and many schools have demonstrated that
children can meet expectations. A preschool teacher recently told me she was concerned that
the children would feel bad if they didn't know the things on the assessment sheet. My answer
was "Then teach them!" Meeting school expectations is a challenge for many children, but
nowhere near as severe a challenge as school failure.
My experience in a large, urban public school system suggests that teaching ethnically and
culturally diverse children is a challenge for many teachers, who have little idea of what to do.
The problem, it seems to me, is not setting high expectations, but rather providing the
compensation, working conditions, supervision, and education necessary for teachers to do a
good job. Backing off from high standards because they are hard to reach denies many
children the opportunity to learn and is the death knell for their future.
Assessment
There are two types of assessment in early childhood education: for planning and for
accountability. Assessments to help teachers plan are for identifying what children already
know, which are their preferred learning styles, and whether they are learning new content that
is presented. This type of assessment guides teachers' instruction. Assessments for
accountability focus on the product—what the child knows and whether this knowledge is what
the program said it taught. Accountability assessments are, of course, the most problematic
since they hold teachers, administrators, and educational systems accountable for what
children have learned.
Without question, neither form of child assessment is perfect. In using authentic assessment,
teachers do not always correctly assess children's learning, and with standardized assessment,
the instruments are crude, young children often don't cooperate, and educators don't really
find out what children know and can do.
Even though we may have trouble assessing accurately, we should be clear about what we
want to assess. The problems of our teachers and our instruments call for more work; forgoing
standards would only make that work harder. When we ask, "Will standards ensure that all
children will learn what we want them to?" the answer is "Probably not; they just give us a
better chance of reaching our goals."
Professional development standards
The final type of standard applicable to the early childhood field is professional development
standards (Hyson 2003). Many of the previously noted criticisms of standards for children and
for programs also relate to professional development standards. As a former administrator in a
teacher education program, I know the shortcomings of standards and have protested more than
a few of them myself. National, regional, and state standards can offend various
constituencies, have too many meaningless dos and don'ts, constrain teacher creativity and
student choice, hold programs responsible for outcomes they can't control, aren't sufficiently
flexible, and so on.
The standards movement in higher education has evoked tension, controversy, and general
hostility, just as it has in school reform. Nevertheless, I must admit that discussing standards,
devising strategies to meet them, sharing our ideas about the standards with others, and
assessing teacher educators' performance in relation to standards add a level of intellectual
rigor that has not always been a part of higher education. Teacher educators, like other
educators, are learning to live with standards and learn from them.
Conclusion
For most teachers the hardest thing about the standards movement is having to change.
Change is difficult, and it often seems like we would rather fail than try something new.
Disinterest in trying new curricula or methods is matched by an equally firm conviction that
whatever we did in the past is best—despite the ample evidence that it is not. Standards are
not a panacea, nor is change easy or pleasurable. But I think standards can help us as
educators to clarify where we want to go and give us a yardstick for measuring our success in
getting there.
References
Head Start Bureau. 2003. The Head Start Child Outcomes Framework. Head Start Bulletin (76): 21–32. Online:
www.headstartinfo.org/pdf/Outcomes.pdf.
Hyson, M., ed. 2003. Preparing early childhood professionals: NAEYC's standards for programs. Washington, DC: NAEYC.
NAEYC. 1996. Developmentally appropriate practice in early childhood programs serving children from birth through age 8. Position
statement. Online: www.naeyc.org/about/positions/pdf/PSADAP98.PDF.
NAEYC. 2005. NAEYC Early Childhood Program Standards and Accreditation Criteria. Online:
www.naeyc.org/accreditation/standards.
Barbara T. Bowman, MA, is a professor at Erikson Institute in Chicago and chief officer, Office of Early Childhood
Education, Chicago Public Schools. A past president of the Chicago AEYC and of NAEYC, she has been a teacher
and teacher educator for more than 50 years.
Copyright © 2006 by the National Association for the Education
of Young Children. See
Permissions and Reprints online at www.journal.n
aeyc.org/about/permissions.asp.
Return to Beyond the Journal Table of Contents
