ADVOCACY

Advocacy in early childhood can have more than one focus.  It may address the needs of the child, the needs of the families, the needs of the staff or director/owner.  Advocacy in early childhood is of great importance because it reaches across all provider sectors and ultimately impacts the community and the society in which we live.

The three main focuses for ACEE are family choice, quality programs, and well-trained teachers.  Subsets include:

• The importance of choices for providers and families regarding early childhood settings, choices of curricula, flexibility in training with consistent, but flexible training programs for directors and teachers.
• The importance of knowing who your state legislators and federal congressmen are.
• The importance of attending their meetings and letting them know where you stand on issues affecting early childhood.
• The need to visit their offices and build a relationship with them while they are in your district, not during session.
• The need to prepare for advocacy to meet the needs of the children, families, and staff you serve.

POSITION STATEMENTS

ACEE endorses a variety of early childhood education settings for young children to promote and facilitate parental choice. These include: center-based, family child care, faith-based, private, and public programs. Full and part-time care is required to meet the individual needs of families and children.

ACEE supports parent choice (faith-based or other curricula that supports the values and philosophy of the family), developmentally appropriate practice (learning activities appropriate to meet the needs of every child in the class, responsive pupil-teacher interaction, activity-based learning centers, developmentally appropriate room arrangement), and special needs (early screening to identify children who may need further assessment, individual plans and accommodations for children identified as having special needs, inclusion of children into programs with typical peers, additional teacher training specific  to the field of inclusion as needed).

Curricula Recommendations

Assessments

ACEE encourages the use of research-based assessments to:

• Assess the learning environment.
• Assess the pupil-teacher interaction using a formal tool such as The CLASS Tool.
• Assess the progress of the children enrolled using a formal tool such as TS Gold.
• Provide ongoing development and educational progress documented and communicated to parents.