Introduction to the NAEYC Early Childhood Program Standards
and Accreditation Criteria
Ensuring the quality of children's daily experiences in early childhood programs and promoting positive child outcomes is the heart of the new NAEYC Early Childhood Program Standards and Accreditation Criteria.
The program standards and accreditation criteria are based on a conceptual framework with four areas of focus. The primary focus area is Children, which incorporates five early childhood program standards, each advancing children's growth in realms of learning and development. Achieving excellence requires early childhood programs to have an effective and durable support structure. This support structure promotes program accountability and makes it possible for classroom life to be consistently nurturing and filled with learning opportunities for each child—and for this high level of quality to be sustained over time. This caliber of program quality depends on Teaching Staff, Partnerships, and Administration, the three additional focus areas, which encompass five additional program standards.
The ten program standards and their criteria uphold a standard-bearer system and support NAEYC Accreditation as an agent for improving the quality of early childhood programs for all children. Accreditation as standard-bearer denotes that NAEYC Accreditation sets the norm for what it means to be a high-quality early childhood program and that the standards and criteria established for NAEYC-accredited programs contribute to children's optimal development and learning.
Collectively, the ten NAEYC Early Childhood Program standards represent essential, interlocking elements of high-quality programs for all children from birth through kindergarten. "All children" means all; it includes children with developmental delays and disabilities; children whose families are culturally and linguistically diverse; and children from diverse socio-economic groups. It also recognizes that all children have individual learning styles, strengths, and needs.
The program standards and criteria represent are evidence-based and grounded in six explicit values:
- The uniqueness of childhood as a developmental phase;
- The essential contribution to optimal child learning and development of reciprocal, respectful relationships with children and their families;
- The distinctive opportunity from birth through kindergarten to support children's intellectual, language, and social-emotional development;
- The essential role of partnerships with families and communities;
- The significance of a strong program infrastructure in providing high-quality care and education, and
- The importance of the quality of children's lives in the present, not only as preparation for the future.
These values, in combination with the evidence-based criteria, reiterate the Association's core belief that children are the ultimate beneficiaries of NAEYC Accreditation. In combination with other elements of NAEYC's reinvented early childhood program accreditation system, the early childhood program standards and accreditation criteria strive to ensure that young children in NAEYC-accredited programs receive consistently high-quality care and education that contributes to their positive learning and development.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE EARLY CHILDHOOD PROGRAM STANDARDS AND ACCREDITATION CRITERIA
The NAEYC Governing Board, as part of its Project to Reinvent NAEYC Accreditation, appointed a 10-member Commission on NAEYC Early Childhood Program Standards and Accreditation Criteria in 2002. The Board charged the Commission to (1) develop explicit program standards for early childhood programs serving children from birth through kindergarten and (2) develop accreditation criteria for each of the program standards, making them more evidence-based and current with the profession's knowledge of best practice.
The Commission worked on this task for 2½ years. The accreditation criteria were developed in conjunction with nine Technical Resource Teams of educators, administrators and researchers from around the country. The development process was informed by the input and feedback of thousands of individuals on various iterations of the program standards and criteria; a review of the empirical literature; and the findings of field tests conducted by a research team from the University of California-Los Angeles.
Definitions of Terms
An early childhood program standard is a global, evidence- and value-based statement that identifies performance expectations for an area of functioning in excellent early childhood programs.
An accreditation criterion is an evidence-based statement that defines a discrete expectation for program practice.
Collectively, accreditation criteria make operational the early childhood program standard with which they are associated. (Performance may be assessed either through observation of behavior or document review.)
A topic area outlines the areas of program performance addressed by individual performance categories.
Age groups provides an overall organizational structure for NAEYC's accreditation criteria. Five groups organize the accreditation criteria:
One universal group includes criteria that are applicable to all NAEYC-accredited programs (regardless of the developmental level of children served).
Four groups address specialized accreditation criteria for programs serving:
- infants
- toddlers and twos
- preschoolers
- kindergartners.
In demonstrating that they meet each of the ten early childhood program standards, NAEYC-accredited programs must address, at minimum, accreditation criteria tied to two accreditation groups: the universal group and at least one of the specialized age groups.
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