Since 1985, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) has sponsored a “national, voluntary accreditation system to set professional standards for early childhood education programs, and to help families identify high-quality programs.”  Nearly 11,000 programs are currently accredited by NAEYC, with approximately 70 within fifteen miles of Carnegie Mellon.  The Children’s School’s first five-year accreditation was dated 3/31/03, so we must complete our part of the re-accreditation process during the next 10 months and then wait for a NAEYC professional to do a site visit to verify our program’s quality relative to the standards.  Our goal is to keep you informed regarding our progress and to involve you in the process.

Because the accreditation process is arduous, time-consuming, and costly, many educators and parents wonder why we bother.  To be honest, I face that question at least weekly as I facilitate the process.  The accreditation “mark of quality” does provide current and prospective parents with an independent assessment that may be helpful in choosing among programs, though our best recruiting tool remains “word of mouth.”  The true value of accreditation, from my perspective, is that involvement in the required self-study process structures our continual quality improvement efforts.  We can acknowledge the areas in which our program excels and identify areas in which our program can be even better.  Our experience five years ago was that most significant improvements involved the communication and documentation of our high quality program and that classroom enhancements focused primarily on health and safety issues.  We are confident that you and your children have benefited from these changes.

In recent years, NAEYC has significantly “reinvented” the accreditation process, including revising the list of program criteria in each of the ten areas: relationships, curriculum, teaching, assessment, health, teachers, families, community relations, physical environment, and leadership & management.  Last May, the staff began reviewing the new accreditation criteria to determine which are already fully met by our program and which need strengthening.  Of the 364 criteria that apply to us (i.e., not applicable only to full-day programs or to infant / toddler care), we have identified only 59 items for improvement.  Some have already been addressed (e.g., adding hand-washing to the school entry routine, subscribing to an air-pollution alert service), the rest will be our self-study emphasis over the next few months.  In many cases, we will strengthen our written procedures to document existing practices.  Each teaching team will develop a classroom portfolio to document their work with children.  For some items, we will clarify our program philosophy and explain how our perspective differs from NAEYC’s.  While there are some criteria that all programs are required to meet, the accreditation standard is to meet 80% of the remaining criteria in each area.

If you are interested in learning more about NAEYC’s Accreditation System, please visit www.naeyc.org to get more information.  We hope that everyone will become involved in the required parent evaluation process prior to the end of this school year.  We also invite those of you who will still have children in our programs next year to offer to be involved in a parent committee that will support the accreditation process in a variety of ways.  Please contact the school office or Dr. Carver directly if you are interested.  There will be involvement opportunities to fit parents with a wide range of skills and time availability constraints.  The process will be most effective and least burdensome if everyone contributes, so please let your voice be heard and offer to lend a hand.