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Child Care and Education Programs- Preschool CAre
ESSENTIAL COMPONENTS:
In addition to the nine Essential Elements listed in the Childhood Care and Education section, the following guidelines for best practices in preschool are intended to provide a broad framework to meet the goal of school readiness for all of Oregon's children.
Inclusive, developmentally appropriate practices that promote healthy physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development -- The curriculum, activities, and interactions in the preschool are purposefully designed and implemented to meet the needs and developmental levels for all children, including those with disabilities, as well as facilitate further development.
Qualified teachers -- Teachers have a background in early childhood education or child development and participate in continued education, training, and staff development.
Low student-teacher ratios and appropriate group sizes -- Four- and five-year-olds should be in groups of 16 to 20 children with at least two teachers.
Health and nutrition components -- All children should be screened for vision, hearing, and immunization status. Snacks and meals should be nutritious and utilize age-appropriate group feeding practices. The environments are safe and promote good health.
Parental involvement and education -- Parents should be invited to volunteer and participate in classroom activities, field trips, and school events. The program should also incorporate parent education opportunities.
Comprehensive services to children and their families -- Family needs are addressed, as well as the child's.
Community Collaboration -- The children and their families are connected with other services offered in the community. The program collaborates with other community resources to meet the needs of the children.
Longevity (for programs that focus on early intervention) -- Those programs that focus on early intervention for children at high risk should last longer than a single school year.
Adequate funding -- Programs should be adequately funded to hire and retain qualified staff and to provide the resources necessary to operate a high-quality program.
Appropriate assessments -- The focus of assessment should be to support normal learning and development, to identify children who may need special services, and to inform policy makers. Multiple indicators of progress in all developmental domains should be used to evaluate program effects and report children's progress to parents. For preschoolers, standardized achievement measures are not sufficiently accurate to be used for high stakes decisions about individual children and schools, though aggregate matrix sampling procedures may be utilized to inform on program effectiveness. The current preferred mode of assessment for preschoolers are social indicators that describe the adequacy of services in support of learning and development. Any direct measures of children's development should be administered to individual children by trained examiners under controlled conditions.
IPreschool Care
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