NAEYC Accreditation: Measuring Quality

Parents want the best care for their children, but determining what is "best" can be a daunting task. When you first chose your child's care center, you took a tour, asked questions and tried to judge the quality of the care provided. In addition to your own observations, there is another tool you can use to measure the quality of care provided, NAEYC Accreditation.

In the United States, each state has its own set of child care regulations. It is important that parents be familiar with these laws when choosing child care. To find out about the regulations for your state go to http://nrc.uchsc.edu/states.html. While you're there, look at a couple of other states and you'll soon see that the laws vary widely from one state to another. NAEYC, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (http://www.naeyc.org) has created a national set of criteria, based on research and developed by experts in the early childhood education field. The criteria address all areas of a program, such as the interactions between the teachers and the children, administrative policies and procedures, staff relationships with families, health and safety, staff qualifications and professional development, staffing (adult: child ratios) and nutrition. Preschools, kindergartens, child care centers and school-age programs may apply to become accredited. Because many of the NAEYC criteria set higher standards than the state regulations, NAEYC Accreditation is a good indicator of a quality program.

Accreditation is a long and intense process. Programs must be in operation for at least a year before they can become accredited. After applying, a program begins an extensive self-study process. Every aspect of the program is reviewed. If criteria are not met, the program makes the necessary changes. The changes may be as simple as posting additional signs reminding staff of correct hand washing procedures. A more difficult and costly change may be take place in order to meet lower staff to child ratios. Often more staff must be hired or fewer children enrolled; either measure greatly impacts the program's finances.

Following the self-study, which can take 9-12 months, a team of trained validators visit the program to verify the results of the self-study. Their evaluation and the self-study are submitted to a national commission of early childhood education experts for a final decision. If the criteria are met, the program is granted accreditation for a three-year period.

Imagine that you have to go through your home and evaluate everything from how you prepare your food to the maintenance of your car to the amount of time you spend with your family to the accuracy of your checkbook. You've been given a book detailing how each task must be completed. And you have to pay a fee to do it. And you have to pay out more money in order to make changes. And you have to let a team of strangers come in behind you to make sure you really are doing everything as well as you say you are. Would you do it?

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