Tomorrow, May 7th, the New America Foundation will be holding a seminar to discuss what quality looks like in early education. The session, entitled “Putting the ‘Quality’ into Quality Pre-K: Lessons from Data-Driven Early Interventions,” will be held from 8:30 am to 10:00 am CST in Washington D.C.. For those unable to attend, the seminar will be airing through a live webcast on New America’s website, and will be posted in its entirety after the event.
The seminar will address questions like: What aspects of “quality” help close the achievement gap? and What policies can be created to encourage incorporation of these quality aspects? Speakers include Dr. Craig Ramey, Professor of Health Studies at Georgetown University; Mary Anne Lesiak, Director of the DC Partnership for Early Literacy project at AppleTree Institute for Education Innovation, Wendy S. Edwards, Principal of the Early Childhood Academy Public Charter School, and Tara Nixon, Lead Teacher at the Early Childhood Academy. Speakers will discuss: what child outcomes relate to quality, what should be measured in a quality program, how professional development can be inserted into early education programs, and how to use data to close the achievement gap (before Kindergarten!).
WECA 
In my opinion, the best way to raise the overall quality of early childhood care and education in Wisconsin is to require regulation for ALL child care programs, including family child care providers. Child care van alarms, automated attendance systems, quality rating systems, and all the other rules and regulations don’t do any good for a child who is in unregulated care.