The Policy Advocacy Dissertation In his

The Policy Advocacy Dissertation In his article, An Alternative to the Doctoral Dissertation: The Policy Advocacy Concept and the Doctoral Policy Document, Leslie Browder puts forth an argument for the need for an alternative doctoral capstone experience. This is expressed through a doctoral policy document, which is a studied advocacy of a reflective scholar/practitioner for a specific policy position regarding an educational issue (Browder, 1995). The issue this policy advocacy dissertation will address is the need for increasing and thus the creation of high-quality, mandated, statewide early care and education standards for the birth to three-year-old population in the state of Illinois. The technique used to measure the quality of care afforded to this population will be through the lens of the day care providers network. This networks structure is comprised of licensed and license-exempt providers. Some of this research will focus on the opportunities available to this population pointing toward quality indicators. These indicators are one of the yardsticks shareholders use to measure the quality of care children in their learning environment have the opportunity to receive. This research will address three aspects of educational reform in early childhood education: (1) the need for more thoughtful approaches to educational policy development; (2) a concern educational leadership express itself in a moral context; and (3) a desire to develop reflective practices in administration (Browder, 1995). For the purposes of this policy, license-exempt is defined as child care provided in home settings that have been legally exempted from Illinois licensing requirements. License-exempt providers can care from no more than three children, including their own children, unless all children are from the same household (Anderson, Ramsburg, and Scott, 2005; Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, 2007b). This policy advocacy concept takes a pragmatic approach. It attempts to use both the critical perspective and the rational perspective in promoting a critical practical rational model (Browder, 1995). Conceptually, such an approach permits policy construction to utilize systems theory and some common sense administrative procedures with a critical analysis of values and visions helping define how administrators ought to act. According to Browder (1995), in combining both critical and rational perspectives pragmatically, there is an expectation Vickers art of judgment will find expression as policy construction sorts out problems to be solved from dilemmas. Consideration for some vehicle like the policy advocacy concept is prompted by perceived needs in reform of educational policy construction. Not only is the need for educational reform perceived, it is a reality for school educators and administrators. This reality is evident from Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) demands, boards of education, parents, governing bodies, students, and best practices in the field, research studies and the need to be globally viable (Browder, 1995). Instead of the traditional five-chapter dissertation format, this dissertation will be presented in seven chapters, beginning with a brief synopsis of how the research will be framed, which is explained in the introduction chapter, the preface. The remaining chapters will follow the guidance of the article: chapter one will contain the vision statement; chapter two, analysis of need; chapter three, an advocated policy statement; chapter four, an argument for the policy; chapter five, policy implementation plan; chapter six, policy assessment plan; and chapter seven, a policy impact statement for the advocated policy. Below are brief vignettes of the distinct disciplinary areas contained in this dissertation. Chapter one is a vision statement stating the need for increasing and thus creating high-quality, state mandated, standards for the birth to three-year-old population in the state of Illinois. Several questions will be posed and answered in my research of this topic. I became aware of this topic through my professional career in working in the field of early care and education via daycare, Early Head Start, and Head Start. My vision statement will address the critical issues apart of the response to the problems embedded in the context of this situation and the impact of the current policy standards set forth by Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (IDCFS) for all license exempt child care centers and child care homes in the state (IDCFS, 2007b). The second part of my dissertation is the analysis of need section. This section explains why I think this topic is important not only to me but to the field of early care and education, the state of Illinois and the entire United States of America. This section defines the problem and its context more specifically. In this analysis, at least five distinct disciplinary areas will be analyzed to help shape the advocated policy: educational, economic, social, political, and the moral/ethical analysis (Browder, 1995). The third section is the advocated policy statement. This section provides a definition of what the policy advocates for in detail, spelling out its goals and objectives. It will answer the questions like whose needs, values, and preferences are represented by the policy advocated and on what basis are the goals and objectives the policy aims to achieve, validated as appropriate and good (Browder, 1995). The fourth section of my doctoral policy document is framed as a policy argumentation with a pro and con essay on the merit of the advocated policy, considering research, public and professional opinion, best practices in the field, and factors relevant to increasing and maintaining high-quality, mandated standards, for the early care and education population in the state of Illinois (Browder, 1995). The fifth section of my dissertation includes a policy implementation plan including such items as educational activities (high-quality curriculum i.e. Creative Curriculum), staff development plans (connected to a career lattice), time schedules (monitored and assessed on a regular basis i.e. similar to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Head Start monitoring process), and most importantly an adequate budget (i.e. reallocation of federal dollars). This plan will ensure implementation comes to fruition through a holistic approach to early care and education. These tenets will prepare children to enter preschool, continue through elementary, and secondary school and go on to become productive citizens and good stewards of self-actualization (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2007a). It follows best practice my section six should include a policy assessment plan to monitor progress and evaluate the outcomes and results of the policy. The assessment plan will detail how policy implementation and administration will be monitored and how oversight will maintain a general sense of checks and balances. In addition, it will detail reporting procedures for providers and the timeframe providers have to make adjustments, corrections, or changes to remediate the deficiencies or inaccuracies needing implementation as a result of an assessment process (Browder, 1995). My final section is a policy impact statement. This statement is reflective in nature, envisioning the estimated consequences via the pros and cons of implementing the advocated policy in the context intended. Questions to help guide the impact statement include: What values are at the center of the policy and is the implementation and proposed operation of this policy consistent with the vision behind it (Browder, 1995). CHAPTER ONE: VISION STATEMENT Introduction My goal is to narrow the achievement gap among impoverished children entering the public school system. To begin to accomplish this goal will require increasing statewide standards monitored for the birth to three-year-old population of children currently being served in licensed and license exempt child care homes. This is an important educational policy issue to study. There are statewide standards for secondary, elementary, and the preschool population of three to five year olds; there are no agreed upon high-quality, enforceable standards for the birth to three year old populations in the state of Illinois for family child care providers. Informal caregivers are the largest non-parental source of child care for infants and toddlers. The prevalence of informal care settings is difficult to ignore since lower income parents can now use public child care subsidies previously limited to licensed facilities to purchase child care from relatives and other informal providers. The use of public funds for informal caregivers is controversial among early childhood professionals, some of who view the provision as contributing to an erosion of standards of quality (Powell, 2008). Recently the state of Illinois began a partnership with Illinois Action for Children and the Illinois Network of Child Care Resource and Referral called Lifting the Standards. This effort was formed to increase the standards of family child care providers in the state of Illinois. Without increasing standards for this population, the children served in these homes will continue to experience gaps in achievement. We must prepare children entering elementary school from licensed and license exempt providers with the same rigor as licensed, accredited centers, lab-schools, universities, and public schools. Typically standards help to narrow the achievement gaps between impoverished (living at or below the poverty level/ Head Start income guidelines) children and well-to-do (parents making a living wage or have a career/profession) children. These standards are germane to educators across the state of Illinois held accountable to No Child Left Behind (NCLB), Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) expectations, meeting goals of the School Improvement Plan for Advancing Academic Achievement (SIPAAA), alignment with Board directives, and maintaining a principalship. These standards are contingent on meeting national, state, and citywide goals which usually concern test scores and lessening the achievement gaps existing within test scores and schools. At root here is a fundamental dilemma; the personal qualities of resilience and courage, a sense of craft in the work of education, a commitment to justice and caring in social relationships and a dedication to advancing the public good in our communal life are difficult to assess. We are apt to measure what we can, and eventually come to value what is measured over what is unmeasured (Rothstein, 2004). Even though Rothstein makes a valid observation, I should note Malcolm Gladwell stated in The New Yorker, test scores i.e. I.Q. test near validity and reliability only when the population normed is congruent with the population tested i.e. industrial-age versus computer-age testers. In other words, often times I.Q. test measure not so much how smart we are as how modern we are (Gladwell, 2007). By the mid 1990s a wave of education reform focused on improving educational outcomes by setting higher standards for what students should know and be able to do. Standards-based reform involves establishing more rigorous academic standards for all students, measuring the performance of students and schools against those standards, and holding schools accountable for educational outcomes. Standards-based reform means systemic reform which involves curriculum frameworks, changes in governance, and a coherent, coordinated set of policies regarding academic content, performance standards, assessment tools, teacher preparation, professional development, and accountability for results (A Chicago Assembly Report, 2001). This research is altruistic with the intention of allowing fellow educational stakeholders inclusive of early care educators, parents, politicians, and administrators to truly become transformational leaders capable of creating and sustaining systemic change within a nepotistic, bureaucratic system, for the benefit of all early childhood aged children in the state of Illinois. This true knowledge is the impetus for transformational change for children, families, educators, and stakeholders in general. Background My philosophical approach to analyzing the causation and possible solutions to this problem stems from an old clich??, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure (Kennedy, 2004). Some of the entities charged with creating, monitoring and maintaining standards for the birth to three populations have created minimum standards and have yet to catch up with other states and increase standards for providers educating the early care population. Currently, several states have a Quality Rating System (QRS) tied to tiered reimbursement or other financial incentives. All Quality Rating Systems are composed of five common elements: Program Standards, Accountability Measures, Program and Practitioner Support, Financial Incentives, and Parent and Consumer Education (McCormick Tribune Center for Early Childhood Leadership, 2007). Tiered Strategies, Tiered Quality Strategies (TQS), and Tiered Quality Rating Strategies refer to a series of approaches states have developed to increase quality in early care and education including tiered reimbursement, rated licensing, quality rating systems, and a combination of these strategies. Increasingly, states are combining their approaches and using more multi-leveled systems. As state practices evolve, the National Child Care Information Center (2007a; 2007b) has moved to reflect these changes, using the terminology Quality Rating Systems (QRS) and focusing on elements comprising the QRS. The National Child Care Information Center, a service of the Child Care Bureau, Office of Family Assistance, is a national clearinghouse and technical assistance center linking parents, providers, policy-makers, researches, and the public to early care and education information. Some of the states whose practices have evolved are Florida, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Illinois (National Child Care Information Center, 2007a). Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia pay higher child care subsidy reimbursement rates to accredited programs. Twelve states and the District of Columbia have statewide quality rating systems. Eleven statewide quality-rating systems link to their states tiered reimbursement program. Twelve states link their quality rating systems to national accreditation. Seven states require state-funded pre-kindergarten programs to be accredited (National Association for the Education of Young Children, 2007b). A Quality Rating System is a systemic approach to assess, improve, and communicate the level of quality in early care and education programs. Similar to rating systems for restaurants and hotels, a QRS awards quality rating to early care and education programs meeting a set of defined program standards. These systems provide an opportunity for states to: (1) increase the quality of early care and education for children; (2) increase parents understanding and demand for higher quality care; and (3) increase professional development of child care providers (NCCIC, 2007a). A Quality Rating System can be an effective strategy for aligning components of the early care and education system for increased accountability in improving quality care. Some of the success of the rating systems can be attributed to the intrinsic desire of providers since the system is voluntary and clearly defines the tiers necessary to increase quality. These efforts other states have made toward the early care and education arena are noteworthy because Illinois has used them as blueprints to develop a similar system for the children in the state. The challenge for those concerned with education reform in Illinois is to look widely, in terms of both time and geography, but talk locally. Without an understanding of progression and context of Illinois education reform, it will be nearly impossible to influence the direction and quality of the next steps in Illinoiss path to better public education (Laine, 2001). The Illinois Quality Counts: Quality Rating System was designed to support the states early care and education programs in providing higher quality care for children and their families. This voluntary system is funded by the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) and is available to licensed programs as well as license-exempt family child care providers servicing children eligible for the IDHS Child Care Assistance Program. One of the flaws to this approach is the voluntary aspect of the system. The education of a child is too valuable to be left to voluntary affairs, it should be mandatory. Just think of the ramifications of a volunteer speed limit (McCormick Tribune Center for Early Childhood Leadership, 2007). One of the purposes of the National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC) is to accredit family child care homes. NAFCC accreditation is a system designed to help family child care providers set and reach quality improvement goals and to help parents and policymakers identify high-quality care in a home setting. The National Association for Family Child Care eligibility is simple for providers to meet. The eligibility criteria include offering care to children in the providers home and the applicant qualifying as a primary caregiver. The provider must be 21 years of age or older with a high school diploma or equivalent, have 18 months experience as a family child care provider, and before submitting the application requesting an observation visit, possess 90 hours of documented training completed (Illinois Network of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies, 2010a). Several communities in the state have better access to quality early care and education than others. The creation of high-quality, mandated standards will afford all children in the state of Illinois the opportunity to be exposed to a high-quality education. Why should children from other states be afforded opportunities for optimal growth and development and the children of Illinois are not exposed to the same opportunities, reaping the same or similar benefits? Personal Statement This topic is important to me because I want to exist in a community in which all children are literate. I became aware of the need to increase the standards of the early care and education population through my professional career. I began my professional career in a day care environment in a small agency that met the minimum requirements of care in a loving way; the staff cared deeply about the children but they were not advancing the childrens educational attainment. The vast majority of these children were from at-risk family structures and environments where their socio-economic stature impacted their attendance, involvement, overall commitment to the program, and their childrens educational advancement. The lack of opportunities these children received was magnified for me when I left the agency and began to work for another agency with Early Head Start, Head Start, and State Pre-Kindergarten program dollars. The dichotomy of quality those programs exhibited was at opposite ends of the education spectrum; Head Start was superior and daycare was inferior. In this capacity, I was able to compare minimum care, meeting the Department of Children and Family Services state licensing standards, to high-quality care; the performance standards of Head Start, the Illinois Early Learning Standards, the expectations of the Community Partnership-Preschool Subcontract, State Pre-Kindergarten (currently called Preschool for All) programs, and the requirements of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, 2007b; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2001; Illinois State Board of Education, 2004; Chicago Public Schools, 2005; National Association for the Education of Young Children, 2007a). This revelation magnified that children whose early childhood experience only included adherence to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services licensing standards began their educational career at a disadvantage. The juxtaposition of programs visualized the importance connected to the quality of early care and education for the infant, toddler, and preschool population. In working in these programs and serving in many capacities in the Englewood and Humboldt Park communities, I realized high-quality care for the birth to three populations should be a goal for all early care educators. This realization became apparent to me through my daily experiences by working in, researching about, and evaluating outcomes of these programs (IDCFS, 2007b). Research has shown in the majority of infant care arrangements in the United States, children are not talked to and played with enough, and they do not have the opportunity to form the kind of comfortable, secure relationships with a caregiver who will promote their healthy emotional development (Hawley and Gunner, 2000). This information is why California State University-Chico, conducted The Relation of Quality Indicators to Provider Knowledge of Child Development in Family Child Care Homes study (Bordin, Machida, and Varnell, 2000). Armed with this information affirms the need for continuously increasing the quality of early care and education standards for all children, especially children cared for in license exempt care in the state of Illinois. The fight must begin in these settings since the majority of children from birth to three are cared for in family child care homes. The study indicated continuing concerns about the quality of care offered in family child care homes. One concern is the relationship between training, education, experience, and provider engagement with children. Bordin et al. (2000) affirms the need for high-quality standards with training and increased early childhood education. Increasing the knowledge base of license-exempt family child care providers should be incremental to become monumental. It must commence with credentialing, which represents baseline competencies in the field and conclude with degree attainment. Post credentialing, these didactic milestone accomplishments ought to progress with an associates, move to a bachelors, increase to a masters, and for higher-order thinkers progress to and culminate with a terminal degree of doctorate. Several avenues are available to providers who seek to scaffold current schemas of early care and educational knowledge. A precursor to ensuring high-quality and thus understanding the early care population via a family child care lens is The Creative Curriculum for Family Child Care second edition. These two volumes provide an inclusive foundation for providers: What it means to be a professional; Why quality matters; The role of curriculum in family child care; The role of curricular objectives; Fundamental beliefs; How the curriculum is organized; Learning games; Imagining a typical day; and Getting started in the field of early child care (Dodge, Rudick, and Colker, 2009). Additional competencies and credentials include: Child Development Associate, Teaching Strategies GOLD inter-rater reliability, Program for Infant Toddler Care, Family Child Care Environmental Rating Scale-Revised, Level 1 ECE Credential, ECE Credential, Infant Toddler Credential, Illinois Director Credential, Level 1 School-Age and Youth Development Credential, Early Intervention (IDHS), National Association for Family Child Care accreditation, Classroom Assessment Scoring System inter-rater reliability, and early childhood certificates issued by Illinois State Board of Education. To further enhance the development of competencies, providers can receive and provide trainings on the Quality Counts-Quality Rating System and the Business Administration Scale (Council for Professional Recognition, 2012; Dodge, D.T., Heroman, C., Colker, L.J., & Bickart, T. S., 2010; Gonzalez-Mena, 2002; Lally, Stewart, and Greenwald, 2009; Harms, Cryer, and Clifford, 2007; Illinois Action for Children, 2012; Illinois Gateways, 2012; Illinois Department of Human Services, 2012; Illinois Network of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies 2010a; Illinois Network of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies 2010b; Pianta, La Paro, and Hamre, 2008; Talan and Jorde-Bloom, 2009; and Chicago Public Schools; 2006). Through my experience in providing training opportunities to the family child care population, Bordin affirmations ring true. Low education requirements, long hours, low pay, and minimal state support create barriers for providers aspiring to achieve greatness. Most industrialized democracies have recognized the importance of creating a positive state for women and children through the provision of strong family support policies incorporating child care as a key social citizenship right. However attempts to create a legal right to child care in the United States through litigation have been largely unsuccessful and state constitutional provisions granting children the right to a public education have not been extended to early education and the right to child care (Polakow, 2007). Policy Response to the Situation I think we can close the ever widening achievement if we start earlier in the childs life. There is much research on the importance of brain development within the early childhood population and its importance in preparing children to enter a preschool environment and thus an elementary (public) school ready to learn and grow, become a productive citizen, and be competitive in a global economy. The field of education requires investigation, evaluation, and internalization about what we now know of the learning process. Researchers recognize learning is as complex and diverse as the human species. We can not teach everyone in the same way, nor can higher level thinking and learning occur in an environment of reward and punishment; like Pavlovs theory of Operant Conditioning. We now know cognition is not separate from emotion, and learning occurs best in an atmosphere of high challenge and low threat. Educators must attend to students brain development through fostering emotional and social needs by creating a classroom where trust, acceptance, respect, and caring are norms (Brown and Moffett, 1999). We know the brain is comprised of many regions performing specific functions. Within each of these brain areas are millions of neurons, or nerve cells, which send messages to each other across synapses. These trillions of nerve cells and synapses and the pathways they form make up the wiring of the brain. New synapses between cells are constantly being formed, while others are broken or pruned away. Pruning allows the brain to keep the connections that have a purpose; an over-pruning of these connections can occur when a child is deprived of normally expected experiences in the early years. This leaves the child struggling to do what should come more naturally (Hawley and Gunner, 2000). This struggling is exacerbated without a nurturing, supportive, educationally rigor learning environment for the child to flourish in. This research indicates proper stimulation, nurturing, and reinforcement helps a childs brain to develop and experience a sense of normalcy. Bordin et al. (2000) discussed the need for regulated structural indicators of quality and process indicators of quality. These indicators can assist license exempt child care providers in improving the quality of education the children in their care receive but providers need to be connected to a support system which can deliver and explain the implications for overall quality child development that assist children in growing and learning to their fullest potential. While parents, researches, and child care providers do not always agree on definitions of quality of care, there are several core elements of child care quality recognized as important to childrens development and these providers must embrace them. These indicators include provider education, a stimulating environment, and age-appropriate routines (Anderson et al., 2005). Research has noted some areas of the brain become less plastic or changeable when the pruning process is over. This has led to tremendous concern about providing what the brain needs to prune and organize itself correctly before the windows of opportunity close. Some of the windows have different time frames for mastery. For example, foreign language acquisition is best attempted prior to taking it at the graduate level, which is something I had to learn the hard way. Early experiences can determine how proficient a child becomes in language. This research revelation has the potential to enhance the current structure of how children are educated in the state of Illinois. Most stakeholders realize language and literacy are important foundational skills for reading and writing. This research can further enhance the statewide initiatives of the Illinois Early Learning Standards and the Chicago Public Schools system of early childhood development and programming. These two educational systems are important to align with; most children of color, who also represent a large number of impoverished children in the Chicago land area, attend programs connected to Illinois Early Learning Standards or Chicago Public Schools funding streams. According to website information, September 2006 numbers reflected 36,000 children were served by the Chicago Public Schools system of early care and education. The program options consisted of Preschool for All, Community Partnership-Preschool Subcontracting, Head Start Child Development Program, Child-Parent Centers (CPC), and Tuition-Based Preschool (Chicago Public Schools, 2005). In the state of Illinois, the entity currently challenged with enforcing license exempt standards is the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (IDCFS, 2007b). The Department of Children and Family Services is the state issuing agency of permits and licenses to day care providers who educate children in a center-based or a home setting. They are responsible for setting standards and licensing day care centers, homes, group homes and day care agencies in the state of Illinois. In July 2005, Illinois had 2,918 licensed day care centers; 10, 277 licensed day care homes; and 375 group day care homes with a combined capacity to serve more than 287,000 children. These large numbers represent a growing concern with the quality of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services standards. They have too many young lives at their disposal receiving substandard early care and education to continue to offer the minimum level of quality and education to our future (IDCFS, 2007a). The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services standards represent a minimum standard of care far behind other high-quality programs like Early Head Start and National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) accredited programs. Providers licensed by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services have a substandard level of requirements when compared these programs. In order to better understand Illinois standards of care and services to nationwide services, facts from the National Association for the Education of Young Children and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services websites are listed below (IDCFS, 2007a; IDCFS, 2007b; NAEYC, 2007a). Thirty-three states require a child-staff ratio for infants of four to one. Three states require a three to one ratio for infants and nine states require a child-staff ratio for toddlers of six to one; additionally some states require ratios of eight to one. Sixteen states require a child-staff ratio for four-year-olds of ten to one and twelve states require a child-staff ratio for five-year-olds of fifteen to one. Thirteen states do not regulate group size for infants and toddlers, sixteen states do not regulate group size for three and four year-olds and fifteen states do not regulate group size for five year-olds (DCFS

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