The Screening and Planning Guide for Inclusive Early Care and Education, Version 3 has been revised to provide community early care and education professionals with the necessary tools to enhance their program’s quality and accessibility for all children, ages birth through five. This guide, nicknamed the Tool, was developed by The University of Maine Center for Community Inclusion and Disability Studies (CCI) with funding from the Maine Department of Education, the Maine Developmental Disabilities Council, the Maine Department of Human Services Office of Child Care and Head Start, and the ACCESS/CITE Cumberland County Early Learning Opportunities Grant.
The authors hope that educators will use the Tool to screen, plan, and guide the development of educational practice designed to support the learning of all children, including children with disabilities, from mild to significant, as well as children with diverse cultural, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. (Please note that the designers of this Tool made a conscious decision to use the language "children with and without disabilities" to ensure the meaning is clear that in referring to all children we are considering children with the full range of abilities.) The Tool can be used in a variety of inclusive community settings including nursery school programs, childcare centers, family childcare homes, public school programs, and Head Start programs.
Version 3 includes a screening instrument organized into six subsections, Outdoor Environment, Indoor Environment, Curriculum Design, Teaching Practices, Families, and Administration. To develop a deeper awareness that quality can not be achieved without addressing both program practices and access standards, statements in each subsection are designated as reflecting either program practices or accessibility. Each section includes a score sheet and graph for the screening instrument, which visually illustrates the program’s placement on the quality continuum examining program practices and access. The Tool can be completed within 2-3 hours, and results can provide the basis for collaborative team discussions about how to enhance early care and education experiences for all children.
Also included in this Tool is a summary report and action plan section designed to support collaborative planning among the consultant, program staff and other stakeholders identified by program administration. The consultant and the early care and education program professional(s) can use these forms to identify program goals, objectives, personal responsibility, timelines, and evaluation procedures.
A health and safety section is not included in this Tool. It is our belief this subject is too important to be covered in a screening tool and needs more comprehensive review. Children’s well-being, the support and supervision they receive, the care and attention to injury prevention, environmental hazards, preparation for emergencies, serving nutritious foods, administering medications, and reducing the spread of disease and illness are essential components in the care and education of young children. These standards are cornerstones to quality care and warrant careful review and assessment on an ongoing basis. As part of the protocol for using The Tool, providers will be asked about their licensing status and current health and safety practices. It is highly recommended that programs regularly participate in a self-evaluation and/or self-study using tools such as the ones listed in the Health and Safety Standards and Resources section in the Appendices.
Another essential cornerstone of high quality early care and education for young children is that of relationships and community building. Social relationships, fostering a sense of belonging, feeling valued and respected, and being a part of a learning community provide the context for all development and learning and set the emotional climate of an entire program. Our belief that attention to this aspect of program quality is critical, resulted in our taking particular care to embed statements having to do with this important area into all six sections of the tool.
Programs that wish to more thoroughly evaluate their early care and education settings may choose to use this instrument in combination with other assessment tools designed to evaluate early childhood environments or as an added component of their program accreditation process. The Child Development Services (CDS) sites are involved as active collaborators and are currently evaluating how they might use the Tool to develop, evaluate, and monitor early care and education programs that contract with, or wish to contract with, CDS for developmental therapy. CCI is also currently working with other partners to identify how The Tool can more systemically align itself with both national and state level accreditation / quality improvement efforts.
To ensure the validity of the content, and the reliability of the data collected, a structured field test of the Tool is underway. In January, 2003 the CCI research team staff and fifteen early childhood professionals from Child Development Services sites and community early care and education programs were trained to use the tool and participate in the field test. Currently these professionals are using the tool in the field statewide. Data from the field test will be analyzed this summer.
The Screening and Planning Guide for Inclusive Early Care and Education, Version 3 is the next stage in the development of a tool that was originally created with the involvement of a diverse group of early care and education providers over a three year period. Initial partners in the design of the tool were the staff from The University of Maine’s Center for Community Inclusion and Disability Studies, the staff from seven CDS regional sites, and the director of the Child Development Services State Office within the Maine Department of Education. All three versions of the Tool also involved community early care and education collaborators who directly participated in the on-site testing of the instrument as well as a review of the content and format.
In developing the content, an extensive review of the literature and quality standards was done. To ensure that this tool was aligned with and built upon existing, nationally recognized, early care and education standards, the following accreditation materials were reviewed; Accreditation Standards of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), Accreditation Standards of the National Association of Family Child Care (NAFCC), Accreditation Standards of the National School age Care Alliance (NSACA) and the Head Start Performance Standards. Additionally, the recommended standards for early intervention / early childhood special education developed by The Division of Early Childhood (DEC) of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) and entitled DEC Recommended Practices in Early Intervention/ Early Childhood Special Education were reviewed. Other resources and materials used to guide the development of this instrument can be found in the bibliography.
Using evaluations of prior versions of this tool, field test results, and new research regarding high quality early care and education, as well as incorporating new educational concepts such as universal design, the Screening and Planning Guide Version 3 was significantly altered. Three major objectives that guided the development of revisions to this Tool were to:
The Screening and Planning Guide for Inclusive Early Care and Education, Version 3 focuses on identifying quality in practice standards AND quality of access to physical, social, and learning environments for all children. The intent of this tool is to provide a way for programs to “raise the bar” on quality. For more information please contact:
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The Center for Community Inclusion and Disability Studies: Maine's UCEDD |
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This is an official publication of The University of
Maine
A member of the University of Maine System
Updated: 01/11/2007