A Call for Excellence in Early Childhood Education

Each April, child care providers across the country rally together to ask the community to celebrate the young child and recognize high quality early experiences that make a difference in children’s lifelong academic and social success.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, April 3 from 11:00am-1:00pm, Indiana child care providers, advocates and organizations will declare April as the Month of the Young Child. The rally will celebrate providers who have moved up a level on Indiana’s Paths to QUALITY rating scale as well as recognize legislators who champion policy to support Indiana children and their families.

The rally will take place in the North Atrium (Ohio Street side) of the Indiana Statehouse Rotunda.  Please join the

Please join the Indiana Association for the Education of Young Children in the call for excellence in early childhood education .

Day Nursery in the news

Thanks to the recent Day Nursery Auxiliary fashion show, a donation to The Children’s Museum and today’s statewide rollout of the Paths to Quality child care rating system signage at child care centers, Day Nursery has had a few great opportunities to share our story in the news recently.  As you might have read here earlier, last Wednesday I was on Fox59 with our Style Show commentator (and Day Nursery graduate) Danielle Smith and models from The Helen Wells Agency promoting our fashion show. 

While we were live on Fox 59, children from the Day Nursery Northwest Center were heading to The Children’s Museum for a field trip compliments of PNC.  The financial institution was announcing a three-year donation to the museum to improve the popular  Playscapes area and wanted to make sure they had a full house of preschoolers to celebrate the announcement.  Although there was not a picture of our children in the story which appeared on Indystar.com, three of the four children pictured in the print version of the newspaper (see at left) were identified as Day Nursery students.

Yesterday, Day Nursery Executive Director Carolyn Dederer was interviewed by WRTV6 (ABC) reporter Myrt Price at our Indiana State Government Center because Day Nursery centers are participating the new voluntary statewide quality rating system, Paths to Quality.

If you missed the news story, you can watch it here.

This morning, the staff of Child Care Answers, the community outreach arm of Day Nursery, hosted one of 11 simultaneous press conferences across our state to announce the latest rollout of Indiana’s statewide child care quality rating system Paths to QUALITY.  Fox 59 covered the press conference so look for the story on their news tonight.   Day Nursery is very excited that six of our seven child care centers have been named Paths to Quality Level 4 (the highest level!) centers.  Our seventh center, the Day Nursery located on 3522 N. Central is a Level 3 and we anticipate it moving up to Level 4 when the center achieves national accreditation through NAEYC.  We are excited about this statewide push for quality child care and look forward to attracting more students because of our high ratings.

Day Nursery Clarian Center Directors Jesse McCloud (left) and Rene Withers show off their new Paths to Quality Level 4 banner.

(L to R) Marsha Thompson, IACCRRA; Mindy Bennett, Child Care Answers and Melanie Brizzi, Indiana Bureau of Child Care

Mindy Bennett Child Care Answers was interviewed by Fox 59

Douglas S. Hairston of the City of Indianapolis Front Porch Alliance is interviewed by the Paths to Quality video crew for future promotional materials.

Indiana’s Early Education Advocates get update from NAEYC

Carolyn Dederer

Today’s post is written by Carolyn Dederer, Executive Director of the Day Nursery Association of Indianapolis.

Jerlean E. Daniel, Ph. D.

Last week I attended the Indiana Association for the Education of Young Children’s semi-annual Public Policy Academy along with early education advocates from all over Indiana.  We met courtesy of the wonders of webinar teleconferencing and our guest speaker was Jerlean E. Daniel, Ph.D, newly appointed Executive Director of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).  Dr. Daniel speaking from Alexandria, Va, reported NAEYC’s standards for programs and professional development have been aligned with its policy stances in order to lead to improvements in children’s development and learning.

 

Here in Indiana, the new Paths to Quality initiative is using these standards to measure individual programs.  Did you know that 1,901 or 51.9% of eligible providers are already enrolled?  To date, 148 of these programs have achieved a “4”, the highest, NAEYC accredited level.  The others are diligently working their way up the scale.  Benchmarks include health and safety standards, classroom learning environments, and planned curriculum.