 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
Making
It Count: Setting Standards for National Programs
Perhaps
you are working on developing a system for measuring outcomes in your
own programs. But you may also be part of a larger local, statewide,
or national program that requires you to report on outcomes that have
been established for you. While it may seem overwhelming to
have to answer to funding agencies while you're wrestling with your
own outcome measurement needs, it may be reassuring to know that national
early care and education experts are also grappling with how to set
outcomes for statewide or national early care and education programs,
and that the process they are using to choose outcomes is not all
that different from your own. In
the fall of 1999 and the winter of 2000, the National Academy of Science's
Board on Children, Youth, and Families convened two workshops of national
early care and education experts to learn from existing efforts to
develop performance measures for early care and education, and to
consider what would be involved in developing and implementing an
effective performance measurement system for the field.
As we have discussed in earlier issues of Making it Count, when designing an outcome measurement system and determining which outcomes you want to measure, it is important to include all of your program's stakeholders in the process. In determining statewide or national performance measures, the workshop participants agreed that setting the expectations for early care and education requires input from a broad range of groups, including parents, providers, researchers, early childhood experts, and community representatives. Once performance measures have been selected and agreed upon, the next step is to develop or select data collection instruments that are: valid; reliable; able to address the full range of early learning and development; and sensitive to the cultural diversity in child care (in terms of children's unique needs, their cultural and ethnic background, and the values their families seek in a child care setting.) Because the policy environment can change, participants cautioned that it is critical to design flexible and responsive systems of performance measurement. This is true for individual programs as well - just as children develop, so do your programs. An outcome measurement system needs to be responsive changes in the program. Finally,
as Making it Count has urged before, in developing an outcome
measurement system, you should tap into the resources of those who
have come before you. While workshop participants suggest that we
can learn from experiences with performance measures in other domains
of public policy, individual programs can learn from other programs
that are already measuring outcomes. While the solutions might
not be directly applicable to your program, the challenges they
face may be similar. (Source: Getting Positive Outcomes for Children
in Child Care: A Summary of Two Workshops, National Research
Council and Institute of Medicine, 2001.) For
more information, contact: National Academy Press, 2101 Constitution
Avenue N.W., Lock Box 285, Washington, D.C. 20055, call (800) 624-6242,
or go on-line at http://www.nap.edu.
A Special Issue of Facts in Action — Over the past year, Facts in Action published a series of articles designed to take you step-by-step through the process of measuring outcomes in your program or family child care home. This series of articles has been repackaged into a special issue of the Facts in Action newsletter and is now available for only $2.00 per copy. If you would like to order this special issue of Facts in Action, please contact: Erika Argersinger Facts in Action, February 2002 |
|
