Charter ed for the early childhood workforce: A recipe for disaster
Blog by Susan Ochshorn/Huffington Post
Last month, amid a flurry of natural disasters, the Brookings Institution and Rockefeller Foundation dumped a dangerous proposal on the overworked, underpaid, unrespected early childhood workforce. In "Beyond Bachelor's: The Case for Charter Colleges of Early Childhood Education," Sara Mead and Kevin Carey bring the K-12 charter school movement right on down to the earliest years of education. At the heart of their concept is a simple bargain: increased flexibility in exchange for increased accountability to deliver results. A Faustian bargain, to be sure. The early childhood workforce, as I've often noted, in this space and elsewhere, is a highly challenged species. Qualifications are all over the map across states and settings (that means Head Start, child care, and state pre-K). (more...)