Post 10

"Early education (and care) is a good investment only if it is of high quality. poor care may do more harm than good especially for the most vulnerable children...conversely poor provision leads to worrying outcomes...What they leave out is is pretty troublesome...There is no mention of child happiness or physical wellbeing..." (Penn 43). I am curious to know if information on student experiences is so uncommon today as it was in 1981 when Batcher published her book. Are we giving student's the best education, including a starting place to develop social and emotional success? The charts would suggest not. ednewscolorado.org claims that "Colorado earned an overall grade of C, coming in at 35th, behind the U.S. average, on six key education indicators in Education Week’s annual state rankings...Colorado’s lowest mark came in the area of its commitment to the teaching profession, where the state achieved a D, ranking 42nd out of the 50 states...Colorado scored almost as poorly in the area of school finance, where it achieved a C-" (Mitchell). According to the man that I met outside the library gathering signatures for his petition Colorado is also 49th in the world for government funding. Clearly were not doing good enough. 
"The most important factors for ensuring quality are including good adult-child ratios, well-trained staff, and good pedagogic programmes" (43).
Teachers are beign overwhelmed by too many students in their classrooms and therefore may be less able to successfully focus on each child's needs. There is a lack of commitment to the job which causes me to wonder whether they cared about their student's success, and we came in 35 on "six key education indicators" (Mitchell). Penn mention NAEYC and DAP  which are guidelines for early education which I have found on the NAEYC website (and which is also in the book), and posted below.

12 Principles of Child Development and Learning

All areas of development and learning are important. Learning and development follow sequences. Development and learning proceed at varying rates. Development and learning result from an interaction of maturation and experience. Early experiences have profound effects on development and learning. Development proceeds toward greater complexity, self-regulation, and symbolic or representational capacities. Children develop best when they have secure relationships. Development and learning occur in and are influenced by multiple social and cul¬tural contexts. Children learn in a variety of ways. Play is an important vehicle for devel¬oping self-regulation and pro¬moting language, cognition, and social competence. Development and learning advance when children are challenged. Children’s experiences shape their motivation and approaches to learning. Creating a caring community of learners Teaching to enhance development and learning Planning curriculum to achieve important goals Assessing children's development and learning Establishing reciprocal relationships with families Merely providing guidelines does not necessarily mean that it will make a person a good teacher. I think there must be the motivation on the teachers' part to help students succeed. Unfortunately Colorado isn't quite cutting it from what I've gathered. As a future teacher of elementary or middle school, I would like to focus my argument on Social Emotional Learning and if schools need to make major changes in their curriculum and teaching standards.