Family Engagement and Early Childhood Education

I recently read an article for a professional development college class I'm taking on authentic assessment and found it interesting. I wanted to share it, because my goal for the upcoming year is to incorporate a lot more authentic assessment into my preschool program. I'm hoping to strengthen my partnership between parents, and families to increase the awareness of children's developments in social, language, motor skills, and cognitive development. Below is a summary of the article.

“Family Engagement and Early
Childhood Education” by Kyle Snow, Ph.D

This article did some recent studies to find out the importance of family involvement in early education experiences. They used studies to show two waves of data from the year 1993 and the year 2007. The study showed that the degree to which parental expectations for what children need to enter school have changed over time, but the frequency of specific family activities that contribute to children’s readiness were lower or unchanged between the years. The findings showed that the children had greater skills (e.g. identifying colors, recognizing letters, counting beyond 20, writing their name, reading written words, and reading storybooks) than the children in 1993. With little change in support from home and family, the author suggests the change comes from children attending early childhood programs. This in turn demands programs to have greater accountability in assessing the children and informing the families about the children’s progress and growth. Because meaningful family engagement in children’s early learning supports school readiness and later academic success, parental involvement is critical to a child’s education. An analysis of NAEYC data revealed that bringing families into the assessment process is among the hardest criteria for programs to meet. Development and learning are strongly reinforced and family involvement is inspired when a child’s progress can be tied to classroom and home activities. Teachers need to use best assessment practices and work with parents in a partnership to share strengths and work on areas of potential concern for the child. Children benefit from authentic assessments in early childhood programs and increased family engagement.