NAEYC Accreditation

Submitted by Laura Shallow

At our last WCCAA Region 4 meeting, I was talking to another center administrator about NAEYC Accreditation. It seems to be one of the hot topics in our industry. In fact I think it was a hot topic 10 ½ years ago when I started in this field. The last figure I heard was that less than 8% of all centers in the United States are NAEYC Accredited and many of those are privately funded and/or non-profit centers and/or large chains. Privately funded centers often have the funding available to hire teachers with the higher degrees desired by NAEYC and large chain centers often have the ability to share knowledge and resources to help each of their centers prepare for and pass all the reporting and validation criteria. Those are disadvantages for me, a small, and in theory, for profit center with no large funding source or back up support. The process took me about 3 years from the first phone call to that day in November 2005 when the certificate arrived in the mail. Many times I wanted to stop the process either because I struggled to meet the high standards or financially I struggled to meet the higher costs associated with applying for Accreditation and maintaining the standards. In the end, however my staff and I are happy we chose to work for Accreditation based on several reasons:

1. Being able to market Shining Stars as Accredited has helped attract families to my center. Parents are more educated than ever on quality care and some that walk through my door already have heard of Accreditation. I hung a banner on my fence in late November stating that we achieved Accreditation and 10 families enrolled! While I can’t say exactly how much it is related (time of year was a factor also) I have queried those parents and they agreed that being Accredited did make their decision that much easier. For example, one family who came in January and enrolled for this fall said, “My mom, who is a school teacher saw that you were Accredited and told us what that meant and that you were a good place to go and that we should check you out first.”

2. The 5 star rating system in Wisconsin has had a set back due to a lack of funding, but I feel that it is not going away and will someday be the way in which childcare centers are marketed. According to the 5 star system, as it is proposed, Accredited centers will be awarded 10 points. That is 1/3rd of the points needed to reach top status and, for me, it actually does bring me to 5 stars.

3. All of us at Shining Stars have learned so much from going through the process. Definitely, every area of my operation became better. I always talk about how easy it is as a small center in a small town to be satisfied with what I am but this field is changing. Sometimes it seems it changes daily, and Accreditation has prepared me for those changes by getting me to put policies and processes into place, to analyze, and to stay aware of and react to those changes. It has done the same for my teachers. I have seen a definite change in every one of them. They are so proud of themselves and the center. I have had the opportunity to hear them talk to others and I see a physical change (they stand tall, show enthusiasm through their actions and voice and their faces brighten) and an emotional change (support for each other and the center, less turnover, more willingness to now try even more new things, and they are showing more confidence in me). For me it has been a cycle: agree to adhere to NAEYC’s standards which requires higher educated teachers which requires me to pay them higher wages which in turn leads to higher moral and job satisfaction for those teachers which results in lower turnover. This circle of thinking can be applied to every one of the over 400 criteria. The hard work is rewarded in the end.

4. Once I became Accredited the word spread and many in the field, my peers, licensing, R & R and other agencies heard and congratulations poured in. That feels great! At times I was alone in this journey. I sat at my desk, filling out piles of paperwork, but I had great support along the way. You truly are not alone. Here is a sampling of the variety of ways in which I received help:
   a. Jayne Baumgart from CESA was inspirational and actually pulled together a collaboration to go through Accreditation as a team with my school district and all the childcare centers within that district.
   b. Beryl Anders was a huge resource and shoulder to cry on. As a teacher at her center I helped her through Accreditation and she repaid the favor tenfold with emotional and technical support.
   c. Encompass allowed two of their Directors from their Accredited centers to come out to my center and do a mock validation visit. Their input was invaluable.
   d. I was able to take advantage of the Centers for Excellence Program and grants from Mary Motquin at the Oneida Center for Self-sufficiency, to make changes to my Infant/Toddler room and playground and get in some continuing education to align my center with Accreditation standards.

5. Last and most important is that caring for children is challenging. At my center I have children enrolled who, at 4 years old are in counseling, children who are not in counseling but should be, children struggling with ADHD and Autism who spend part of their week in other Early Childhood programs, children with physical challenges like hearing loss and severe asthma, and children struggling with peer pressure, school pressure and parental pressure. Accreditation has helped me to plan for and work with all types of families, children and staff so that I do what is best for everyone that I encounter.

I would love to hear your opinions. I would love to print your comments and answer your questions, to the best of my ability, in future newsletters. For those of you already Accredited, did I do you justice? This is a big subject with many points of contention. I tried to hit my main points, but there are many more pros I could have addressed. Would you like to see this subject added to our conference? Email me at Shiningstar160@hotmail.com or the organization through the website or better yet write an opinion paper for the July Newsletter.