Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/addressing-center-size-a-village-of-interconnected-houses-for-very-large-centers/5011177/
When I visit child care centers in Canada or Scandinavia, I'm struck by how small and intimate they are. A typical child care center in Sweden in and around the city of Stockholm has one to four groups of 12-15 children each for a total of no more than 60 children.Meanwhile, many, many centers in the United States house well over 100 children. The largest child care management organizations have average licensed capacities between 135 and 193 children per center (Child Care Information Exchange, May/June 1996, p. 11).
The 50 largest centers in the United States house over 300 children each (Child Care Information Exchange, July/August 1992, p. 11), with the largest, the Central Learning Center in Memphis, Tennessee, having a capacity of 962! This is massive, to say the least.
Is there any evidence that larger is better, developmentally speaking? Or is there any evidence that the issue of size is benign, i.e., that overall size of center doesn't impact on quality child care? The evidence is sketchy and in some cases somewhat tangential. But I think it is powerfully indicative.
Smaller Centers Are Better, Developmentally Speaking
Over 20 years ago, Elizabeth Prescott and her colleagues ...