Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/child-care-and-early-education-no-just-about-it/5010595/
"We are not just day care," sniffed the director to the prospective parent. "Can you not see by our sign that we are a child development program, a preschool?""We are, of course, not child care," huffed the Head Start administrator. "We have a higher calling. We are Head Start. We teach the children."
"We are an all day Montessori program, not child care," firmly explained the Montessori teacher.
In the February 1989 issue of Child Care Information Exchange, I wrote a column on the unfortunate distinction between child care and early education ("Is Everybody Singing Our Song? Child Care and Early Education"). It was written in those heady days when early education and child care was finally on the national agenda and there was talk of actually increasing funding.
Times are different now, and the competition is likely to be for shrinking funds. But the message on the ill used distinction between child care and early education is still appropriate.
The "just day care" label is still alive as an epithet to be applied to other programs. The two important studies that brought into the open the poor quality of many existing child ...