Single Set Of National Standards For Preschools

One issue being debated in preschool education currently is whether there should be a single set of national standards for preschoolers. A proposed way of doing this involves expanding Common Core, which delineates the standards that students in each grade of K-12 should be able to meet, down to a preschool level. These standards aim to provide a framework by which teachers should teach students skills necessary for future education. However, opponents of this state that a single curriculum could be too restrictive when applied at a national level. Therefore, it would be more beneficial to allow preschools the freedom to develop curriculums according to the needs of their students; in order to ensure that these preschools are high-quality,

In America, the median salary for a preschool teacher is $28, 570, far less than the median kindergarten teacher’s salary of $54,550 or the median high school teacher’s salary of $57,200. Obviously, this is not a salary that would influence many future teachers to become preschool teachers, especially considering the amount of work that goes into prepping materials and lesson planning for young children. However, it is important that preschoolers receive high-quality education. For example, studies have shown that low-income children need high quality preschool in order to close the achievement gap between low-income and more affluent children. Without high quality education, the affluent children will continue to enter kindergarten more prepared than low-income students on average, because they are statistically talked to, read to??, more than their low-income peers. Therefore, reaching the goal set forth by Common Core to equal the playing fields between schools may be attainable through making preschool jobs more attractive, so that high quality teachers will want to take

Some may oppose these ideas because they do not support increasing government spending. This is becoming increasingly relevant with regards to federal spending, as the current administration is seeking to cut out a lot of the federal spending on education in order to transfer power back to the states. Additionally, many people support Common Core and other standardized measures because they (thereotically) provide an equal playing field for all students. These people may oppose my plans because they do not ensure that all students will get the same education—in fact, they do just the opposite. However, in order to persuade those who would not support my ideas, I would seek to emphasize the importance of preschool and the success of many different types of preschool programs. In accordance to this, my supporters would likely be those who do view preschool as important or value different types of intelligence. Someone who believes that preschool is important would most likely agree with raising teachers’ wages because we tend to think that those who hold valuable jobs should be paid more. Additoinally, valuing multiple intelligences would mean that one may endorse the idea that preschools should not be held to strict standards because different students could benefit from different types of