The Perils of Accreditation1
By: Judy Harris Helm

Supporting Quality Early Childhood Experiences
There are major problems with how early care and education is provided for the majority of children in Illinois. These problems include an inadequate salary for child care staff, high staff turnover, and limited training. A focus and reliance on accreditation as a means of achieving quality puts the responsibility on the center and the center's staff, yet the issues go beyond the walls of the center to the community. How our youngest children will be nurtured, cared for, and educated are issues that need to be addressed by the community as a whole.

Lack of Infrastructure for Quality
Gallagher and Clifford (2000) of the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center at the University of North Carolina conclude that current programs for children outside the home lack a comprehensive infrastructure or support system to stand behind the delivery of services to the child and family. The term infrastructure, a substructure or underlying foundation, is especially appropriate because it invites comparison to the other ways that we support and maintain installations and institutions that support communities. There is a vast infrastructure that supports the quality of health care, another that supports schools. But the majority of providers of early childhood programs are on their own and have minimal assistance. It is also worth noting that many of the programs in downstate Illinois that do achieve accreditation are public funded programs such as public school preschool programs, Head Start, and laboratory schools. These programs access the infrastructure of the host school system, university, or a national organization. Yet in Peoria, for example, less than one fourth of the children are in such programs.

Accreditation is an efficient way to work toward and recognize quality in early childhood programs. It provides a yardstick to measure quality and a way to set goals. For those programs with an infrastructure that enables them to keep well-trained staff, to provide adequate preparation time, to maintain data systems, and to coordinate support services, accreditation can be a quality enhancement. It is effective and works well. But for those programs that do not have the infrastructure, without changes in that infrastructure, the process may be overwhelming and discouraging. As I talk to directors and teachers I find that the decision not to pursue accreditation is based on a lack of time, a reluctance to begin a labor-intensive process, and a lack of resources to correct concerns.

In many places around the country, a variety of approaches have been taken to help centers interested in the accreditation process to get the work done. This assistance can take the form of providing mentors from accredited programs, offering support groups, supplying onsite consultation and financial incentives. Many of these approaches, such as the one taken by the Chicago Accreditation Project, have been very successful. The most effective accreditation-support projects provide not just help with the paperwork but also help with concerns identified through the self-study process such as inadequate playground equipment and lack of training in specific areas. These projects are providing what the infrastructure lacks in connection with other professionals, help with data collection, and financial support for quality.

Still, recruitment to these projects can be a challenge. One of the reasons may be that centers and directors of early childhood programs without public support see these accreditation projects as short-term help, a boost but not an answer. They may fear that the self-study could reveal concerns that they do not have the resources to correct. They may fear that support, while there for the accreditation process, will not be there for the long haul. Many early childhood programs today are struggling just to meet minimal requirements such as hiring enough staff to meet child-to-staff ratio requirements and health and safety needs. In programs that provide full daycare there is little opportunity for reflection. As a consequence, there is little time for gathering data, discussing quality, and working on improvements.

Providing support for the accreditation process, while a step in the right direction, can give us the dangerous feeling that we are doing something about the infrastructure problems when we are not. Accreditation can be a measure, a sign of the health of a community's early childhood system. Like a thermometer measures body temperature, the accreditation system can tell us a great deal about early childhood education in our community: who becomes accredited, what concerns are revealed in self-studies and who doesn't even try. However, just as an aspirin can reduce the numbers on the thermometer and give a false sense of improvement, so can accreditation of centers give us a false feeling that we are doing something about the support systems necessary for quality care. Changes that produce quality need to be changes in the infrastructure. These changes require deep thought, collaboration, and commitment of the community - not just the center. When this community-wide commitment happens, accreditation will be easy, inviting, and productive.

1 Reprinted from the Spring/Summer 2000 issue of Continuance. Continuance is produced by the Intergenerational Initiative at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Reproduction rights granted.