Policy and Procedures, are they mandated and who is accountable?

My chosen topic for the simulation is "Policy and Procedures, are they are mandated and who is  accountable?"  I chose this topic because throughout the years I have worked in Head Start, I have seen and developed policies to incorporate the state licensing rules and the head start performance standards.  It is a very difficult task to produce new policies.  However, my decision to chose this topic is to incorporate all childcare centers to follow the same guidelines for policy and procedures.  This is one way to make sure all children can receive developmentally appropriate education.  Then there is accountability, who should be accountable, should the teachers, parents, administrator or the policy makers.  Although I was involved in making procedures, the policies and procedures were not valuable to changes because no one was held accountable for not following them.

I have learned so far that when you are constructing a research, you have to take in account about the topic chosen and being able to answer questions like these:

·         Is the topic to broad?

·         How can you break it in to three subtopics?

·         Are the subtopics related to specific research you want to produce?

I did do some research on the Early childhood Policy and procedures. I came up with a website that brought great interest to me is that how the different states have different policies and procedures. They are developed by the states therefore there are many policies that are mandated by some states but not others. How can we get it the same policies and procedures mandated by all? That is my main concern.  In the article I read it stated:

"Compelling research supports the lifelong

importance of early childhood development, and hard

economic evidence shows that smart investments in early

childhood yield long-term gains. The research is clear,

and yet many state policies ignore what we know about

healthy early childhood development."

(Knitzer & Stebbins, 2007)

That statement alone made me want to know how or can we make policy and procedures the same for all states to provide vital learning for all preschool children.

I broke my topic of policy and procedures into three subtopics and that is:

1.      How can the same policy and procedures go nationwide for all Early childhood Centers?

2.      Who is accountable for not meeting the policies?

3.      How to align procedures with policies at early childhood centers?

My questions to my colleagues.

Which sup topic would be the best to use for research?

Do you have any websites that can provide some information on the sub topic that you chose for me?

Resource:

Kintzer,J., & Stebbins, H. (2007, June). State Early Childhood Policies. Retreived from NCCP, National Center for Children in Poverty website:http://www.nccp.org/publications/pdf/text_725.pdf