Statement of Grievances

EEAL was created by a group of like minded individuals that grew increasingly dissatisfied with NAEYC. Instead of sitting back and complaining, we took action and became involved with a local AEYC affiliate. Despite our best efforts and active participation, we felt powerless as decisions were made that did not seem to take into account the best interests of children and the professionals that care for them. We spent many years "fighting the good fight" and encouraging our collegaues to hang in there. In early 2012 we decided that we were done playing nice and we drafted a formal letter to NAEYC stating our grievances. When we did not hear back from them for several months, EEAL was born. Check out our Statement of Grievances and let me know what you think.

Statement of Grievances

By the Board of the Beach Cities Association for the Education of Young Children (BCAEYC)

April 25, 2012

After much deliberation, the Board of BCAEYC has determined that it is in the best interest of the profession and the members of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) for the Board of BCAEYC to publicly state our grievances with NAEYC.

This Statement is made without malice, in the hopes that NAEYC will survey its membership and consider the opinions of the membership in regard to a number of significant matters of concern and appropriately address these concerns.

NAEYC, having failed to this point to appropriately address such matters has compromised the integrity of the association and its members.  The Board of BCAEYC is therefore committed to making these concerns public and is hereby requesting that NAEYC respond in kind.

A Brief History:

NAEYC has a wonderful history of being a professional association that was driven by ECE practitioners and was responsive to the needs and input of the membership.  This value system resulted in an association that once proudly counted more than 100,000 members worldwide.  The association, through no fault of its own, has seen these numbers fall as the Economic Crisis has rippled across the country.  However, we believe that NAEYC has contributed to this loss of support by way of some misguided actions and policies.  NAEYC is not alone in this trend.  Programs and Initiatives across the country, in their efforts to secure funding and political support, have endured “vision drift”.  The Board of BCAEYC has determined that it will not acquiesce to vision drift and will hold both the association leadership and its membership responsible.

In addition, NAEYC has engaged in a number of decisions that indicate its intent to move away from the grass-roots culture of an association driven by the needs and input of its membership in favor of a corporate and institutional culture.  It has made important decisions without adequate consideration of the capacity, needs, and input of the members and member-affiliates.  Such decisions include but are not limited to:

·         Re-affiliation

·         Accreditation

·         Position Statement on Technology and Young Children

Vision Drift:

Like the more commonly discussed “mission drift” in which an agency or association alters its mission in an effort to secure support and funding – NAEYC has suffered “vision drift”.  The young child and the ECE professional were once central to the vision of NAEYC.  Below is NAEYC’s Vision Statement.

Vision Statement

NAEYC's efforts are designed to achieve these ends:

• All children have access to a safe and accessible, high quality early childhood education that includes a developmentally appropriate curriculum; knowledgeable and well-trained program staff and educators; and comprehensive services that support their health, nutrition, and social well-being, in an environment that respects and supports diversity.
• All early childhood professionals are supported as professionals with a career ladder, ongoing professional development opportunities, and compensation that attracts and retains high quality educators.
• All families have access to early childhood education programs that are affordable and of high quality and actively participate in their children's education as respected reciprocal partners.
• All communities, states, and the nation work together to ensure accountable systems of high-quality early childhood education for all children.

The Board of BCAEYC believes strongly that NAEYC has lost sight of this stated vision in a number of ways:

·         Developmentally Appropriate Curriculum:  We believe that the new Position Statement on Technology and Young Children contradicts best practice as suggested by many of NAEYC’s member leaders.  In addition, highly respected entities such as the Academy of American Pediatrics oppose screen time for children under two years of age.  The Board of BCAEYC submitted a letter of opposition to this newly revised position statement during the period in which public feedback was invited.  We have received absolutely no response to our concerns from anyone at NAEYC.  At the same time, we have received a significant amount of feedback from other members and colleagues in support of our opposition.  We have received virtually no feedback requesting that we withdraw our opposition.

·         Developmentally Appropriate Curriculum:  The NAEYC Accreditation All Criteria Document, 2012, consists of 86 pages of measures.  The very volume of these measures has resulted in an oppressive amount of work and reflection that is required of a program.  This labor intensive effort often times effectively acts to reduce the developmentally appropriate practice of a program as it drains the attention and energy of candidate program staff away from the children.  This phenomenon is also seen in State and Federally-funded programs and the membership of NAEYC has long been critical of this unintended consequence.  However, instead of streamlining Accreditation in response to such concerns, NAEYC has redoubled the complication of Accreditation – adding expense and increased time commitments once dedicated to the children.  This notion of adding quality by subtracting resources is driven by those that have lost touch with direct services for children and their families.

·         Supports Diversity:  Criteria 6.A.05a calls for at least 75% of teachers to have a minimum of a baccalaureate degree or equivalent by 2020.  Whitebook, et al, 2006, identified that teacher language and cultural diversity in inversely related to educational attainment.  In other words, it becomes increasingly unlikely that an NAEYC Accredited program can support the linguistic and cultural diversity of the community which it serves.  Whitebook et al, 2006, also discovered that highly qualified teachers were well-represented in private programs – yet this group least reflected the cultural and linguistic demographics of California.  This would seem to indicate that accredited programs are more common to affluent communities than to communities at risk.

·         High Quality:  As indicated above, Accreditation requirements may have the unintended consequence of reducing the cultural and linguistic diversity of a program.  However, the presence of teachers that reflect the language and culture of a community is an indicator of quality (Kagan, S, 2009)

·         Support as professionals with a career ladder…ongoing professional development opportunities…:  NAEYC has, through its insistence that California AEYC, dismantle its highly successful State-Section-Chapter model in favor of a State Affiliate-Local Affiliate model, reduced the opportunities for ongoing professional development.  The Section structure in California was an important step in developing leadership.  Since the Section model was discarded, it has been increasingly difficult to find leaders that are interested in making the leap from a leadership position at the local level to a State leadership role. 

·         Supports Diversity/Support as professionals with a career ladder…ongoing professional development opportunities…:   NAEYC’s decision to charge registration fees to presenters at the National Conference has likewise reduced professional development opportunities for its members.  Where innovative, emerging leaders in ECE once submitted workshop proposals to NAEYC in the hopes of having their conference experience partially “subsidized” by a complementary registration – today’s conferences are dominated by sessions by seasoned and well positioned leaders, those employed by well-funded programs, or those with services or products to sell.   The diversity of the real world ECE delivery system is silenced by this current practice.  The sole criteria for workshop proposals needs to be the content of the workshop – and not the ability of the presenter to afford the trip.

Note:  These are significant compromises to the vision of NAEYC and as such must be examined seriously rather than being dismissed as a matter of nuisance by a renegade Affiliate Board.  The Board of BCAEYC is a high quality, diverse, dedicated group of leaders that represents a cross-section of the ECE delivery system and includes representatives from colleges, family child care, private programs, state-funded programs, consultants, and ECE students.

Customer Service:  As mentioned before, the history of AEYC is that of a membership driven, grass-roots association.  Affiliate leadership was, and is, an act of volunteerism and dedication.   When the National Office fails to provide the necessary and expected quality of support, it strains the nature of the National-Local Affiliate relationship.  BCAEYC has experienced a number of customer service challenges.

·         NAEYC has made repeated requests of our Treasurer to submit the same documents for electronic deposit of monies to our Affiliate account.

·         NAEYC has misplaced paperwork submitted by BCAEYC related to educational awards.

·         NAEYC has failed to respond to our letter in opposition to the Technology and Young Children position statement with any invitation for dialogue.

·         NAEYC has increased the Affiliate share of expenses for insurance, etc, without increasing the quality of its customer service.

·         NAEYC has failed to respond to repeated calls from the field to address the onerous nature of Accreditation with any invitation for true and meaningful dialogue.

These failures contributed directly to BCAEYC Board members making the deliberate decision to decline NAEYC’s recent invitation for a dialogue in Santa Monica.  Given its history, this invitation appeared to be disingenuous. 

BCAEYC has committed its energies this upcoming year to holding NAEYC accountable to its membership.  We will continue to advocate and encourage our colleagues to do the same.  We not only look forward to your response – we expect a well-considered response that invites greater collaboration between the National and the local affiliates.

This day, April 25, 2012, the members of the Board of BCAEYC,

Stacey Smith-Clark

Michelle Moen

Linh Terry

Angela Beck

Gregory Uba

Catherine Scott

Jenn Palma

Jessica Cardenas

Jocelyn Tucker

Lindsey Evans

Carol Minami

Lori Davidson

Serena Sun

Morma  Arambula

Ronnie Silverstone

Sources:

Kagan, Sharon L, 2009, American Early Childhood Education: Preventing or Perpetuating Inequity?

NAEYC, 2012, All Criteria Document

Whitebook, M. et al, 2006, California Early Care and Education Workforce Study, 2006