In the
pod cast Dr. Vasquez describes the effects of certain issues that effects
excellence and the equity of care and education for children and families. Dr.
Vasquez explains the adverse effects of achievement gaps, school readiness,
standards and assessments and gives both positive and negative aspects of each
one and the effect they have on children. She describes how much of the focus
has been taken off what best for the children and placed more on the academic
aspect of learning. She describes how each topic is directly related to the
other and that these issues are not new and what can be done to improve them.
She also states the demands that are being placed on academics are causing a
much wider achievement gap and we are not giving children the tools they need
to be successful. She reminds us that our first commitment is to the children
not to fix them but to work with them. It is extremely important to know the
children we work with and build positive relationships in order to know the
right thing to do for them.
In Zambian, to address the knowledge gap the Zambian Early Childhood Development Project (ZECDP) was
launch in 2009 by the Zambian Ministry of Education, the Examination Council of
Zambia, UNICEF, the University of Zambia, and the Center on the Developing
Child at Harvard University to measure effects of an ongoing anti-malaria
initiative on child development. They combine existing measures with newly
develop measures for preschool age children that provide a broad assessment in
the Zambian context. The goal of the project is to improve what we understand
about child development as well as
Un Buen Comienzo (UBC), “A
Good Start,” is a collaborative project in Santiago, Chile, to improve early
childhood education through teacher professional development. The idea is to
improve the quality of educational offerings for four-to-six-year-olds,
particularly in the area of language development. This project is also designed
to intervene in critical health areas that improve school attendance as well as
socioemotional development, and it seeks to involve the children's families in
their education. UBC also incorporates a comprehensive evaluation: a
cluster-randomized experiment in all 60 schools. This type of longitudinal
evaluation in early education has not been carried out in any other country in
Latin America and will place Chile at the forefront of demonstrating the impact
of a high-quality early education.
When humanitarian crises hit around the world, nongovernmental organizations rush into the fray, intensively focused on urgent survival needs, not necessarily on longer-term impacts that may take an even greater toll on the country and its citizens. Theresa Betancourt, a Center-affiliated faculty member who studies children in adversity and has worked alongside NGOs, wants to help them see that farther horizon: Combining short-term survival efforts with attention to children’s developmental needs only magnifies the long-range benefits for individuals and societies. Betancourt, who is currently studying both former child soldiers in Sierra Leone and children whose parents have HIV/AIDS in Rwanda, says that one reason NGOs may not have incorporated the latest thinking into what they are doing is that there just haven’t been enough studies done on global child mental health. “I can’t change that NGOs work on very tight timelines and are underfunded,” says Betancourt. “But what I can change is having research that’s more oriented towards addressing some of the key questions that they need to understand and then being good at being in those circles, so that we can translate that evidence base strategically.”
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