Early childhood educators should take advantage of attention on assessment to design appropriate systems. Proper assessments should enable more reflective teaching, honor children's full range of development, and provide safeguards to children from unnecessary assessment or misuse of assessment data. Issues include what standards to measure, what…

Examines the changes and challenges accompanying increased attention to early childhood education during the past several years. Interest has been piqued by the first national educational goal (readiness), big business concerns, and professionals' reexamination of the field. The authors in this special "Kappan" section examine issues…

Despite obvious need, a strong, empirically based rationale, and a growing political will, the promised new era in childcare and early education has faced complex challenges. This article discusses inequity, discontinuity, and fragmentation in providing these services and explores some ameliorative strategies within a new policy context. Includes…

This paper explores how basic principles of child development can be used to guide the formation and evaluation of educational policies. Child development principles are those beliefs that, predicated on empirical research, have developed over time. They are generally accepted by child development specialists as the minimum elements necessary for…