In order to solve this problem a clear strategy for how to place students into different classes and programs needs to be initiated. At the administrative level, there needs to be an organizational mechanism that creates several different classes with students within each class being educated at different paces. At the same time, there needs to be a standardized testing mechanism at the early level to determine which students belong at certain levels. The reason that this is crucial is that students need to learn at the natural pace that they are accustomed to. The only way to do that is if they are truly inspired by what they are learning. Furthermore, the expansion of curriculums to a wide variety of disciplines will ultimately help these Day Care Centers to expand on other aspects of its problems. Primarily, if there are different levels of education, parents will be much more inspired to bring their children to school because they feel that there is a value advantage at Day Care Centers that their children cannot learn in their own homes. The only way to achieve this is to produce various funding mechanisms. Currently, the under funding of Day Care Centers presents this from becoming a reality.
The low quality of current Day Care Centers due to the restraints mentioned above have also demotivated parents from becoming actively involved at the Day Care level. At the core level, the reason that Day Cares are valuable is to free up the time for parents to work or perform their other duties. Since parents are already busy without having to concern themselves about the actual operational level of Day Care, it requires a tremendous effort on the part of the administration to get parents involved. This also means that there has to be specific causes for which parents want to get involved in, the most significant of which is how children are actually getting taken care of at the Day Care Centers. Therefore, there are several barriers that are both organizational and institutional that prevents parents from getting extremely involved at Day Care Centers.
At an organizational level, parents do not have the motivation to help because administration does not make it clear that their help is crucial for the success of the Day Care Center. Furthermore, even those parents who are very concerned about their children's education have little or no means to help at Day Care Centers. The administration does a poor job of having specific duties that parents should be involved in, and therefore there are inadequate instructions on what specific duties parents can help support. The consequence is that few parents on an organizational level want to help because of they believe their efforts are either wasted or they do not actually know how to get involved.
At an infrastructural level, parents are just much too busy. They not only have to worry about their children's behavior outside of Day Care Centers but they have work themselves, the consequence of the combination of these two factors is that they limit their ability to participate on behalf of the organization itself. The inevitable conflict means that parents feel no obligation to help the Day Care Centers, and instead attempts to focus on their child's education outside of these institutions.
The only way to get parents actively involved at Day Care Centers is if fundamental changes are made at the administrative level to teach and educate parents on the importance of their involvement. The administration must increase the value proposition they provide to parents. Parents must feel that their contributions actually help their ultimately goal of improving the education and care of their children. If the administration can do this, then parents will be more motivated to get involved at a grassroots level.
The problems at the Day Care level extends not only to the organization and overall administration but at a classroom supervision level. Understaffing not only extends to the overall administration but also to teachers as well. Which means that the ratio of educators or supervisors to children is extremely high, thus contributing to the lower quality of supervision for children in general. Furthermore, supervision at this particular level is of a much lower quality than should be expected at this level of education. Since teachers at the Day Care Level are paid a ridiculously low salary, many times they are the least qualified individuals to teach children at this particular level. The implication is that they lack the proper training to educate children and also...
This leads to lower quality supervision at the classroom level and disrupts the learning process of children. The combination of this problem and the overall understaffing within each classroom also implies several problems. It means that children are not being supervised properly which could lead to dangerous and harmful activity. Second, it decreases the level of education for children because teachers are more concerned with the behavior of students rather than their educational process. Overall it decreases the confidence of parents that their children are being well taken care of at Day Cares, which ultimately decreases the trust level placed within these institutions.
Changes at several levels much occur in order for this problem to be mitigated. First, higher qualifications and standards for teachers within these institutions are a must. The only way to accomplish this goal is to increase the funding within Day Cares so that they have the monetary ability to offer higher compensation and competitive wages to attract high quality teachers. The ratio of teachers to students must also be lowered dramatically to ensure that all students are receiving adequate support as well as supervision. Again this particular goal requires significant funding. However, for trust between parents and administration to be established it is a necessary first step.
The at the core level for many Day Cares is their inability to access resources. The chronic underfunding of Day Care Centers also implies that there is a problem with having adequate resources to supply classrooms. Such materials that are fundamental for a good learning experience such as curriculum books, and supplies that are needed for arts and craft are always in short supply. Again this taps into the problem that most Day Cares have with attracting students because they do not have the facility or resources to consistently make their experience worthwhile.
Without proper resources, funding, or administrative support, teachers are losing their fundamental motivation to teach students. They feel overwhelmed by their jobs and also feel that they are underappreciated. This is the reason that Day Care Center teachers have one of the highest rates of turnover in all educator positions. When teachers are not motivated, they decrease the level of attentiveness and also the level of education to children, promoting greater neglect and continuing the vicious cycle that is occurring within our Day Care centers. Rectifying teacher motivation will involve all of the steps mentioned above with providing greater monetary rewards to teachers, increasing access to supplies and decreasing the ratio of teachers to students. However, one additional step that needs to be taken is to show appreciation for educators so that they understand what they are doing is valuable to students and parents. Teacher appreciation is one of the keys to keeping teachers motivated because then they feel that there is a reason that they keep doing what they do. However, finding an adequate source of motivation in and of itself can be very difficult which is why many implicit problems arise from this process.
The fact that classes are not uniform decreases the educational quality of the institutions and creates an administrative problem in terms of monitoring progress as well as holding teachers accountable. Since teachers create their own curriculums and there are no policies governing how they teach or what they teach, uniformity and standardization is impossible. Thus, administrators have no way to monitor teacher performance and parents cannot hold teachers or administrators responsible for their actions. Creating a uniform curriculum can be very difficult because it requires that all teachers have access to the same materials as well as students who are at the same level in terms of their education. Active participation on the part of the parents, administration and teachers will be the key to solving this problem.
In general the problems that Day Care Centers face are often interlinked with each other. The result of these problems is that negativity enforces greater negativity and before long problems escalate into full blown catastrophes. There needs to be changes on a governmental, administrative and parental level to motivate dramatic reforms to Day Care Center policies. Since these institutions are extremely important for both busy parents and children who require better education, it is essential that better management and organization goes into Day Care Centers.
