Stakeholder perspectives on childcare center quality and performance

¶ … Child Care Center Management

The many aspects that are present within the complicated and difficult task of managing a child development center provide substantial challenges for managers burdened with their successful operation. Directors of these centers play a pivotal role in guiding and leading these places of learning into the right direction. The purpose of this essay is to explore and discuss the varying approaches and methods that important stakeholders within the childcare center environment evaluate the impact of these centers. The essay will examine this topic from several perspectives that include how the children or students evaluate the program, the parents, the professionals, the staff and the director or managers of these centers. This essay will explore how each one of these different viewpoints are represented and impact the overall quality of a childcare center.

Children

As the main focus, and sometimes most overlooked aspect of the childcare center, is the child themselves. Children are useful and practical modes of feedback for leaders to look to evaluate the overall performance of these type of childcare centers. Since, children are often the source of feedback, being used as a source of accurate and substantial advice is often ignored. The child's behavior and attitudes in general provide another source of evaluation feedback for leaders to take note. If children are meeting set standards and objectives laid out by the strategic outlook of the organization, it can be interpreted as a useful means to evaluate the efforts that were employed to achieve those standards.

Children enrolled in childcare centers can provide the most important evaluation information when due to a certain level of honesty that is inherent within most children of a young age. In many cases, these children are politically naive and will make honest comments. This aspect of the children can be effectively used and accepted as valuable when combined with other evaluation data that can help supplement and complement this type of feedback.

Parents

The parents of the children involved play a pivotal role within the evaluation process for a childcare center. Parents are essentially the paying customer and their needs must be met, in many cases before the child, in order to sustain a beneficial relationship. The parents of childcare students vary in many ways and leaders must be open to many broad ideas on how the organization is ultimately effecting their children.

In today's society, many cultures blend together and often end up meeting within these childcare centers. Evaluating the organization from a parent's standpoint will include a large variety of ideas based on different cultural influences that are present in many environments and neighborhoods. School leaders should be aware that many times, the child will spend more time with at center then with either one of the parents. A parent's input on the operational success of the center itself must be taken with a softened approach due to the emotional connection that many parents have with the quality of childcare their children may be receiving.

Professionals and Community

The role of childcare centers are to eventually improve the quality of the community that the organization is based in and inspire others around to live at that same level. Professionals and community leaders evaluate childcare centers from many different aspects. For many in this realm, superficial qualities may be important such as the exterior of the building, parking situations and property values. Professionals are more likely to view and evaluate a childcare center on certain standards within their profession or industry.

These circles are more likely to be interested in the commercial and financial operations of the organization and view success in these types of models. Other non-profit-based organizations may have a different approach on evaluating these types of childcare centers which value child performance such as grades or even curriculum. In many markets childcare centers are competitive markets and the community may wish to hold these types of organizations to certain standards that lie within the laws and rules of that particular environment. Childcare center leaders are often required to meet many legal standards that are created from the Federal and state levels to other more localized rules and regulations.

Management

The director, administrator or manager of any childcare center is responsible of the overall direction of the organization. Evaluating the performance of the organization will require blending the aforementioned groups of stakeholders with the personal professional opinion of the director him or herself. Ross (2004) elaborated about this challenge and suggested creating a secretive or clandestine approach to evaluating the center. He wrote this approach has " purpose is to find out what is really happening in your program, and whether or not it matches what should be going on. "

Directors can create many different approaches to this task but essentially they must be based on reason and feasibility. Documentation is a very key component to this approach and requires a disciplined mind to follow good habits. Written evaluations of staff and children can provide ample documentation for varying purposes and makes organizing the center much simpler.

Putting It Together

Combining the many different inputs regarding the quality of work conducted at a childcare center requires experienced and knowledge. A wise leader can put the many evaluations together to form a coherent picture and then apply resources to where they need to be applied to sustain success. Creating priorities is essential in making a total and complete observation. The opinion of a disagreeable parent may not be valued as high as the Mayor of the city's, so it is necessary to apply some reason and common sense to the feedback depending on the source. Since each childcare center is different in some form, each evaluation approach should be unique as well, and tailored to the special circumstances that contribute to its individual needs and standards.