Issues and Trends: Economists, Neuroscientists, and Politicians as Early Childhood Advocates

             This week as I researched the international website where I have found more promising information about early childhood education overseas, http://www.acei.org, I noticed a newsletter entitled, Is it Possible to Measure Children’s Learning Globally?  I found this newsletter article’s title interesting because in our Early Head Start facility, my coworker and I have just recently completed a series of child assessments to determine each child’s abilities/development in the areas of cognitive, physical (gross and fine motor skills), and social/emotional through administering the DECA and DENVER assessment tools. As a result, I was curious to see if this article was going to state specific information about the types of assessments that were suggested on a universal level or the learning domains that were viewed as particularly important.

            From this article, I learned that the Learning Metrics Task Force (LMTF) is working towards the goal of a universal learning measurement approach by creating a global framework for measuring the learning of all children and youth worldwide. In these reports which included a set of two, it was noted how there is not enough data that provides information of progress in regards to children’s learning on a universal level. As a result, because this proposed model will have many challenges, there has yet to be an established set of universal learning domains that will be used to measure. In addition, LMTF stated that they are also aware that there would not be a “one size fits all” approach. They suggested that consideration should be given for each country’s choice of measurement tools and six identifiable areas (agreed upon universally) that would be assessed to determine a child’s progress in relation to the country’s educational goals.

While reading this article, I also learned that the LMTF supports a holistic approach to learning or “educating the whole child” which is not a new insight but just confirmation/support of information that I have gained over the years.