The first major issue that affects early childhood education in the state of Georgia is equity matters. The data shows that most families living in the rural areas of the state have a great need for high-quality early childhood education, yet they are underserved. Most children from low-income families in the rural parts of Georgia enroll for education at a late age, thus affecting their development ( Levine et al., 2015 ). The second issue affecting early childhood education in the state of Georgia is the low pay and high turnover. Early childhood educators are not paid well in relation to the difficult work they do, and this leads to high turnover, which hurts the system. The third issue is the lack of family engagement. The educators struggle to engage the families in the program to help the child develop in all aspects of life. The fourth issue is the standards and curriculum which does not provide quality early childhood education and force children with more paperwork and less play, yet such children require more play to grow and develop their motor skills ( Roskos, 2017 ). The fifth issue affecting early childhood education in the state of Georgia is insufficient to finance due to low funding.
The issue of equity in the early childhood education can be looked into by seeking means to ensure that there is equity in the access of the early childhood education to all the children irrespective of the level of income. Many families in low-income rural areas have difficulty in accessing the early childhood education for their children due to lack of expansion of such programs to all areas ( Jennings, 2015 ). The issue of low pay and high turnover needs to be looked at in a way that seeks to motivate early childhood educators through fair pay. Lack of family engagement is an issue that requires collaboration with parents so that they also get engaged in the education of their children. The preschool children require to have continuous learning both at school and at home; thus, the need to engage the parents. The standards of early childhood education, as well as the curriculum, needs to be reviewed in a way that ensures there is quality in the program. The curriculum needs to allow the children to undergo all the five developmental domains. An examination and review of the funding to early childhood education could be necessary to solve the problem of insufficient funds.
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The policy recommendation to solve the problem of lack of equity in early childhood education is to develop and implement a system that ensures early childhood education programs are available in all areas, both the rural and urban centers to increase accessibility and equity for all families. This policy can involve initiating the construction of early childhood education centers in collaboration with the other education stakeholders. The policy recommendation to solve the issue of low pay and high turnover for the early childhood educators is to implement a program that makes progress toward compensation and benefit standards at parity and to introduce a fair remuneration system for the teachers ( Elango et al., 2015 ). This program will help ensure that early childhood teachers receive fair pay that enhances motivation and reduces turnover. A policy to solve the problem of low family engagement is to introduce a program that promotes collaboration between the teachers and parents through the facilitation of communication and the elimination of barriers to communication. The policy recommendation for the standards and curriculum is to have a team of experts in early childhood development to review the current curriculum and to introduce a new curriculum that helps in the development of a child in all domains ( Britto et al., 2017 ). The issue of funding can be solved by introducing having the state government include early childhood into its annual budget so that every year, the system receives adequate funding.
References
Levine, T. A., Grunau, R. E., McAuliffe, F. M., Pinnamaneni, R., Foran, A., & Alderdice, F. A. (2015). Early childhood neurodevelopment after intrauterine growth restriction: a systematic review. Pediatrics , 135 (1), 126-141.
Elango, S., García, J. L., Heckman, J. J., & Hojman, A. (2015). Early childhood education. In Economics of Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States, Volume 2 (pp. 235-297). University of Chicago Press.
Jennings, P. A. (2015). Early childhood teachers’ well-being, mindfulness, and self-compassion in relation to classroom quality and attitudes towards challenging students. Mindfulness , 6 (4), 732-743.
Britto, P. R., Lye, S. J., Proulx, K., Yousafzai, A. K., Matthews, S. G., Vaivada, T., ... & MacMillan, H. (2017). Nurturing care: promoting early childhood development. The Lancet , 389 (10064), 91-102.
Roskos, K. A. (Ed.). (2017). Play and literacy in early childhood: Research from multiple perspectives . Routledge.
