The UH Child Care Center maintained its National Association for the Education of Young Children accreditation status recently, which it earned in 2004.
According to the NAEYC Web site, its Accreditation of Programs for Young Children group has helped set professional standards for early childhood education programs.
‘NAEYC has many specific standards and criteria a program has to meet in order to receive such a title,’ Jennifer Skopal, UHCCC assistant director, said.
Skopal said the criteria are divided into 10 standards: relationships, curriculum, teaching, assessment of child progress, health, teachers, families, community relationships, physical environment and leadership and management.
NAEYC assessors conduct random, unannounced visits to centers throughout the country, and then return their evaluations to the NAEYC Academy in Washington, D.C., to be scored. If a program fails to continue meeting these criteria, it can potentially’ lose its recognition.
‘(It’s important to have this title because) it sets us apart from other centers, and NAEYC accreditation is not something that is easily attained,’ Skopal said.
The NAEYC program standards and accreditation criteria were updated in 2006 to include two things, according to the NAEYC Web site.
The first is an explicit program standard for early childhood programs serving children from birth through kindergarten. The second is making all of the standards more evidence-based and aligned with the profession’s knowledge of best practice.
Each accredited program is required to file an annual report along with applicable fees on the program’s first, second, third and fourth anniversaries of accreditation.
About’ 7,335 accredited programs operate across the country, 295 of which are in Texas, according to NAEYC statistics.
The UHCCC applied for and received Southern Association of Colleges and Schools accreditation this year as well. The UHCCC administration and staff performed an in-depth assessment of each of the SACS seven standards to ensure that each standard was met.
‘I am very proud of our program. We have all worked very hard to ensure we are meeting these standards. It is a reflection of quality and excellence,’ Skopal said.
Sherry Howard, director of the UHCCC, said the center has met its mission with this recent accreditation. Howard said this official recognition is important to the University as a whole.
‘It’s (about) excellence in education and building future cougars,’ Howard said.
