February 23, 2012 by Irene Sege
Photo: Alessandra Hartkopf for Strategies for Children
Across the country, early educators face questions about how best to align early childhood programs with the academic rigor of the Common Core State Standards adopted by 46 states (including Massachusetts) and the District of Columbia. The answer, experts say, lies in developmentally appropriate practice and understanding what research tells us about how young children learn.
“We have to be careful that those standards, particularly as they extend downward, appropriately recognize these important social, communication, and self-regulation skills that are really as critical for kids’ learning in those early and later years as whether they know the alphabet,” Robert C. Pianta, the dean of the
