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Hey y’all! Welcome back to your Advocacy Alphabet with Natasha Kile, your AECA Public Policy Chair. Today, we’re talking about O is for Outcomes.
We live in an age of measurement. Assessments, benchmarks, data points, dashboards – the pressure to quantify what children know and can do has never been greater. And while accountability has its place, somewhere along the way we began measuring what is easy to count rather than what actually counts.
So let me offer a different set of outcomes. Not the ones on the standardized assessment or the program evaluation rubric – the ones that tell us whether we are actually doing this right.
Is this child joyful? Do they wake up excited to come to their early childhood program? Do they laugh easily, play freely, and approach the world with the kind of open-hearted wonder that is the birthright of every young child? Joy is not a frivolous outcome. It is a profound indicator of safety, security, and wellbeing – the very conditions under which all other learning becomes possible.
Is this child curious? Do they ask questions, investigate problems, and persist when something is hard? Curiosity is the engine of lifelong learning, and it is either nurtured or extinguished in the early years. No standardized test can measure it, but every early childhood educator knows it when they see it.
Do they belong? Do they feel seen, valued, and connected – to their peers, their educators, and their community? Belonging is not a soft outcome. Research tells us it is one of the strongest predictors of academic success, mental health, and civic engagement across the lifespan.
And are they resilient? When things go wrong – and they will – can they recover? Can they try again? Can they trust that the adults around them will help them through?
Joy. Curiosity. Belonging. Resilience. These are the outcomes worth fighting for – in our classrooms, in our programs, and in our policy conversations.
If we measure what matters, we will build what children actually need.
Do you have an advocacy story you’d like to share? I would love to feature your voice in a future column. Reach out to me at policy@arkansasearlychildhood.org.
p.s. You can find all the posts in the Advocacy Alphabet series here
Natasha Kile
AECA Public Policy Chair
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