Program Administration Scale
To many education and early child care practitioners today are proud and glad for the various management tools that enhances their efficiency in managing early child care. Such tools which prove to be vital in overall administrative activities and function is the Program Administration Scale or abbreviated PAS. Program Administration Scale is a reliable administrative tool for measuring the quality of administrative practices relating to programs of education and early care. This essential tool developed by Talan and Bloom shall be central of this paper discussion.
In this regard, this paper shall discuss PAS and how to improve this vital tool to achieve quality administration. The Program Administration Scale (PAS) The Program Administration Scale (PAS) is ordinarily designed to measure the ideals of leadership and management ideologies and practices of center-based early childhood organization. This is achieved through the use of the only machinery of its nature and to focus extensively on organization’s administrative and managerial issues.
In respect to this, it uses a 7-point rating scale that assesses the instrumental measures of leadership and management functions of any given organization of early childhood orientation. The Program Administration Scale broadly deals with all the stakeholders’ profound elements of childhood organizations such as, administrator evaluation, director evaluation, child care evaluation, child care management and early childhood leadership.
It enables every director teacher and administrator to continue to strive and provide the best possible care and services for toddlers, children and families in their program in the quality administrative practices possible (Bloom, 2007). Essential program administration scale achieves this by focusing exclusively on administrative issues, using machineries and objectives such as: clarifying the values that would clearly and coherently complete the program vision.
This is automatically pegged on the goal plans and designs that assist the staff to meet their targets and carry out the mission of the organization in the required time frame. Research shows that, the Program Administration Scale is also concerned with at least 25 areas that are important to healthy program ranging from development of human resources and fiscal management to assessment of the child as well as planning and evaluating the whole program (Paula 2002).
In consideration of both center-based early child care education programs and to the extent, public school-based programs, this resource, essentially give a clear picture of how the program is today and even in future. Evidently, this is a wonderful tool for realizing the strengths and providing the clear route for improvement. It also measures the entire quality of administrative methods of early care and education programs. Program administration scale explores the underlying relationship between child care program administration, organizational climate, and global quality.
Jack et al. (2007) has established that Program Administration Scale (PAS) utilization in the program administration and organizational functions fosters positive climate linked to the early children’s school going age to enhance global quality. A significant relationship between the organizational climate and a language interaction factor is also realized. Educational directorate was related to higher quality administrative practices as opposed to profit oriented centers hence scoring significantly better than profit oriented centers.
In addition, it established that there is a significant correlation between the PAS, the Parents and Staff. Measuring Early Childhood Leadership and Management The role of Program administration scale has been fundamental concerned with the elements of quality and while there are a variety of tools available to realize this objective through assessing and improving the quality of the classroom learning environment, there has been little available in assessing and improving the quality of organizational practices in early childhood programs.
According to (Bloom, 2007), the McCormick Tribune Center for Early Childhood Leadership in the United States developed the Program Administration Scale (PAS) to provide a consistent, reliable and user friendly administer tool for scaling the overall quality of administrative practices of early care and education programs. The Programs administration Scale essentially, assesses the quality of early childhood management in basically ten areas. They are areas which have great importance in the development and management of individuals input and out put in the whole organizational scale.
These ten areas are: human resources development, child assessment, program planning and evaluation personnel cost and allocation, fiscal management, center operations, family partnerships, technology, marketing and public relations, as well as staff qualifications (Paula, 2002). In so doing, program administration scale essentially fits and suits the designs of early childhood program administrators, researchers interested in quality assurance, monitoring personnel, and quality enhancement facilitators among other reasons (Mary 2001).
The program administration scale is therefore meant to complement the widely used environment rating scales. Evidently, the program administration scale and the environment rating scales aims to measure the quality these systems on a 7-point scale where both the program scale administrator and other rating scales generate a profile suitable to guide the efforts of the program’s improvement (Mary 2001).
When these instruments are integrated in their use from an organizational perspective, they provide administrators with a focused perception of best classroom theory and practices, and a broad view in terms of programs quality. The Program Administration Scale is largely useful to diverse bodies far from childhood management and leadership in various ways such as empowering center directors and managers with a framework to structure their own program improvement efforts efficiently.
Still to add, they offer technical assistance to a group of consultants, specialists, and mentors working with directors to measure the element of quality improvements as well as policymakers promoting accountability in early care and education programs. To a larger extent, this advantage includes researchers, program evaluators and college instructors who look forward to broad overview of effective organizational practices in line with all the measuring and monitoring program quality (Bloom, 2007).
In addition, the whole process of program administration scale use various widely used methods such as conflict tactic scales and others to meet certain conditions necessary for program administration. The conflict tactic scale, is used especially when researchers, program evaluators and college instructors as well as all those involved in the program administration scale to identify vital components in child maltreatment (Jack et al 2007).
In a survey carried out in the United States, to establish the prevalence of family and other forms of violence, this method of conflict tactic scale was successfully used. In that survey, program administration scale enabled the findings that physical assault, psychological aggression and various measures of injuries and sexual coercion were some of the violence realized in several and different measures (Jack et al 2007).
The under mentioned different scalars of injuries was either associated with corporal punishment or physical abuses and with supplementary questions on neglect, discipline and sexual abuse. The realization of these scales was based on several premises that conflict is inevitable and at the same time a very valuable aspect of human interaction and social circles basically through using coercion, force and violence as a measure and tactic for resolving conflicts being harmful as oppose to negotiation.
Conflict tactic scale as a program administration scale is concerned with behaviors and not attitudes and seeks to measures the behavior of both the respondent and their partner and it achieves its objective through approaches like using interviews of all kinds such as face to face interviews, telephone interviews, and in general terms all questionnaires be it self-administered or computer administered questionnaires (Paula 2002).
However, the controversy surrounding the designers of the program administration scale in the method of conflict tactic scale, was that they did every thing based on the reflection on ideological differences as opposed to empirical evidence which was seen to be more objective (Mary 2007). For instance, several scholars and critics of conflict tactic scale argued that, the method of gathering information was discriminating and in some respect used theories that biased say other gender and these points out the fact that their finding and resolutions were not representative.
An example of a theory used by critical tactic conflict was a feminist theory which is an instrument that holds on to the fact that partner violence is exclusively committed by men as a sure mean to dominate women. These critics that claim raw-numbers and instances of violence is not a coherent and valid way to provide information about the context as well as extent in which they occur (including the initiation, intention, history, or pattern of violence).
This method, therefore, may lead to a misrepresentation of the characteristics of violence between partners and clearly points pout that conflict tactic scale does not measure economic abuse, isolation, manipulation involving children, or even intimidation, which in so much forms the basis of the common measures of violence from a victim (Bloom, 2007). Direction of Evaluation of PAS The quality of the early childhood leadership and management (workforce) factors in the Importance 3hich is very overriding in determining if the early education. Program is rated highly or poorly as far as quality is concerned (Paula, 2002).
Alongside this, the well equipped and safe and environment for early learning is the characterized in terms of the behaviors of those practicing and it is likely to contribute to the quality effectiveness of the program for children and their families. On the other hand, Professional development to aid the practitioners in the acquisition of knowledge as well as improving teaching techniques should in essence reflect this vital connection between the program’s quality in similar ways as the quality of the early childhood leadership and management (Jack et al 2001).
Within the general working of early childhood, program quality is evaluated against the progress of the whole process of program scale. Because of the already existing standards of early childhood program, which chiefly reflect the leadership needs of larger population of children, the overall improvement of the quality of an early childhood education is necessary, but however, it might be insufficient, to cater for the individual differences of children in terms of their developmental processes (Mary, 2001).
The under mentioned individual differences may include disorders and some other myriad of disabilities. The PAS combines the knowledge they have about how to evaluate the leadership and managerial education to know about program quality for these children within the confines of the general, dimensions of elements that facilitates the program quality only in accordance to the guidelines of professional development on early childhood.
At this crucial stage, the program offers: recognized and approved components of program quality that has global orientation; the necessary need of incorporating the various dimensions of program quality to basically strive for high quality; and provide and implement the recommendations for including content to program quality in respect to the professional development using the what, the who, and the how conceptual framework (Bloom, 2007).
Dimensions of Program Quality Program quality in various aspects may be categorized in two broad ways: the curriculum and intentional teaching quality which includes planning, implementation and evaluation and the condition of the program quality encompassing structural and environmental factors like physical environment, child-staff ratio, staff qualifications, communication and collaboration with families, administrative leadership and compensation.
This two dimensions helps in the defining the early childhood program’s quality and in predicting whether these early experiences can in the ultimate end promote higher rates of learning and development young children (Paula, 2002). Whereas teaching and learning experiences, are facilitated by Professional development which proved a transactional design to support the learning and acquisition of professional knowledge, values, skills, and rationale to enhance the application of all this knowledge through practice.
The vital components of this development include the possible characteristics of the learners, the content in accordance to the generally defined professional competencies, ethics and standards (Mary 2001). The organization is the third component and it aims at facilitating learning experiences using modern approaches, methods of teaching and models. Program Quality and Child Outcomes It is now evident that substantial research has been done to suggest a causal relationship between program quality and the result of developmental in young children learning through early education programs.
Among those young children who learn in early education programs, obtain to a greater extent the high quality of early care which gives them strong foundation for readiness for school across many elements of learning both for the present and future school success. The said relationship between program quality and positive results, have led to children and their families at large spawn several initiatives throughout the United States which are now focusing on the improvement of early childhood program quality(Jack et al 2007).
Initiatives Focused on Improving Early Childhood Program Quality Over the years the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) established purposely to asses and finance children leadership and management program has been an important resource in helping all the stakeholders to make an extra move towards improving the quality of early child care and education programs.
Later on this showed the good start, courtesy of grow smart initiative which sparked a considerable focus in every body concerned on improving quality of the program through mechanism aimed at enhancing efficient professional development and the create awareness about early learning standards so as to examine children’s school readiness goals (Bloom, 2007). Many individuals and organizations have developed and are effortlessly pursuing to establish program standards and guidelines early learning. Such guidelines and standards give a foundation for improving the quality early childhood program.
They are criteria used within professional considerations to help define what early childhood practitioners failed to realize and must remember in order to create high quality early education for children and families (Mary 2001) The Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) This is an important initiative with aims of improving the quality early childhood program through Quality Rating and Improvement System. It is a way of assessing documentations of program quality, and improvements, communicating information about program quality to all stake holders (Paula 2002).
A QRIS facilitates early childhood programs to employ measurable quality improvement objectives which could help all the concerned parties to identify high quality programs for their children. The Program Administration scale system ought in my view come up with system that integrates technological dimension such as internet usage in order for the educational institutions to advance their programs a swift and from any corner of towards well as with minimal congestion which will see the reduce their administrative costs (Bloom 2007).
They can achieve this if they design tools that are meant to empower their enrolment, retention rates and growth in their organizations. In so doing, they will have to establish functionalities of reporting and feedback, assist their targeted enrollment and growth. Conclusion In consistency with the high-quality, crucial administrative practices for ensuring beneficial outcomes for children and families are a must to be considered in the PAS.
The Program administration through all its designs, measures management and leadership practices of organizations for early childhood to instrumentally of focus exclusively on organization’s administrative issues. The 7-point rating scale in assessment is concerned with measuring leadership and management functions relating to helping an organization clarify their values, focus on its vision, set goals and patterns of realizing the goals in a specified time span so as to empower their systems to develop the mission organization.
This approach considers areas of personnel cost and allocation, human resources development, center operations, fiscal management child assessment, family partnerships, program planning and evaluation, marketing and public relations, technology, and staff qualifications. All these are instrumental to easy use and generation of a clear profile to support program improvement efforts.
Though, PAS application to public school-based, educational and center-based early care programs, its quality improvement on as a leadership and administrative tool shall greatly bank on technological integration. References Bloom, M (2007) The program administration scale: New York: Teachers College Press Jack, R. et al (2007), Handbook of public administration: London, CRC Press Mary, R. (2001) Program Administration Scale Program: London, Cengage Gale Paula, J. (2002) Early childhood education: New York, Greenwood Publishing Group
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