First, the educational equity orientation of the start-up plan
When discussing educational equity, we must first understand what equity is. John rawls, an American liberal thinker, put forward the famous principle of fairness (justice) in A Theory of Justice [1]. According to his theory of fairness (justice), helping disadvantaged children is the concrete embodiment of the concept of fairness. The purpose of the Start Plan is to provide educational compensation for disadvantaged children, promote their good development on the original basis, and realize educational equity. The educational equity orientation contained in the initial plan is mainly manifested in the following aspects.
The government promotes equality of educational opportunities through legislation, and has continuously invested funds for this purpose.
Due to the unequal social, political and economic status of the country in reality, ensuring equal educational opportunities has become the core issue to realize educational equity. Ensuring equal educational opportunities is mainly to change the educational situation of disadvantaged social classes, which "means that any low natural, economic, social or cultural situation should be compensated as much as possible from the education system itself". [2] The government must shoulder the heavy responsibility of promoting education equity. In addition to meeting the needs of some children for good education, we should also make necessary and timely educational compensation for disadvantaged children to narrow the gap between them and other children in educational opportunities. The beginning plan embodies this educational equity orientation. According to the federal law of the United States, the government's Department of Health and Human Services should provide financial assistance to the designated start-up plan implementation department. The original plan did not charge parents, and 80% of its funds came from the federal government, and the rest mainly came from the community. Since the implementation of the plan, the federal government's funding has never stopped, and the amount has been on the rise. According to the "Advance Act" promulgated by the government in 198 1, the federal government should allocate at least/kloc-0.07 billion US dollars for start-up projects every year. Since the promulgation and implementation of this law, the amount of government funding for initial planning projects has increased year by year: 1990 is15.52 million US dollars; 1999 reached $4.658 billion, three times that of 1990; By 2005, the allocation reached $6.843 billion, four times that of 1990. Per capita, the government's investment in each child in 1992 was $34 15; In 2004, it reached $7,222, twice as much as 1992. [3] In 2007, the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States passed a new bill for the Start program with a validity period of five years, which stipulated that the federal government would provide 7.35 billion US dollars in financial support for the Start program in 2008, and also increased the opportunities for homeless children, immigrant children, physically disabled children and non-native English-speaking children to participate in the Start program. (4) Government funding has provided important support for the smooth development of the project, and more and more preschool children of different ages and groups have benefited or are benefiting from the project.
In addition to providing funds, the government also promotes educational equity through legislation. The "non-discrimination principle" in the Preliminary Plan Act stipulates that the Ministry of Health and Human Services of the government will refuse to give financial assistance to any project, plan or activity that discriminates against race, belief, skin color, gender, physical defects, etc. The initial plan gives priority to those children who need help most, and requires that at least 90% of all children participating in the project come from families whose income is below the government poverty line. In addition, the preliminary plan has always stipulated that the participation rate of disabled children should not be less than 10% of the total. 1985 Among the children who participated in the initial planning project, disabled children accounted for12.2% of the total; From 65438 to 0996, 13% disabled children participated in the initial project. These children have different types and degrees of disabilities, including mental retardation, disability, deformity, visual impairment, hearing impairment, emotional disorders, language disorders and learning disabilities. (5) The initial plan requires project service centers in all regions to visit the families of vulnerable children in their regions at least twice a year in order to provide services to these families more directly. These specific provisions guarantee the right to education of disadvantaged children, narrow the gap between them and other children of the same age to a certain extent, make all preparations for their enrollment, and promote their successful completion of their studies.
A large number of follow-up research reports show that the original plan treated the strong and weak groups by unequal means, which promoted educational equity, and indeed had a significant impact on children's individuals and families, and also produced huge social benefits.
Provide comprehensive services to ensure the fairness of children's future development.
Children's talents and family backgrounds are different, and their opportunities are different. Fair education is not an egalitarian and stereotyped educational model, but provides the most suitable educational conditions for every child, so that every child can develop to the maximum at his original level and give full play to his potential. The Start program is a comprehensive educational project. Its continuous and comprehensive service for children's early childhood ensures the high quality of education, gives full play to the potential of children with different talents and families, and finally ensures the fairness of children's future development.
The overall goal of the Start program is to cultivate children's high-level social ability, so that disadvantaged children can adapt to the environment, overcome obstacles and assume responsibilities in life. In order to achieve this goal, the preliminary plan mainly provides four services: children's education and development services, parents' participation services, health services and staff quality improvement services.
Children's education development service mainly provides children with a suitable learning environment and diverse experiences, and helps children to realize social cognition, physical quality, intellectual level and emotional development in a way suitable for children's age and development state, thus comprehensively improving children's social ability. The purpose of parents' participation in services is to help parents raise their awareness, enhance their educational skills and gain knowledge and experience about children's growth and development, thus strengthening their role in children's education. [6] Health service is a comprehensive service to provide children with physical, psychological and dietary nutrition, including daily health check-up, treating children, providing children with adequate nutrition, and helping parents understand the relationship between nutrition and health. The staff quality improvement service provides vocational training opportunities for parents and staff serving in the project, thus better promoting the implementation of the start plan. These services provided by the Start plan are not isolated unilateral services, but coordinated and comprehensive services.
In order to improve the service quality and meet the needs of children's development, in recent years, the plan is trying to reform and expand the service scope. For example, from 1995, the early project-early action-which was initially planned began to provide services for infants and pregnant women, so as to improve the health level of infants at birth, promote their development and enhance the positive role of families in early childhood education. The original plan was a half-day service project, and now it has begun to try to provide full-day service. At the beginning of the implementation of the initial plan, only educational services based on the project center were provided, that is, children were allowed to study in the project center; Now, the Start program has added family-centered services to help parents deal with problems such as children's literacy, parents' unemployment crisis and family material abuse. In addition, with the increasing emphasis on knowledge base in early childhood education, in recent years, developmental adaptive courses that meet the needs of children aged 3-4 have been added to the initial planning projects to promote children's success in kindergartens and schools.
Beginning Plan has been implemented in the United States for more than 40 years, and has been providing comprehensive services for disadvantaged children and their families, helping children to make basic preparations for school life. As a result, the number of children receiving special education has decreased significantly, and the number of children who repeat their studies after entering school has also decreased significantly, and the IQ and academic performance of children from low-income families have improved. This result objectively reflects the achievements of the Start program in providing comprehensive services for children and pursuing educational equity.
(3) Attach importance to cooperation with families and communities, and give full play to the role of families and communities in promoting educational equity.
Educational compensation for disadvantaged children is not enough only by educational institutions themselves, but also by giving full play to the role of families and communities. According to the viewpoint of "ecology", to make the influence of education more effective, we should not only be satisfied with a few hours of school education, but also change the living environment of children. Only when families and communities coordinate and create an educational environment suitable for children's development can each child get the best development. Start attaches great importance to parents' participation and education. Some American scholars regard parental participation as the core of the initial plan. Start has always believed in the idea that to improve children's lives, the lives of their parents and teachers must also be changed; Without the participation of parents, children's lives cannot be changed. In the initial plan, parents participate in the project as responsible guardians of children, main educators of children, contributors to the initial plan and the community. There are some provisions on parental participation in the Preliminary Plan Act. For example, 565,438+0% of the local project policy team members must be the parents of the children currently involved in the project; Parental participation should be voluntary; Parents can serve the project as employees or volunteers; During the project, all facilities should be open to parents, and parents can participate in the formulation and implementation of children's educational development plans, and so on. These regulations give parents greater priority to encourage their participation and ensure the service quality of the initial plan. In addition, the Start plan also attaches great importance to the education of parents. By providing parents with relevant knowledge and experience, parents can correctly educate their children, improve their family's economic situation and create a good environment for their children's development.
In terms of cooperation with the community, Start is committed to strengthening communication, cooperation and information sharing with relevant community institutions. These community organizations include health care service providers (such as clinics, doctors and dentists), mental health service providers, nutrition service providers, individuals and institutions that provide services for disabled children and their families, service agencies that maintain and support families, child protection agencies, local primary schools and other educational and cultural institutions, child health service providers, and any institutions or commercial organizations that provide support and resources for families. [7] These community organizations are connected with families to form a complete educational service network. Generally speaking, there are two basic models for the initial plan of using community resources to solve some specific problems for disadvantaged children: one is the coordination model, which allows a family service expert to provide social services for about 60 families; The second is a comprehensive model, in which a tutor cooperates with a class teacher to provide social services and home visits to about 10 families. 〔8〕
Start program encourages parents to participate in the project, and promotes the concern and support of the whole society for disadvantaged children and their families and social environment. On the other hand, the plan has greatly relieved the pressure of such families, giving parents time and energy to carry out their own vocational training and get more job opportunities, thus alleviating social contradictions and promoting social equity to a certain extent.
Second, the Enlightenment of Start Plan on the Fairness of Preschool Education in China
In recent years, due to China's economic and social reasons, vulnerable children groups occupy a large proportion in society. This group mainly includes children of poor farmers, unemployed and migrant workers, children of single-parent families, street children, disabled children and so on. They have limited opportunities to receive normal education and special compensatory education. Solving the problem of equal right to education for disadvantaged children is a key issue related to eliminating inequality and realizing the democratization of education in China. The American Beginning Program has its own uniqueness in pursuing fairness in preschool education, from which we can get the following enlightenment.
First of all, the government should pay attention to the compensation for the disadvantaged groups and actively promote the equality of children's educational opportunities. China is a country with a serious shortage of public education funds. Children who need education account for 20% of the world's total, but education funds only account for 1% of the world's total education funds. Of this limited public education fund, only about 1.3% is used for preschool education. [9] Whether these limited funds serve the advantaged groups or the disadvantaged groups are two completely different choices in education policy. The enlightenment of the American Start plan is that the government should provide funds and institutional guarantee for disadvantaged children and give them the necessary education compensation, which is an inevitable choice to achieve educational equity. In the specific implementation process, China should establish and improve the national funding system for vulnerable groups and establish an effective legal guarantee mechanism according to the basic national conditions and education status. Only by actively paying attention to the disadvantaged groups, formulating effective policies and measures, and establishing a scientific compensation mechanism can we continuously improve the level of educational equity and promote the best development of disadvantaged children at the original level.
Secondly, we should adapt to local conditions and provide suitable educational opportunities for disadvantaged children. The start-up plan is a comprehensive service system, and the coordination of various service items provides the most suitable educational conditions for each child's development, so that the child's potential can be fully exerted. This practice is worth learning from. In China, disadvantaged children are involved in a wide range of subjects, and due to the differences in region, environment, historical tradition and so on, it is impossible to unify and standardize their education. We should provide suitable educational opportunities for disadvantaged children according to local conditions and people's needs. For example, it is unrealistic to establish a large number of fixed-point formal preschool education institutions in the sparsely populated and relatively backward northwest region. Flexible and low-cost informal preschool institutions are better choices, such as various forms of mobile kindergartens, book and newspaper stations, toy halls and so on. These informal preschool education institutions can provide as many educational opportunities as possible for disadvantaged children, that is, to realize the fairness of preschool education. The government should provide financial assistance to various informal preschool education institutions and give them regular guidance.
Thirdly, we can use community resources to provide services for disadvantaged children and their families and establish a community-based education service network. Start plan takes the lead in mobilizing the resources of various community organizations to protect the interests of young children. China can also learn from the Start plan in the education of disadvantaged children, establish a community-based education service network, and provide compensatory education for disadvantaged children through family education consultation stations, children's holiday activity rooms, and early childhood education consultation stations. The government should support these educational institutions, provide financial aid in terms of manpower, material resources, financial resources and information, and strengthen the standardized management of these institutions, so as to safeguard the fair right to education of disadvantaged children.