Decade of Challenges and Opportunities: China and the United States—How to Promote Early Childhood Education Equity for Quality Access

• In Event: A Global Perspective on Early Childhood Education

Abstract

This papers compares policies on equal quality access to preschool programs in China and the US. The two countries have had common issues and challenges of getting access to quality Pre-K programs in the past decade, and had different political approaches to address them. They both had insufficient public investment on ECE, unequal educational resource distribution, and uneven development of ECE among areas as well as different social-economic backgrounds. However, China adopted a strategy of universalizing and a more flexible and resilient curriculum encouraging creativity, while the US has had a history of favoring targeted programs more standards and academic skills. These differences could be traced back to their cultural traditions and political contexts.

Authors

• Xiaohua Liu, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Qi Xing, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill