Moving Toward Culturally Relevant Supervision and "Quality" Assessment

• In Event: Equity at the Center: The Imperative to Reconceptualize Early Care and Education "Quality"

Abstract

The persistence of managerial professionalism, assimilationist government policies, and rising accountability practices imposed by Wisconsin’s Department of Children and Families (DCF) through its quality rating and improvement system (QRIS) have devalued the cultural contributions of providers, families, and communities from diverse racial, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds (Bullough, et al., 2014; Goepel, 2012; Author, 2022). As a result, DCF’s colorblind legislation has constructed the inequitable, culturally unresponsive policies and practices that govern the Wisconsin childcare industry (Turner, 2018).

Through a meta-ethnographic study of 21 Black women family childcare providers’ narratives, I interrogate the ways the policies and legislation of Wisconsin early care and education (ECE) governing agencies (1) criminalize and police Black women ECE business owners; (2) utilize tactics of intimidation and control based in a lack of organizational integrity; and (3) devalue the experiential knowledge and cultural wisdom of Black childcare providers through culturally unresponsive measurements of quality.

Culturally relevant practices of quality assessment require regulatory agencies to acknowledge the cultural knowledge of Educators of Color and address social-historical context in which diverse perspectives have been marginalized in ECE policy and decision-making around issues of pedagogy, practice, equity, and social justice (Kruse, 2012; Author, 2022). QRIS programs and other evaluation measurements must value educators’ practices that are culturally congruent with children, families, and their communities. Rather than over-emphasizing the importance of formal education within Western institutions of higher education and top-down, standardized measurements set by external policymakers, a true commitment to children and families would empower families and communities to determine what curriculum, values, and practices are important to them and how the program meets these standards (Author, 2022).

The discussion will examine ways DCF and other regulatory agencies can move toward a more equitable future within the field of ECE by (1) interrogating how its white-centric practices have dismissed the diverse perspectives, cultural knowledge, and professional contributions of Black women educators; (2) reflect on the interplay of its representatives’ implicit biases with the socio-political, economic, and racial beliefs they bring into their work with Black providers; and (3) partner with Black women and other marginalized groups to promote a more culturally relevant, community-centered assessment of quality care and education.

Author

• Crystasany R. Turner, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
  Presenting Author