Researching+a+Preschool+or+Kindergarten

On rare occasions a student may be given permission to research a preschool or kindergarten for his or her Context Statement. Permission is generally granted only to students who are majoring or intend to major in Early Childhood Education. Schools available for such research must be non-profit in nature and located in Rhode Island (e.g, the Child Development Center at URI, Headstart programs in Rhode Island communities). Students researching such schools must understand that doing so may entail more time and investigation than researching a larger school with more available data. The following guidelines should be followed


 * 1) Select an appropriate audience for your report and be sure to direct all statements to that audience


 * 1) Follow the general Context Statement template for all sections except for School Analysis. Draw heavily upon US Census and KidsCount data. Use the community in which the school is located for the Community Background section, regardless of the number of students drawn from neighboring communities. Reference the school district in the same community in the District Analysis section, making clear that while your school is //located// within that district, it is not //a part of// the district


 * 1) For the School Analysis section, use online research and personal interviews with school personnel to determine:


 * Number of students served
 * NAEYC accreditation
 * Demographics of student body
 * Teacher qualifications
 * Neighboring communities served
 * Philosophical orientation
 * Achievement/school readiness data
 * Data on any larger program or organization (e.g., Headstart) of which the school is a member
 * Any other information that can be compared or contrasted with information on the district in which the school is located

As with any Context Statement, statistics should rarely be presented in a vacuum. Instead they should be presented in conjunction with other numbers to explain their significance. Ask the director of the program to provide any publicly available statistics her or she may have.