Standards of Experience

Federal, state, and local governments, school districts, and parents pressure early childhood educators to get children "ready" for school, ready to "succeed" in school, and ready to perform well on standardized tests measuring academic skills. The industrial model implies that when raw materials have been placed on the right kind of assembly line and subjected to a fixed series of processes, "out" will "come" identical productsidentical shoes, chairs, cell phones, or test scores.