It’s More Than Content: Expanding the Conception of Early Learning Standards

This article presents a case study of standards-based reform in early childhood education to demonstrate how a particular set of early childhood stakeholders—by laterally incorporating a range of developmental domains within their standards—provided a "rhizoanalytic" response to the Bush administration's call for early learning standards in language, early literacy, and mathematics. By incorporating the work of the National Research Council with Wisconsin's Model Early Learning Standards, the author considers how early childhood stakeholders can construct future political responses that horizontally and vertically align the field of early childhood education. Such a rhizomatic response provides the opportunity to propose politically viable policies that respect the heterogeneity that exists within the field of early childhood education.