MANAGING QUALITY IN YOUNG CHILDREN'S PROGRAMS: The Leader's Role.

MANAGING QUALITY IN YOUNG CHILDREN'S PROGRAMS: The Leader's Role. Mary Culkin (Ed.). New York: Teachers College Press, 2000. 243 pp. The benefits of early care and education (ECE) on children's lives are currently being trumpeted in both professional and popular media. Consequently, a new awareness of the administrator's role in determining the quality of that care is emerging. Nevertheless, Mary Culkin argues that the field has failed to take action to ensure that administrators have the requisite training and skills. Culkin is one of the principal investigators of the Cost, Quality, and Child Outcomes Study of Child Care Centers (1995).

Although most ECE directors are former teachers with valuable expertise in dealing directly with children and families, such experience is certainly not sufficient to prepare them for their new role. In this 12-chapter volume, a group of prominent experts in ECE administration map out where we have been, where we are now, and where we need to go to correct this omission.

In Part 1, Dorothy Hewes, author of a widely used college textbook on administration, contributes a chapter on the history of the director's role. A chapter by Paula Jorde Bloom examines the metaphors and narratives that directors use to describe their roles. Chapters by Gwen Morgan, Nancy Brown and John Manning, and Roger Neugebauer identify essential competencies, core knowledge, and management abilities that directors need. Karen VanderVen outlines stages of directors' development and places them within a systems context, based on Bronfenbrenner's theory of human ecology.

Part II lays out the argument for establishing a credentialing process for program administrators. Gwen Morgan argues that "rather than trying to adapt to incompatible ideas from the past, ... we [those in the field of early care and education] should be asserting our own concepts as strengths and celebrating the ways in which we have always been ahead of the curve" (p. 146).

Anne Mitchell cites evidence from ECE in other countries, as well as from other professions in North America, to support the idea of requiring a credential for individual directors. While agreeing that national standards for directors are needed, Sue Bredekamp tackles issues of equity and accessibility in training, and argues against moving too quickly toward establishing a national credential. Roger Neugebauer and Marsha Poster examine current directors' perceptions of their own training and review several innovative professional development programs for directors. Citing trends in employer-sponsored child care and public welfare-to-work policies, Karen Hill-Scott sees improved management training as a key factor in bridging the gap between the profession's aspirations to maintain highest quality services and the limitations resulting from a lack of resources.

This book is a valuable resource for ECE administrators seeking to understand their role in a broader context, for university faculty or others charged with providing professional development opportunities for directors, and for advocates and policymakers interested in raising the quality of child care in the United States. Reviewed by Patricia F. Hearron, Professor, Child Development, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC