Maryland Excels Designation

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:It is bureaucratic nonsense and a distraction from actual quality teaching.

Only schools that can’t get the high EXCELS designation believe this. It’s a quality control for your preschool. Stop lying to these people on DCUM.

+1

Our preschool is the highest designation of Level 5. It has a high quality program and low turnover. You cannot get this designation unless all of your lead teachers are certified and degrees and you have little turnover. This leads me to believe that the other posters comments above are either uneducated about EXCELS or they are actually owners of schools that do not have the excels accreditation disguused as a parent. As a parent, you cannot look it up yourself and you will see.

Everything I looked at for my kids was unrated or in the 0-2 range, so I have no experience with 5. We were looking at small part time preschool options. No idea what your school is and no experience with schools at that level. At our level, I did not find 1-2 to be a step up from unrated. In some cases, quite the opposite.

Me again. I’m curious now. I looked around on the check childcare website and I found some large daycare centers that had 5s (Goddard, Children in the Shoe). I am wondering if high excel numbers correlate with large centers, or if that’s just anecdotally in my searching.

Yes, I think having a large center means more administrative capacity to do all the paperwork needed for an Excels rating. Doesn't mean all large centers/chains have this.

I think in looking for providers I'd look first at:
1. Are they in compliance licensing-wise (some paperwork violations are fine but a laundry list of them or any ratio violations is a red flag to me)
2. What do they say when you ask about teacher turnover? (many will say turnover is normal and that is true but a good center can brag about how long their teachers stay, at our Excels level 3 center even the assistants rarely turned over except during the height of the pandemic)
3. When you visit, are the teachers engaged with the kids or do they look annoyed/bored (yes, I've seen this during tours of very expensive centers)?
4. If answers to the above are good, check accreditation/Excels level to compare quality.

If you have high turnover and uncertified and non degreed teachers you will never get a high level Excels designation. It doesn’t matter if you’re large or small and it DEFINITELY has nothing to do with administrative paperwork.

But you can also have those things and not have an Excels designation. Btw degreed teachers isn't a predictor of better outcomes for kids.

[Anonymous]

Maryland excels is bs
Even people out of Harvard are mostly aholes

[Anonymous]

I work at a small school with teachers who all have masters in education but the EXCELS
paperwork is absolutely ridiculous . If you don't
write specific phrases in your policies you don't move up. I think programs should be rated on their environment, teachers and interactions with children not on the phrasing of their paperwork. It is purely bureaucratic and does not indicate a good program in my view.