DOUBLE TAB TO ZOOM ON PHONE OR TABLET Appendix 3 Model Work Standards Assessment Tool With the input of hundreds of teachers, directors, and providers from around the country, the Model Work Standards have been developed to complete the picture of a high-quality early care and education program by articulating the components of an adult work environment that enables teachers to do their jobs well. The Standards are divided into thirteen categories, ranging from Wages and Benefits to Professional Development, Diversity, and the Physical Setting. You can use the Standards as an assessment tool, rating each item as Consistently Met, Partially Met or Unmet/High Priority, or Partially Met or Unmet/Low Priority. A fuller description of the complete Model Work Standards assessment tool along with guidelines for its use can be found in the publication Creating Better Child Care Jobs: Model Work Standards for Teaching Staff in Center-Based Child Care, available for $10 from the Center for the Child Care Workforce (www.ccw.org). The following pages offer a few extracts from the Model Work Standards to give you a flavor of only the first few of the Standards in four of the thirteen categories. Guidelines for their use include these ideas: 1. Look at each Standard area and determine if all staff agree that your program adequately addresses this issue. Identify what you currently have that satisfies staff and what you want to work for right now. If not everyone agrees, it will be important to work toward understanding why the staff have varying perspectives on this subject. 2. Ask each staff person to identify one or more of the Standards that they want to achieve. Rank the top one to three priorities that are agreed upon by all staff members. Taking your top priority, use the worksheet provided to develop your plan of action. You may want to start with a Standard that will be fairly easy to achieve but important to you. For example, increasing your number of paid sick days. For those child care teachers who are represented by a union, this process can be used to improve the current union contract. 3. Determine the cost for each of your top priorities. It is important to place a dollar amount on the various goals you have set. Some pro- grams decide how much money they can allocate or will raise to make changes (for example, $5,000 for the coming year) and then select their top priority. 328  Appendix 3 COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL