Jesse Leinfelder
Endorsement for Dan Haggard – NAEYC Governing Board
I urge you to support Dan Haggard for Governing Board. Dan is leading stakeholders in NM to construct an exemplary “early childhood system of systems” –recognizing the interconnectedness of all elements and efforts. As Deputy Director of Early Childhood Services he has worked for many years within state government to establish a solid foundation for early childhood. Here are a couple notable examples:
- With Dan’s leadership the higher education task force accomplished common core curriculum and syllabi for EC courses across the state, so classes taken at one institution transfer seamlessly to another. The core design is updated at minimum every 5 years, and all staff are invited to the annual Faculty Institute for targeted professional development.
- NM’s QRIS was among the first in the nation, and has undergone 3 transformations under Dan’s leadership. The current FOCUS on Children’s Learning emphasizes use by teachers of the Early Learning Guidelines in an ongoing process of authentic observation, documentation and curriculum planning. This is a very innovative approach to QRIS, designed in response to persistent low proficiency on later standardized tests and is showing promising results.
- FOCUS embraces child care, state PreK, early intervention Parts C and B, and home visiting—bringing all these programs/systems under a standards-based umbrella, with common understanding of our goals for children and families. With Dan’s guidance NM is building the data management capabilities necessary for unified planning, reporting and accountability of these early childhood systems. Dan promotes participation by all stakeholders in collaborative planning for policy and program development. He has been involved with NAEYC initiatives for many years, is a strong leader of TEACH and WAGES, and maintains collegial connections with several key NAEYC leaders—preparing him well for service on the Governing Board.