EMPLOYMENT OF RELATED SERVICE PERSONNEL IN PRESCHOOL PROGRAMS - A SURVEY OF GENERAL EARLY EDUCATORS

This report describes a mail survey of general early childhood educato rs to determine the extent to which representatives from various disci plines, commonly found on early childhood education teams, are employe d by general early education programs. Randomly selected respondents w ere from four types of programs: Head Start, public school prekinderga rten, public school kindergarten, and community preschool/child care. Of the 893 mailed questionnaires, 483 (54.1%) were returned and coded. Respondents indicated that programs that enrolled at least one child with disabilities tended to employ higher percentages of personnel in related service disciplines than did programs with no children with di sabilities. Among other results, surveys indicated that relatively few programs reported having sufficient related service personnel to form basic team constellations.