Completing a self-assessment of your program's cultural competence is important to determine your program's areas of strength in regards to cultural competency and areas that would benefit from improvements.

Several self-assessment tools exist to help programs gather information on and make improvements to culturally competent practice. One option is the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) Pathways to Cultural Competence Checklist, which is included in this Resource Guide and was adapted in 2012 for QUALITYstarsNY. The Checklist provides a process to assess if and how culturally competent practices are being implemented in your program. The program director, staff, or provider can use the Pathways to Cultural Competence tool to reflect on overall program practices and determine areas in which they can improve.

Providing early care and learning services with a culturally competent lens is valuable not only for creating partnerships with families and parents but also in encouraging children to learn about their families, culture, and selves. Additionally, programs that promote cultural competency help children learn about and accept the diversity that they will encounter throughout their lives.

The National Association for the Education of Young Children believes that "[f]or optimal development and learning of all children, educators must accept the legitimacy of children's home language, respect (hold in high regard) the home culture, and promote and encourage the active involvement and support of all families, including extended and nontraditional family units" (NAEYC 1995, 2). Since all children are rooted in their families, we see a child's family structure and all that it entails as the core of their family's culture. This structure can include family socioeconomic status, family composition, parent's level of educational attainment, abilities of children and family members, family's immigration status, family's religion, family's home and preferred languages, parent's sexual orientation, and the way that a family classifies its race and ethnicity. Children's cultural and family socialization practices should be consistently integrated into early childhood program practice to provide higher quality early care and education (Gonzales-Mena, 2012; Grant & Ray, 2013).