dinating with elementary schools” (Kauerz, 2013). A success of this focus on alignment
in the literature and in the data of this study is the support for communication among
grade levels and across schools. With increased communication, there are more opportunities
for collaboration among colleagues as well as the chance to learn about the work
being done at different grade levels or in different schools. This opportunity for improved
collaboration could also bring in an elementary school perspective to early learning
settings. Bringing elementary school standards and viewpoints into the early learning
setting might have an unfortunate consequence of creating expectations for preschool and
pre-k that are not appropriate for children at that age.