Kathryn Tout

An exploration of goals for the professional development of early childhood educators, and an inquiry into effective practices for achieving these goals, based on a review of studies on professional development programs and their practices

An examination features of coaching and other on-site, individualized professional development strategies associated with positive outcomes for early childhood practitioners and children, based on a research review and a multi-case study of coaching in quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS)

A summary of an examination features of coaching and other on-site, individualized professional development strategies associated with positive outcomes for early childhood practitioners and children, based on a research review and a multi-case study of coaching in quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS)

This report covers 18 months of the Minnesota Parent Aware QRIS pilot from July, 2008 through December, 2009, and is part of the process evaluation of the program.  The report addresses the supply of programs and the tuition rates charged by programs in the pilot areas, provides a synthesis of data from multiple sources to describe the number and percent of eligible programs that have enrolled in Parent Aware, their patterns of enrollment, and the star ratings received by those programs.

An analysis of the child care subsidy system in Anoka, Becker, Brown, and Hennepin Counties, MN, to determine the impact of tiered reimbursement on the availability of and access to higher quality child care.

This report details the findings from the year 1 process evaluation of Parent Aware.  The first section provides a comparative analysis of Parent Aware with other QRIS.  Next, evaluation findings describe stakeholder perceptions about the program and its successes and challenges to date and provides an analysis of findings about early implementation of Parent Aware including program enrollment, recruitment, promotion and marketing, the rating process, on-site observations, and the provision of quality improvement resources and consultation.

This powerpoint explores the roles and responsibilities of quality improvement consultants and explores characteristics of effective consultants and the agencies that employ them.

This powerpoint explores several key issues in measuring quality including: which measures best capture the system wide vision of quality; are the measures driving the vision; what infrastructure is needed to support measurement of quality on a large scale; and how can these measures be used to distinguish levels of quality?

This brief reviews previous research regarding the importance of identifying the purposes of measurement, distinguishes among different purposes for conducting assessments ofquality in early childhood settings, discusses the need for precaution when assessments seek to address multiple purposes at once, and raises implications for developing future measures.