Evaluation

Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) for early care and education and school age care programs are designed to collect information about quality and to use that information to produce program-level ratings, which are the foundation of a QRIS.

Validation of QRIS for Early Care and Education and School-Age Care (April 2012).pdf

The use of Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRISs) is continually expanding across the country; in 2010, there were 25 states operating or piloting QRISs and now nearly every other state is planning to or has already begun developing a QRIS or another quality improvement (QI) initiative (Tout, Starr, Soli, Moodie, Kirby, and Boller 2010; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2010b).

The QRIS Evaluation Toolkit (August 2011).pdf

QUALITYstarsNY is New York’s quality rating and improvement system that is being implemented in targeted communities with funding from the State Department of Education. The goal of the recruitment project was to recruit suitable applicants for the 2012-2014 implementation of QUALITYstarsNY. Early care and education programs were recruited and selected primarily from communities within and around Persistently Low Achieving public schools.

QSNY Recruitment Evaluation Report 12-31-12.pdf

QUALITYstarsNY is New York’s quality rating and improvement system that is being implemented in targeted communities with funding from the State Department of Education. The QUALITYstarsNY Readiness Project was an early strategy to engage the early care and learning community by making QUALITYstarsNY information available in local communities and preparing programs for future statewide implementation. This was accomplished by training workshop facilitators who then provided multiple workshops within 10 regions of the state.

QSNY Readiness Evaluation Report 10-31-12.pdf

Study shows how quality improvement happens.

ASM_2012_16_fall_1.pdf

The Snapshot is a time sampling observation instrument designed to describe children’s exposure to instruction and engagement in academic activities as well as to describe activities and adult responsive involvement. The Snapshot’s unique contributions to previous observational instruments are in the teacher engagement of the children and children’s engagement with academic activities sections.

TheSnapshot-MultiStateCodeSheet.doc

As a part of the FACES study*, Mathematica Policy Research designed and conducted a study to assess the extent to which using different observation measures and protocols to evaluate classroom quality may affect (1) the resulting scores and (2) the reliability of the measures.

SRCD poster 2011 3_25.pdf

This report details what was learned from the piloting of BrightStars, Rhode Island's quality rating and improvement system. Substantial changes were made to BrightStars as a result of this pilot.

Report.pdf

This evaluation brief is one in a series of evaluation briefs conducted on behalf of Kentucky STARS for KIDS NOW.  Within this brief, you will find links to other reports written as part of Kentucky’s process evaluation. This particular evaluation brief is to inform a discussion of alternative rating structures for Kentucky STARS for KIDS Now. The brief provides a theoretical review of possible rating structures.

Report.pdf

The field of early childhood education continues to grapple with the issue of understanding quality in classrooms. The lack of clarity in definition (or conceptualization) and related ability to assess (or operationalize) quality has contributed to a reliance on the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS-R), which is often interpreted to be synonymous with the quality of a classroom. Likewise, the ECERS-R (although a measurement tool) is often used to define quality.