Measuring Quality

This report presents key questions about QRIS including: (1) What does the research say about the strength of existing measures of quality?

A research article that examines the times during the day and the frequency with which classroom ratios can be sample to achieve a representative classroom ratio within one state

A research article that investigates multiple ways in which parent involvement is conceived and measured in QRIS and how parent involvement relates to other aspects of child care quality.

A research article that investigates how many items are necessary to score and how many classrooms are necessary to rate to achieve a representative score on the ECERS-R based on classrooms sampled in one state

A guide to developing, implementing, and evaluating a child care quality initiative involving the collection and dissemination of child care quality indicator information to parents.

This 2007 document presents an overview of the Quality Measures Compendium, which is a framework used to review measures of the quality of early care and education settings. It is intended to provide uniform information about quality measures. Thirty-five quality measures are listed.

Report.pdf

This Microsoft PowerPoint on Early Childhood Professional Development Constructs was presented at the Leadership Symposium of the National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education in February, 2008. The focus is on common measurement approaches and alignment of goals and data across professional development, quality rating systems, and early childhood educator competencies. It is explored whether the core constructs of education, training, and credentials function to predict quality and child outcomes. Areas that need to be addressed are listed for research and systems.

This document presents a literature review on ideas, research, policy, and practice concerning quality in early learning and child care (ELCC). The literature is drawn from three main sources: (1) Canadian research and policy documents pertinent to quality issues; (2) research literature that is primarily from the United States and tends to be focused at the individual program level; and (3) and the policy analysis literature, much of which comes from western Europe, and is concerned with quality at the system level.

This report presents findings from a study of the school-based, after-school programs of Stone Soup Child Care Programs in California. A thorough review of the published after-school care literature was carried out to identify practices that are characteristic of good quality. Twenty good practices of after-school programs were identified in three categories: (1) Staff Management Practices, (2) Program Management Practices, and (3) Community Contacts. A data collection effort measured the adherence of the after-school programs to these practices.

This document summarizes findings from the 2003 reliability and validity study of the Program Administration Scale involving 67 center-based early childhood programs in Illinois.