Report

This report provides an in-depth look at quality rating and improvement systems in Miami/Dade County in Florida and in the States of Tennessee, Illinois, Indiana and Pennsylvania.  This report, on defining and measuring quality, examines the approaches used by five states and communities to measure quality through QRIS.

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The purpose of this Brief is to highlight issues and recommendations for conducting program observations as part of a QRIS. Some of the issues in this brief apply to all early care and education settings, including family child care homes; others apply only to center-based programs with multiple classrooms. The first section of the Brief includes considerations when selecting a quality measurement tool. The second section describes issues related to hiring and training individuals to conduct

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An important long-term goal of QRIS is to improve child development and school readiness outcomes for children. This Brief examines key issues in measuring children’s development when evaluating QRIS.

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The purpose of this document is to encourage high-quality QRIS evaluations by providing timely information on evaluation options to those who may be in positions to authorize, finance, design, and refine QRISs and other quality improvement efforts, including state child care administrators, legislators, and other potential funders. This brief presents basic evaluation concepts, useful tools for determining the appropriate design and timing of an evaluation, and evaluation references and resources for those who wish to learn more.

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This report provides a crosswalk of the NAEYC accreditation system with other accreditation/assessment systems including the American Montessori Society, Head Start, and the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. The purpose of the crosswalk was to compare the other systems to determine the necessity and utility of the Connecticut Preschool and Readiness Standards. While this report was done specifically for Connecticut, readers will find it helpful since it compares different accreditation/assessment systems that states should be considering in their QRIS alignment efforts.

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As quality rating and improvement systems (QRISs) increasingly become the key strategy for improving the quality of early care and education, it is critical to understand and examine how such systems define quality, the benchmarks used to indicate quality, and the opportunities in place to support improvement. This report examines the extent to which QRISs support the professional development of practitioners and include in their rating rubrics key ingredients — staff qualifications, direct compensation, and the factors related to work settings –  that have been linked to quality.

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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 evaluation of the field test of QUALITYstarsNY, New York State's quality rating and improvement system (QRIS), that examined: program recruitment, support, and participation; the use of QRIS standards to measure quality; and the implications for state-wide implementation, based on program observations, surveys, interviews, and documents, and lead agency interviews.