Transcript Document

A COUNT FOR QUALITY:
CHILD CARE CENTER DIRECTORS ON
RATING AND IMPROVEMENT SYSTEMS
Karen Schulman
National Women’s Law Center
NARA Licensing Seminar
September 11, 2012
Introduction
• Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) are a
strategy to assess the quality of child care programs,
assist programs in improving their ratings, and inform
parents about the quality of child care programs.
• QRIS are growing rapidly – 22 states have statewide
programs and four have QRIS in one or more
communities. It is also a key component of the Race to
the Top Early Learning Challenge.
• NWLC and CLASP spoke with child care center directors
about their experiences with QRIS to gain insight into how
the systems are working and how they could be improved.
COMPONENTS OF QRIS
Key Components for a Successful QRIS
• Strong quality rating standards
• Effective quality measurement, monitoring, and
assessment
• Incentives and support for improving quality ratings
• Efforts to make QRIS responsive to the needs of all
children
• Parent education and involvement
• Aligning standards across early care and education
settings
Staff Education, Training, and
Professional Development Standards
• Most QRIS include education and training requirements
for directors and teachers.
• Directors supported these requirements and believed that
professionalizing the workforce benefits children.
• Directors wanted more supports, including better access
to training, a wider and more diverse range of training
options, and funding to reward teachers who obtain higher
credentials.
Classroom Environment Standards
• Most QRIS use the Environment Rating Scales (ERS) to
judge the classroom environment and experience (space,
materials, activities, interactions, schedules and routines).
• QRIS rating may be based on achieving a minimum score
on each subscale and/or in each classroom, or an
average score across subscales and/or classrooms.
• Some centers are able to improve certain aspects of their
classroom environment, but find it very difficult to improve
other aspects, such as facilities that would require
expensive renovations to meet higher standards.
• Some directors believed their QRIS classroom
environment standards did not place enough emphasis on
teacher-child interaction.
Family Engagement Standards
• Criteria for family engagement can include parent-teacher
conferences, family activities, and parent advisory boards.
• Directors recognized family engagement as essential to
children’s development and supported standards in this
area.
• Most directors did not find it difficult to meet their states’
family engagement standards and many thought their
states should have even higher standards that encourage
ongoing interactions and building relationships with
families.
Center Administration and Management
Standards
• Criteria can include record-keeping practices, written
policies and manuals, and in some instances
compensation and benefits.
• Directors wanted more training and technical assistance
on business and management practices.
• Small centers particularly need support in this area since
they often lack the additional staff to devote to
administration and management.
Monitoring and Assessments
• For assessments to truly function as a mechanism for
improvement, directors thought there should be:
 Reliability and consistency among assessors and technical
assistance specialists.
 Comprehensiveness in the evaluation of their centers.
 Feedback to facilitate improvement.
 Coordination between QRIS assessments and other monitoring
requirements.
• Directors said that a well-designed assessment process
can lead to an increased sense of pride, professionalism,
and teamwork.
Monetary QRIS Supports
• Grants, awards, bonuses, tiered reimbursement
• These supports are needed cover additional costs
entailed in achieving and maintaining higher quality levels
(salaries for teachers with higher education credentials,
staff training and education, supplies and materials).
• Most child care providers rely on state and other outside
funding to help with these costs because they cannot ask
low- and moderate-income families to pay higher fees.
• Tiered reimbursement targets resources toward providers
who serve low-income children receiving child care
assistance, who could most benefit from high-quality care.
Non-monetary QRIS Supports
• Coaching, mentoring, technical assistance, peer-to-peer
support
• Help in understanding and meeting QRIS standards
• Most effective when provided on a regular and ongoing
basis
Private Supports
• Many centers must constantly fundraise and seek grants.
• Small centers lack the support available to centers that
are part of for-profit chains or larger agencies.
• Private funding is often limited in scope, only available for
a certain time period, or only available in certain
communities.
Responding to the Needs of All Children
• Directors supported a greater focus on the caregiver-child
relationship in QRIS standards for infant/toddler care.
• Directors agreed that QRIS standards should include
more specific criteria on cultural and linguistic
competency.
• Directors discussed the importance of QRIS standards
that are appropriate for the care of children with
disabilities and other special needs and program
assessors who understand and recognize appropriate
practices for children with disabilities and other special
needs that will ensure children’s safety and well-being.
Helping Families Identify and Choose
High-Quality Care
• QRIS are intended to help parents choose high-quality
care.
• Directors believed states need more consistent and
sustained efforts to inform parents about QRIS, programs’
ratings, and child care quality in general.
 Information can be provided through written materials, websites,
and child care resource and referral agencies as well as
pediatricians, parent networks, and other trusted sources.
• Directors believed child care subsidy agencies should
share information on QRIS with families receiving child
care assistance.
Aligning Standards Across the Early
Childhood System
• Licensing and QRIS are part of separate systems in most
states; standards for licensing and QRIS are sometimes not
entirely consistent or coordinated.
• Alignment between accreditation and QRIS (for example, by
making accreditation the highest quality level) can create an
extra incentive for centers to become accredited.
• Tying together QRIS and child care assistance (for example,
through tiered reimbursement) helps providers that serve lowincome children improve quality.
• Linking QRIS and state prekindergarten programs (for
example, by allowing providers to offer pre-k if they achieve a
certain quality rating) can facilitate participation in both
systems.
CONCLUSIONS AND
RECOMMENDATIONS
Cross-Cutting Lessons
• Communication among child care providers, licensors,
assessors, coaches, and parents
• Relationships between children and caregivers, programs
and parents, centers and coaches
• Resources to achieve and maintain a higher quality level
• Review and reassessment to ensure QRIS are
implemented effectively to improve the quality of care and
meet the needs of all children
Recommendations for Policy Makers
• Set quality rating standards that appropriately reflect
elements essential to the quality of care.
• Establish a quality assessment process that is reliable
and responsive.
• Provide sufficient, sustained incentives and support for
improving quality.
• Design QRIS to meet the needs of all children.
• Educate parents about QRIS and high-quality care.
• Align QRIS with other high-quality programs and
components within the early childhood system.