Issues in Measuring Child Care Quality

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Issues in Measuring Child Care Quality

• Tenth Annual Welfare Research and Evaluation
  Conference
• June 4-6, 2007
• Washington, DC

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What is Quality?

• Explicit instruction in key skills
• Sensitive and emotionally warm interactions
• Responsive feedback
• Verbal engagement/stimulation
• An environment that is not overly structured or
  regimented

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Why Measure Quality?

• Ensure children are in healthy, safe and
  appropriately stimulating environments.
• Measure effects of efforts to improve the
  environment as a way to improve child outcomes.

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How Do We Currently Measure Quality?

• Researchers sometimes use more focused measures
  but
• Overwhelmingly, the Environmental Rating Scales
  (ECERS-R, ITERS-R, and FCCERS) are used,
  especially by states to assess the effects of
  quality improvement efforts, and..
• Quality improvement efforts are themselves guided
  by the Environmental Rating Scales.

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How Do the ERS Define Quality?

• Space and Furnishings (8 items)
• Personal care routines (6 items)
• Language and reasoning (4 items)
• Activities (10 items)
• Interactions (5 items)
• Program structure (4 items)

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ERS Conceptual Framework
Health, safety, comfort of the classroom
environment
Space and furnishings(8) Personal care routines
(6)
Child Outcomes
Teacher behavior and interactions with Children
Language and reasoning (4) Interactions (4)
Childrens activities
Activities (10) Program structure (4)
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What Does This Strategy Yield?

• Coaching on the ERS can raise average scores by
  about a point, especially for low-scoring
  classrooms. No evidence that raising scores by
  this amount results improved child outcomes.
• If what we want is a high-quality environment, as
  defined by scores of 6 or higher on the ERS, we
  have not been able to achieve it, so we dont
  know whether such change would produce the
  outcomes for children that we want.
• The elements that predict child outcomes are such
  a small part of the ERS that raising overall
  scores may not help.

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Project Upgrade Conceptual Framework
Language/literacy- rich environments, activities
Language/ literacy curricula
Child Outcomes (language, emergent literacy)
Teacher Behavior, interactions to support
language, literacy
Training and ongoing mentoring
Literacy-rich environments
Classroom and take-home materials to support
literacy
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What Does This Strategy Yield?

• Focused curricula and mentoring had a dramatic
  impact on teacher behavior and interactions and
  on child language/emergent literacy outcomes.
• The impacts brought children close to or above
  national norms on three of the four outcomes.
• This approach did not result in an
  inappropriately regimented environment or
  curtailment of developmentally-appropriate
  activities.

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Children's Activities
Language/ literacy activities
Developmental activities
Developmental activities
Language/ literacy activities
Routines, transition, gross motor play
Routines, transition, gross motor play
Circle time
Circle time
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Choices

• Continue to rely on the ERS as a coaching tool
  and a measure, recognizing that improvement in
  quality will be modest, no change in child
  outcomes.
• Identify specific goals for children of different
  ages, choose focused strategies and measures
  linked to those strategies.