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Produced by Research Connections
Peer Reviewed JournalCurrent Filters: Resource Type:Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects [remove]; New in five years [remove]; Pub Year:2008 [remove];
8 results found.|
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Assessing States' Child Care Quality Rating Systems (QRS) Statewide or local child care Quality Rating Systems (QRS) are in place in 26 states and are under consideration in many others as tools to measure, monitor, and promote quality in early child care and education programs. The QRS Assessment produced a series of products as a resource to inform decision-making about and evaluation of QRS. Key products include: (1) a compendium of QRS, (2) two in-depth study reports (one focused on quality measurement and one on the role of QRIS in integration of the early care and education system); (3) a secondary data analysis on quality measurement, and (4) a toolkit for evaluating QRIS. Research questions include: (1) What is the variation in how select QRIS define and measure quality?; (2) What processes are used to measure components and determine an overall rating?; (2) What is the availability (and use) of consistent and reliable data on quality measurement?; (4) What role does QRIS have and to what extent does it contribute to integration of early care and education programs?; (5) How could states and localities monitor and assess the extent to which QRIS contribute to ECE system development?; (6) What is the prevalence of quality rating components across QRIS and at different levels?; (7) How does the prevalence of quality rating components differ between rating levels across QRIS and between types of providers (such as Head Start and accredited centers)?; (8) What is the unique effect of each quality component on observed quality?; and (9) What patterns of quality profiles emerge based on unique effects of components and how do these profiles map to actual rating levels in QRIS? |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Policies Database The Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Policies Database provides a single source of detailed information on CCDF policies across time and across the fifty states, territories, outlying areas, and the District of Columbia. The database includes policies regarding family eligibility, application and redetermination, priorities and waiting lists, family payments, provider requirements, reimbursement rates, and select quality and administration information from the CCDF plans. The database captures programs funded in whole or in part by CCDF funds, policies that can be coded with acceptable consistency across states, and policies that have been implemented. It captures changes across time, key county-level variation, and different treatment for different subsets of families. Data will be made available to the public in the form of the annual Book of Tables, capturing a subset of policies for a specific point in time. The full database detail will also be made available to the public. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Improving the Quality of Child Care Available and Used by Low-Income Working Parents and At-Risk Families through the Development of an Integrated Data Systems Model for Policy Research and Decision-Making The goal of this project is to develop an interagency, integrated data system for the purpose of assessing accessibility and quality of early care and education programs available to and utilized by low-income working parents and at-risk families, as well as the impact of quality initiatives to support the school readiness of children in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Steps to creating the unit include: identifying current data collected at the state and local levels; assessing data quality and gaps; establishing appropriate data sharing and protection agreements; and designing and incrementally building and deploying the system. The data system produced will be a web-accessible, data management system designed to provide reliable data usable by appropriate state, local, nonprofit, academic and other stakeholders, to increase support for policy-level decision-making in Virginia. The following questions are addressed: (1) What types of and what is the quality of child care being used by families in the subsidy program?; (2) Does this vary by locality and family characteristics, such as ethnicity?; and (3) How are these children faring in Kindergarten? |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Maine Child Care Research Capacity Project: A Study of Program Quality and Children's Progress The purpose of this project is to conduct an evaluation of Maine's Quality Rating System (QRS), a voluntary, four-step program designed to increase awareness of the basic standards of early care and education, to recognize and support providers who are providing care above and beyond those standards, and to educate families and the community about what high quality care is and why it is important. The evaluation focuses on standards of program quality of child care in Maine and on one component of program improvement: the use of child level assessment data. The project addresses three broad research questions: (1) What are the differences in program quality between programs enrolled in the QRS and programs not enrolled in the QRS? (2) What is the impact of the federal Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) on improving the quality of care available to and utilized by low-income working parents?; and (3) How are programs assessing the developmental progress of infants and toddlers using that information for program improvement? |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Maryland Cooperative Agreement to Merge Data Files to Research the Effect of Subsidy Programs on School Readiness A recent shift of the child care subsidy program to the Maryland State Department of Education in 2006 has allowed for increased collaboration among the child care licensing, subsidy, and credentialing offices and the State education system. The goal of this project is to examine associations between child care subsidy receipt and kindergarteners' school readiness. The three main components of this project include: (1) enhancing and analyzing administrative data; (2) contextualizing findings from administrative data through findings from focus groups; and (3) building a research consortium with the goal of refining early childhood education policy. Research questions include: (1) How do children who received a child care subsidy the year prior to kindergarten perform on assessments of school readiness upon kindergarten entry? How do these children compare with children from low-income families who did not receive a subsidy?; (2) How do parents and community-based child care providers define high quality care and school readiness? What challenges and supports do providers experience when preparing children for kindergarten?; and (3) What is the quality of providers who accept child care subsidies, and those who actually serve subsidized children throughout the state? |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Mixed Methods Investigation of Quality Rating Systems' Influence on Program, Classroom, and Teacher Quality In an effort to improve and unify early care and education, policymakers in numerous states have developed quality rating and improvement systems, a policy that establishes common quality standards for early childhood programs. This study explored the relationship between Colorado's Qualistar Rating System and process and structural dimensions of quality as measured by the ECERS. By analyzing the association between program characteristics and changes in quality as well as by assessing the transcendence of quality definitions, I also investigated how it is unifying the early care and education system. The research questions are: (1) In what ways, if any, does participation in Colorado's QRIS relate to classrooms' process quality?; (2) In what ways, if any, does participation in Colorado's QRIS relate to classrooms' structural quality?; and (3) In what ways, if any, is Colorado's QRIS impacting the emerging ECE system? |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Social and Economic Disparities in North Carolina Communities: Issues of Access and Quality in Licensed Child Care This study evalutates access to high-quality child care across North Carolina communities. Multiple data sources are used in hierarchical linear models utilizing two and three levels to inform future state and national policies that promote equitable access to high quality child care across community contexts. The study includes three aims: (1) to estimate the availablility of high quality licensed child care programs in communities throughout North Carolina; (2) to examine the relationship between the socioeconomic context of communities and child care quality; and (3) to compare community socioeconomic contexts of child care programs participating in voluntary Environment Rating Scale assessments with child care programs not participating. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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Strengthening Families Illinois: How Management and Policy Interventions Influence the Quality of Professional-Parent Partnerships in Child Care The goals of this multiple case study were to: (1) identify how Strengthening Families Illinois (SFI) influenced changes in child care programs; (2) identify theorized characteristics of conventional and relational child care organizations; and (3) test the hypothesis that conventional bureaucratic organizational systems discourage partnerships with families, whereas relational bureaucratic organizations are more conducive to partnerships with families. |
Administration for Children and Families/OPRE Projects
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