Our study adapts a K-12 education policy framework to assess alignment in state ECE policy systems; this narrows our focus to three policy levers: 1) standards; 2) curricula; and 3) assessment, operationalized as states’ QRISs. We examine national, publicly available data in an attempt to measure and characterize state systems alignment and the extent to which the governance of our focal policy levers are dispersed across, or housed within, different state-level institutions or agencies (i.e., alignment via governance). (author abstract)