Description:
Parent Aware, Minnesota's Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) for early care and education programs, completed its second year of a four-year statewide expansion at the end of 2013. The purpose of Parent Aware is to promote children's optimal development and school readiness through a two-pronged strategy that (1) provides information about early care and education program quality to parents and (2) supports quality improvement of early care and education programs. Parent Aware is unique among QRIS nationally with a name that focuses on parents and resources dedicated in the system to supporting marketing efforts and parent decision-making. As a pilot program from 2007 to 2011 and throughout the early years of statewide expansion, the Parent Aware evaluation contributes research and information to support design and revisions of the system, monitoring of successes and challenges, and reporting on implementation and outcomes. For example, evaluation findings related to the validation of the Parent Aware Rating Tool and linkages between program ratings and children's school readiness will be included in reports on Minnesota's Race to the Top - Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) grant award for 2012 - 2015. The evaluation also produces findings related to implementation, the effectiveness of quality improvement supports, parent perceptions of Parent Aware and the role of Parent Aware in Minnesota's early care and education system. The overview of the Parent Aware Evaluation at the beginning of this report provides an outline of the primary research questions and the timeline for addressing each question. The purpose of this report is to analyze activities and outcomes from the second year of statewide expansion. A previous report produced after the first year of expansion focused primarily on implementation (as few programs had been rated through the Parent Aware full rating process by the time the report was released) and provided baseline findings to which findings from subsequent reports can be compared. This report on Year Two of expansion draws upon data from programs rated in three "cohorts" from the end of 2012 through the end of 2013. (author abstract)
Resource Type:
Reports & Papers
Publisher(s):
Country:
United States
State(s)/Territories/Tribal Nation(s):
Minnesota