Abstract:
As quality rating and improvement systems (QRISs) increasingly become the key strategy for improving the quality of early care and education, it is critical to understand and examine how such systems define quality, the benchmarks used to indicate quality, and the opportunities in place to support improvement. This report examines the extent to which QRISs support the professional development of practitioners and include in their rating rubrics key ingredients - staff qualifications, direct compensation, and the factors related to work settings - that have been linked to quality.
Excerpts from the report:
We report on our investigation of both quality rating and improvement system supports
for professional development and on rating rubrics related to staff formal education, compensation and benefits, and adult work environments in center-based programs. Here, we examine the extent to which these key ingredients for program improvement are included within and vary across quality rating and improvement systems. We anticipated that staff qualifications and professional development, as they have largely been the focus of improvement efforts in the early care and education field, would be consistently included in systems. As QRISs are becoming the primary strategy for quality improvement, we were also interested to learn the extent to which QRISs attend to the other key ingredients - compensation and factors related to work settings - that have been linked to quality.
This investigation describes the variety of ways in which different QRISs identify and define these key elements associated with supporting staff, both as individuals and as a group, to improve and sustain quality. We used the Child Trends Compendium of Quality Rating Systems and Evaluations as our major source of information of QRISs. To gain additional insight into how systems are operationalized, we conducted interviews during spring and summer 2010 with key stakeholders from four jurisdictions with varying QRISs characteristics, Colorado, New Mexico, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia (D.C.). To clarify particular elements of some QRISs, we alsoreviewed individual QRIS websites and corresponded with administering agency directors.
Four components of QRISs as described in system plans constitute the focus of this investigation:
1) Staff qualifications;
2) Financial incentives for professional
development;
3) Direct compensation, including salary and
benefits; and
4) Adult learning environments.