# Presentation: 037088

## Issues in Measuring Child Care Quality

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

## 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

## 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.

## 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.

## 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)

## ERS Conceptual Framework

- Child Outcomes

**Health, safety, comfort of the classroom environment**

**Teacher behavior and interactions with Children**

**Children’s activities**

**Space and furnishings(8)**
**Personal care routines (6)**

**Language and reasoning (4)**
**Interactions (4)**

**Activities (10)**
**Program structure (4)**

## 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 don’t 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.

##  Project Upgrade Conceptual Framework

- Child Outcomes
- (language,
-  emergent literacy)

**Language/literacy- rich environments, activities**

**Teacher Behavior,  interactions to support language, literacy**

**Literacy-rich environments**

**Language/**
**literacy curricula**

**Training and ongoing mentoring**

**Classroom and take-home materials to support literacy**

## 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.

## Children's Activities

**Routines, transition, gross motor play**

**Circle time**

**Routines, transition, gross motor play**

**Circle time**

**Developmental activities**

**Language/**
**literacy activities**

**Developmental activities**

**Language/**
**literacy activities**

## 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.