Moving Up the Ladder: How Do States Deliver Quality Improvement Supports Within Their Quality Rating and Improvement Systems?
As national attention has increasingly focused on the potential for high-quality early childhood education (ECE) to improve children’s school readiness, states have developed quality rating and improvement systems (QRISs) to document the quality of ECE programs, support systematic quality improvement, and provide clear information to families about their child care choices. Nearly all states in the nation currently operate—or are planning to implement—some form of QRIS. This brief discusses quality improvement supports, including their prevalence in state and regional QRISs, and key considerations for their implementation.