Funded by the McCormick Foundation
Strengthening the Definition and Measurement of Family Partnership in Illinois’ Quality Ratings and Improvement System for Early Childhood Education
The goal of this project is to help build and strengthen Illinois’ Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) and become a national model for how to define and measure family engagement. Over the past decade, policymakers have dramatically expanded investment in Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) as a way to assess and improve the quality of early childhood education settings. QRIS push beyond basic individual state license requirements by using a set of quality indicators, typically based on community definitions, to rate the quality of programs.
Nearly every state in the country includes family engagement as one indicator of quality for their QRIS. Family engagement involves the activities and strategies by early childhood education centers to engage and support families. These family-oriented activities are an important component of early childhood education quality, which is likely why so many QRIS include it. Yet, there is a weak evidence base for states to draw upon when developing measures for family engagement in these rating systems.
Using a Two-Generation Framework to Define and Measure Family Engagement
Recognizing the importance of parents for child wellbeing, early childhood education programs often provide direct services to support parent wellbeing, such as parenting classes or education and career training. This two-generation approach uses early childhood education as a platform to simultaneously promote parent and child wellbeing. Although centers’ support of parents is considered an important element of early childhood education quality, we surprisingly have no systematic data on these parent focused activities. Moreover, we have little understanding from early childhood providers on the types of services they would like to offer to parents and the barriers to providing services as well as parents’ perspectives about the key services that they need to support their own skill development.
Key Design Elements of Study
We implement a mixed-methods study in Illinois’ QRIS to examine (1) the types of center support services that exist in Illinois; (2) barriers and opportunities to providing direct services to parents; and (3) the extent to which these activities relate to child wellbeing. Our study includes three main activities:
- Focus groups that emphasize the voices of providers and parents
- Provider survey on the types of services centers provide to parents
- Parent survey on their own education, income, employment, and household characteristics