High-quality, well-implemented early childhood education (ECE) positively affects the learning trajectories of children who start school with lower skills than their peers, according to decades of evidence. Yet studies on ECE programs across the country reveal that too few offer high-quality programming. To date, the ECE field has focused most improvement efforts on classroom materials and interactions. Broadening these efforts to an organization-wide focus could better support quality improvement. The UChicago Consortium and the Ounce of Prevention Fund designed teacher and parent surveys, the "Early Education Essential Organizational Supports Measurement System" (Early Ed Essentials), to help ECE sites diagnose organizational strengths and weaknesses. The current study tested whether the newly-adapted and designed Early Ed Essentials teacher and parent surveys captured reliable and valid information about the organization of ECE programs-information that is also associated with existing indicators of program quality.
About the Author: STACY B. EHRLICH was a Senior Research Analyst at UChicago Consortium on Chicago School Research. She is a developmental psychologist with expertise in the areas of children's early conceptual development. Ehrlich led the development of the early childhood education research agenda at UChicago Consortium. DEBRA M. PACCHIANO is Vice President, Translational Research at the Ounce of Prevention Fund. She is responsible for the conceptualization, implementation, and evaluation of applied research initiatives to advance professional learning, quality improvement, and practice innovation in early education teaching, learning, and leadership. AMANDA G. STEIN is Director, Research and Evaluation at the Ounce of Prevention Fund. Her research interests include studying the short- and long-term trajectories of children and families participating in early education settings and advancing the definition, measurement, and testing of "high-quality" practices and organizational conditions in the early childhood field. MAUREEN R. WAGNER serves as the Project Manager and provides qualitative research support on the Early Ed Essentials project. She also staffs research and policy committees, and supports the work to translate the Early Ed Essentials framework to policy solutions. The University of Chicago Consortium on School Research (UChicago Consortium) builds the capacity for school reform by conducting research that identifies what matters for student success and school improvement. Created in 1990, UChicago Consortium conducts research of high technical quality that can inform and assess policy and practice in the Chicago Public Schools. UChicago Consortium studies also have informed broader national movements in public education. UChicago Consortium encourages the use of research in policy action and improvement of practice but does not argue for particular policies or programs. Rather, UChicago Consortium helps to build capacity for school reform by identifying what matters for student success and school improvement, creating critical indicators to chart progress, and conducting theory-driven evaluation to identify how programs and policies are working.