Contact: Mary Stalker
Director of Communications, Research & Development
518-690-4217 ext 22
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
2/26/2013
Five stars set the bar for early
education
(Albany, New York) Early care and education has been a much talked about
issue in the last few weeks. We have Governor Cuomo and President Obama to
thank for that. The governor, in his state of the state address and the
president, in his state of the union address both addressed the benefits of,
and need for, early education. And they both added the caveat that it must be
of high quality. Quality, however, is not easy to identify, and it’s even more
complicated to measure. New York has a mechanism in place to do this, but it’s
not being fully utilized.
The Early Care & Learning Council has
released a paper that explores quality rating and improvement systems for early
care and education. The paper, A Statewide Quality Rating and Improvement System: The Case forNew York examines quality rating and
improvement systems across the United States and New York’s own system,
QUALITYstarsNY. The paper looks at how other states have implemented and
financially supported quality rating and improvement systems.
The author’s recommendation is that
QUALITYstarsNY be fully implemented and funded by New York State.
Assemblywoman Donna Lupardo of the 123rd District agrees, "At a time when both the Governor and the President
are highlighting the importance of high quality early learning, it's important
that New York State has a mechanism to measure quality. As the Chair of the
Children and Families Committee in the Assembly, I understand the need for our
children to receive high quality care from their earliest days in order to be
prepared for school, life and the global economy. I support the
recommendation of this paper."
QUALITYstarsNY is a comprehensive tested
system that assesses, rates and improves early care and education.
QUALITYstarsNY is a 5 star system; on the face of it, it is similar to hotel
star rating. However it’s much more involved than that and includes guidance
and supports for quality improvement. Due to lack of funding there are only 450
programs (including centers, family child care homes and UPK sites) across the
state are enrolled in QUALITYstarsNY.
The governor and president mentioned
Universal Pre-K (UPK) as the channel to reach more children and provide them
with the quality education they need. The reality is that UPK only reaches a
fraction of the 900,000 young children in need of early care and education. UPK
is a program for 4 year olds and operates on the school calendar. It doesn’t
work for children under 4, or those who need year round care, or can’t attend a
program that only operates 3 to 5 hours a day. 38% of New York’s school
districts do not operate UPK; in those districts it’s not an option for anyone.
So while increasing access to UPK may benefit many children, it does nothing to
ensure the quality of those programs or the quality of care and education
offered to hundreds of thousands of New York children. About 246,000 of child
receive publicly funded subsidies to receive child care separate from the UPK
system. Yet for most of these programs there is no measure of quality.
The majority of states in the nation have a
quality rating and improvement system in place to measure and improve the
quality of care and education available to young children. Without a quality rating and improvement system in
place, we are unsure of the quality of a program beyond basic licensing and
programmatic guidelines it must follow. A fully implemented quality rating and
improvement system helps to ensure both the long- and short-term success of the
children and families.
To view the full paper: http://www.earlycareandlearning.org/resources/documents/QRISbriefFINALMS.pdf
To learn more about
QUALITYstarsNY visit: www.qualitystarsny.org
###
Early Care & Learning Council: For more than
thirty-five years, the Early Care & Learning Council has been a leading
voice for early care and education in New York State. With its statewide
network of child care resource and referral agencies, the Council has
successfully fought for increases in funding to support early childhood programs
and for the reform of child care laws, regulations and policies to improve
safety and quality in child care settings. The Council was a founder and
convener of both the Child Care that Works Campaign and Winning
Beginning NY, both statewide advocacy coalitions. The Council and
partners work to increase the quality, affordability and capacity of the early
care and learning field and does so through training and technical assistance,
data management and advocacy initiatives. For more information, please call
(518) 690-4217 or visit www.earlycareandlearning.org.
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