How stable is program quality in child care centre classrooms?

Abstract

In the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) sector there is a move to reduce oversight costs by reducing the frequency of quality assessments in providers who score highly consistently across time. However, virtually nothing is known about the stability of ECEC quality assessments over time. Using a validated measure of overall classroom quality, we examined stability of quality in a sample of over 1000 classrooms in licensed child care centres in Toronto, Canada over a 3-year period. Multilevel mixed-effects linear regression analyses revealed substantial instability across all types of ECEC centres, although publicly operated centres were somewhat more stable and tended to have higher quality scores. We also found substantial variance between classrooms within ECEC centres. None of the structural, child/family and neighbourhood characteristics we examined were significantly related to stability of quality ratings. The lack of stability found in our sample does not support the use of a risk-based approach to quality oversight in ECEC. Large within centre classroom quality variance suggest that all classrooms within a centre should be assessed individually. Furthermore, classroom level scores should be posted when scores are made public as part of accountability systems. Future research should, in addition to administrative data used in our study, explore how factors such as educator training, participation in program planning, reflective practices and ongoing learning might improve stability of quality over time.

Structures and systems influencing quality improvement in Australian early childhood education and care centres

“…In many countries, the ECEC sector operates as a mixed-market system notable for its diversity, ranging from single-service providers to large organisations that operate multi-site centres. Diversity in provider size is characteristic of both for-profit and not-for-profit services in countries such as Australia (Brennan & Fenech, 2014 ), Canada (Varmuza et al, 2021 ) and Finland (Mäntyjärvi & Puroila, 2019 ), with some research suggesting that provider size can impact quality. For example, a national survey of Australian educators showed that centres that were part of a large corporate chain were rated significantly lower on having time to develop individual relationships with children than centres operated by small private operators (Rush, 2006 ).…”

“…In addition, observations of positive caregiving gathered in a large US study have shown lower scores in for-profit multi-site organisations compared to independent for-profit services, for some but not all age groups (Sosinsky et al, 2007 ). More recently, Varmuza et al ( 2021 ) have examined three years of Canadian QRIS data for single and multi-site, for-profit and not-for-profit providers using the Assessment for Quality Improvement (AQI). While there were no consistent differences in annual comparisons of quality by the size of provider, multi-site for-profit operators showed increasing AQI ratings over time.…”