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National Center on Early Childhood Quality Assurance

The National Center on Early Childhood Quality Assurance (ECQA Center) supports state and community leaders and their partners in the planning and implementation of rigorous approaches to quality in all early care and education settings for children from birth to school age. The Center's expert staff use collaborative approaches to do the following:

  • Advance strong health and safety standards and licensing regulations that align with the Child Care and Development Fund and Head Start Performance Standards.
  • Support the development and enhancement of state quality initiatives, including quality rating and improvement systems.
  • Enhance quality assurance systems through the use of technology, data analysis, and research that promote continuous quality improvement, efficiency, and innovation.

 

Contact Us

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Announcement/Events: 
Announcing Updated Content in the QRIS Resource Guide and New Website Addresses

The National Center on Early Childhood Quality Assurance (ECQA Center) is happy to announce that we have published an updated QRIS Resource Guide. The QRIS Resource Guide and National Program Standards Crosswalk Tool have new website addresses.

Join the Child Care Licensing Community of Practice

The National Center on Early Childhood Quality Assurance (ECQA Center) understands that child care licensing administrators, managers, and supervisors have unique needs and want to communicate with others in similar roles. To connect you with your peers across the country, the ECQA Center, in...

Highlighted Tools and Resources: 
National Database of Child Care Licensing Regulations

The National Database of Child Care Licensing Regulations is a tool for finding and searching state child care licensing regulations and licensing agency contact information. It also includes links to other state and national early childhood program standards.

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Program Standards Crosswalk

The Program Standards Crosswalk is a tool designed to help States that are developing and aligning program standards for licensing, quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS), and/or prekindergarten programs, to search and compare the content of several sets of national standards.

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QRIS Resource Guide

The QRIS Resource Guide provides guidance for States as they explore key issues and consider decision points during the planning and implementation of a quality rating and improvement system (QRIS).

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Provider Cost of Quality Calculator (PCQC)

The Provider Cost of Quality Calculator (PCQC) is a tool that calculates the cost of care by levels of quality based on site-level provider data. The tool can help state policymakers, child care providers, and other stakeholders understand the costs associated with delivering high-quality child care services.

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Resource Search: 
125 resources found.
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Early Learning and Development Guidelines

This document provides current website links to early learning and development guidelines (ELDGs) from the 50 states and the District of Columbia. At this time, all states have developed ELDGs for preschool children (3 to 5 years old...

Addressing the Decreasing Number of Family Child Care Providers in the United States

Action is needed to ensure that family child care remains a strong, healthy component of the early childhood education system. This brief examines the reasons family child care homes close and offers information...

QRIS Management and Partners 2017 Fact Sheet
This fact sheet describes the numbers and types of organizations responsible for the administration and management of a QRIS as well as their responsibilities and types of agreements

All of the fact sheets in this series are available...

Quality Rating and Improvement System Fact Sheets

This is a series of fact sheets about the state of quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS). Data are from the Quality Compendium, a catalog of the QRIS operating in the United States.

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Strategies to Strengthen Family Child Care: Addressing the Decreasing Number of FCC Providers

This second webinar in the Strengthening Family Child Care series explored possible reasons behind the decrease in family child care (FCC) providers, and strategies that...

Strategies for Strengthening Family Child Care: Using Data to Inform Policy Change

This webinar explores strategies for understanding your family child care (FCC) population and reaching out to and engaging FCC providers; and, outlines supports and services that can help improve the access to and sustainability of...

Family and Stakeholder Engagement in QRIS 2017 Fact Sheet

This fact sheet describes the QRIS family-engagement indicators and stakeholder-engagement campaigns implemented in 2017.

All of the fact sheets in this series are available...

Program Participation in QRISs in 2017 Fact Sheet

This fact sheet summarizes QRIS program participation in 2017 by program type and quality level; this document also summarizes the types of data QRISs collect on child demographics.

All of the fact sheets in this series are available...

Shared Services to Build and Sustain Quality 2018 - Meeting Resources

A library of resources from the 2018 Shared Services to Build and Sustain Quality meetings is available. The National Center on Early Childhood Quality Assurance (ECQA...

Sustaining Quality Improvement at All Levels of the Early Learning System

This resource was presented as part of the systems-building sessions at STAM 2018.

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