Accreditation as an Alternative Pathway to Quality in QRIS

Sim Loh is a family partnership coordinator at Children’s Village, a nationally-accredited Keystone 4 STARS early learning and school-age enrichment program in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, serving about 350 children. She supports children and families, including non-English speaking families of immigrant status, by ensuring equitable access to education, health, employment, and legal information and resources on a day-to-day basis. She is a member of the Children First Racial Equity Early Childhood Education Provider Council, a community member representative of Philadelphia School District Multilingual Advisory Council, and a board member of Historic Philadelphia.
Sim explains, “I ensure families know their rights and educate them on ways to speak up for themselves and request for interpretation/translation services. I share families’ stories and experiences with legislators and decision-makers so that their needs are understood. Attending Leadership Connections will help me strengthen and grow my skills in all domains by interacting with and hearing from experienced leaders in different positions. With newly acquired skills, I seek to learn about the systems level while paying close attention to the accessibility and barriers of different systems and resources and their impacts on young children and their families.”
Of the 24 statewide quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS), 21 include linkages to national program accreditation and 15 include accreditation status as an alternative pathway to quality at a specific level of a statewide QRIS. While there is general agreement that program accreditation status is a valid measure of overall quality, little attention has been paid to the relationship between accreditation status and the threshold scores on classroom assessment tools such as the Environment Rating Scales(ERS: ECERS-R, ITERS-R, SACERS) and administrative assessment tools such as the Program Administration Scale (PAS), frequently used to determine incremental levels of program quality in QRIS. … Download this resource to read the rest of the research.
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