What I Wish I Had Packed for the Journey of Becoming a Family Child Care Provider | McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership

I began my career in early childhood education as a family child care provider more than 13 years ago. I moved from an unrelated field in the corporate sector. Embarking on a new career as a family child care provider was very much like a journey. As I traveled, I grew as a professional by seeking a master’s degree in National Louis University’s early childhood administration program. I also met wonderful mentors who encouraged and supported my desire to grow and learn. Most importantly, I had the pleasure of opening my home and heart to many families whose challenges and triumphs still inspire me today. I remain honored and humbled by their trust.

However, when I decided to change careers and offer care and learning to children in my home, I did so equipped with little more than my good intentions and a desire to provide meaningful service to my community. As I reflect on the journey, I now realize a career change of any kind requires preparation, some packing of resources, and knowledge to ensure success. Good intentions are not enough.

In my current role as a program assessor, I have come to view family child care quality through three lenses: Process quality, structural quality, and the quality of business practices. Process quality relates to the quality of interactions in the care environment. Some indicators of structural quality are teacher education, curriculum, and materials. The quality of business practices relates to the benefits derived from the family child care business and the protections that are in place to ensure stability and sustainability. In my experience, these multiple lenses of quality are interconnected. Warm and nurturing interactions along with rich language exchanges are vital indicators of process quality, yet it is difficult to foster process quality without the foundation provided by the elements of structural quality, and without sound business practices, program viability is compromised. Many a fretful day and worried night might have been spared had I possessed this knowledge at the start of my career as a family child care provider.

It would seem that the most fruitful journeys begin when we have packed sufficiently. I now know that to create and maintain a high quality family child care business one must prepare in advance of the journey as well as while travelling. Securing a license is only the first step of the journey.

Vital next steps for the new family child care provider include:

1. Become a member of the organizations that support our profession like the National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC) and the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). These organizations have a legacy of advocating for high quality care and education for all children.

2. Immerse yourself in the vast historical and theoretical knowledge base our profession is built upon. Learn about the theories and practices that define high quality early childhood education. You can do this by pursuing early childhood education course work at your local community college and by attending professional development workshops offered by your local child care resource and referral agency. Continuously build upon the skills and knowledge these resources provide by doing your own independent research and reading. Stay connected to current research by visiting the peer-reviewed online journal, Early Childhood Research and Practice. Our profession is built upon a legacy of research, theory, and practice; seek and use this knowledge to guide your thoughts about the type of care and education you want to provide.

3. Access the tools used to assess family child care quality and business practices. Utilize these tools as a road map for developing or enhancing your family child care business. Firt, review these tools and note how practices are described at the low, mid, and high levels of quality. Next, set benchmarks for what you would like to achieve by assessing where you currently stand in relation to the indicators. Finally, evaluate what resources you need to move toward the indicators that describe higher levels of quality.

The Family Child Care Environmental Rating Scale-Revised (FCCERS-R) assesses process quality and some aspects of structural quality across 38 items. The items in the scale represent best practices in health, development, and education. The scale is designed to assess child care practices within the unique context of family child care.
The Business Administration Scale for Family Child Care (BAS) assesses business and professional practices across 10 items. The items in the scale represent best practices in family child care management.

4. Acquire the tools to help you put these practices into place. Do not reinvent the wheel! There are a variety of publications and other resources designed specifically for family child care to help guide your ongoing process, structural, and business quality improvements.

Tom Copeland, the nation’s leading expert on the business of family child care, has published a wide range of books and conducts trainings on the best practices of running a family child care business. Utilizing these resources will help you align your business with the professional practices described in the BAS.
RedLeaf Publishing offers a variety of resources and publications for family child care. Everything from the amazing Calendar-Keeper, a record keeping system for family child care, to numerous helpful books on curriculum and environments.
Build your program management and early childhood education library by sourcing the following books: The Ultimate Child Care Marketing Guide, Social and Emotional Tools: SET for Life, and Director’s Toolbox

5. To set the stage for your success, seek technical assistance from specialists at your local child care resource and referral agency. Technical specialists can help you distill the knowledge you have acquired by providing on the ground assistance in your family child care environment.

What you need to know most is that you are not alone; family child care is a vital delivery model of care and education that exists within a long tradition community care. The more you know at the start, the better equipped you will be to fully serve the children and families in your program.

Bon Voyage!

Sonja Crum Knight is an Assessor and Training Specialist for the McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership at National Louis University. Prior to joining the Center, Sonja worked as a family child care provider and a marketing executive in the cable television industry. She received her master’s degree in early childhood administration from National Louis University and a post graduate certification in online instruction from Roosevelt University. Sonja is currently pursuing a doctorate in education at Capella University.

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Measuring Organizational Conditions for Improving Quality

By McCormick Center • May 13, 2025

Leaders, policymakers, and systems developers seek to improve early childhood programs through data-driven decision-making. Data can be useful for informing continuous quality improvement efforts at the classroom and program level and for creating support for workforce development at the system level. Early childhood program leaders use assessments to help them understand their programs’ strengths and to draw attention to where supports are needed. Assessment data is particularly useful in understanding the complexity of organizational climate and the organizational conditions that lead to successful outcomes for children and families. Several tools are available for program leaders to assess organizational structures, processes, and workplace conditions, including: Preschool Program Quality Assessment (PQA) 1 Program Administration Scale (PAS) 2 Child Care Worker Job Stress Inventory (ECWJSI) 3 Early Childhood Job Satisfaction Survey (ECJSS) 4 Early Childhood Work Environment Survey (ECWES) 5 Supportive Environmental Quality Underlying Adult Learning (SEQUAL) 6 The Early Education Essentials is a recently developed tool to examine program conditions that affect early childhood education instructional and emotional quality. It is patterned after the Five Essentials Framework, 7 which is widely used to measure instructional supports in K-12 schools. The Early Education Essentials measures six dimensions of quality in early childhood programs: Effective instructional leaders Collaborative teachers Supportive environment Ambitious instruction Involved families Parent voice A recently published validation study for the Early Education Essentials 8 demonstrates that it is a valid and reliable instrument that can be used to assess early childhood programs to improve teaching and learning outcomes. METHODOLOGY For this validation study, two sets of surveys were administered in one Midwestern city; one for teachers/staff in early childhood settings and one for parents/guardians of preschool-aged children. A stratified random sampling method was used to select sites with an oversampling for the percentage of children who spoke Spanish. The teacher surveys included 164 items within 26 scales and were made available online for a three-month period in the public schools. In community-based sites, data collectors administered the surveys to staff. Data collectors also administered the parent surveys in all sites. The parent survey was shorter, with 54 items within nine scales. Rasch analyses was used to combine items into scales. In addition to the surveys, administrative data were analyzed regarding school attendance. Classroom observational assessments were performed to measure teacher-child interactions. The Classroom Assessment Scoring System TM (CLASS) 9 was used to assess the interactions. Early Education Essentials surveys were analyzed from 81 early childhood program sites (41 school-based programs and 40 community-based programs), serving 3- and 4-year old children. Only publicly funded programs (e.g., state-funded preschool and/or Head Start) were included in the study. The average enrollment for the programs was 109 (sd = 64); 91% of the children were from minority backgrounds; and 38% came from non-English speaking homes. Of the 746 teacher surveys collected, 451 (61%) were from school-based sites and 294 (39%) were from community-based sites. There were 2,464 parent surveys collected (59% school; 41% community). About one-third of the parent surveys were conducted in Spanish. Data were analyzed to determine reliability, internal validity, group differences, and sensitivity across sites. Child outcome results were used to examine if positive scores on the surveys were related to desirable outcomes for children (attendance and teacher-child interactions). Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to compute average site-level CLASS scores to account for the shared variance among classrooms within the same school. Exploratory factor analysis was performed to group the scales. RESULTS The surveys performed well in the measurement characteristics of scale reliability, internal validity, differential item functioning, and sensitivity across sites . Reliability was measured for 25 scales with Rasch Person Reliability scores ranging from .73 to .92; with only two scales falling below the preferred .80 threshold. The Rasch analysis also provided assessment of internal validity showing that 97% of the items fell in an acceptable range of >0.7 to <1.3 (infit mean squares). The Teacher/Staff survey could detect differences across sites, however the Parent Survey was less effective in detecting differences across sites. Differential item functioning (DIF) was used to compare if individual responses differed for school- versus community-based settings and primary language (English versus Spanish speakers). Results showed that 18 scales had no or only one large DIF on the Teacher/Staff Survey related to setting. There were no large DIFs found related to setting on the Parent Survey and only one scale that had more than one large DIF related to primary language. The authors decided to leave the large DIF items in the scale because the number of large DIFs were minimal and they fit well with the various groups. The factor analysis aligned closely with the five essentials in the K-12 model . However, researchers also identified a sixth factor—parent voice—which factored differently from involved families on the Parent Survey. Therefore, the Early Education Essentials have an additional dimension in contrast to the K-12 Five Essentials Framework. Outcomes related to CLASS scores were found for two of the six essential supports . Positive associations were found for Effective Instructional Leaders and Collaborative Teachers and all three of the CLASS domains (Emotional Support, Classroom Organization, and Instructional Support). Significant associations with CLASS scores were not found for the Supportive Environment, Involved Families, or Parent Voice essentials. Ambitious Instruction was not associated with any of the three domains of the CLASS scores. Table 1. HLM Coefficients Relating Essential Scores to CLASS Scores (Model 1) shows the results of the analysis showing these associations. Outcomes related to student attendance were found for four of the six essential supports . Effective Instructional Leaders, Collaborative Teachers, Supportive Environment, and Involved Families were positively associated with student attendance. Ambitious Instruction and Parent Voice were not found to be associated with student attendance. The authors are continuing to examine and improve the tool to better measure developmentally appropriate instruction and to adapt the Parent Survey so that it will perform across sites. There are a few limitations to this study that should be considered. Since the research is based on correlations, the direction of the relationship between factors and organizational conditions is not evident. It is unknown whether the Early Education Essentials survey is detecting factors that affect outcomes (e.g., engaged families or positive teacher-child interactions) or whether the organizational conditions predict these outcomes. This study was limited to one large city and a specific set of early childhood education settings. It has not been tested with early childhood centers that do not receive Head Start or state pre-K funding. DISCUSSION The Early Education Essentials survey expands the capacity of early childhood program leaders, policymakers, systems developers, and researchers to assess organizational conditions that specifically affect instructional quality. It is likely to be a useful tool for administrators seeking to evaluate the effects of their pedagogical leadership—one of the three domains of whole leadership. 10 When used with additional measures to assess whole leadership—administrative leadership, leadership essentials, as well as pedagogical leadership—stakeholders will be able to understand the organizational conditions and supports that positively impact child and family outcomes. Many quality initiatives focus on assessment at the classroom level, but examining quality with a wider lens at the site level expands the opportunity for sustainable change and improvement. The availability of valid and reliable instruments to assess the organizational structures, processes, and conditions within early childhood programs is necessary for data-driven improvement of programs as well as systems development and applied research. Findings from this validation study confirm that strong instructional leadership and teacher collaboration are good predictors of effective teaching and learning practices, evidenced in supportive teacher-child interactions and student attendance. 11 This evidence is an important contribution to the growing body of knowledge to inform embedded continuous quality improvement efforts. It also suggests that leadership to support teacher collaboration like professional learning communities (PLCs) and communities of practice (CoPs) may have an effect on outcomes for children. This study raises questions for future research. The addition of the “parent voice” essential support should be further explored. If parent voice is an essential support why was it not related to CLASS scores or student attendance? With the introduction of the Early Education Essentials survey to the existing battery of program assessment tools (PQA, PAS, ECWJSI, ECWES, ECJSS and SEQUAL), a concurrent validity study is needed to determine how these tools are related and how they can best be used to examine early childhood leadership from a whole leadership perspective. ENDNOTES 1 High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, 2003 2 Talan & Bloom, 2011 3 Curbow, Spratt, Ungaretti, McDonnell, & Breckler, 2000 4 Bloom, 2016 5 Bloom, 2016 6 Whitebook & Ryan, 2012 7 Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Luppescu, & Easton, 2010 8 Ehrlich, Pacchiano, Stein, Wagner, Park, Frank, et al., 2018 9 Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2008 10 Abel, Talan, & Masterson, 2017 11 Bloom, 2016; Lower & Cassidy, 2007 REFERENCES Abel, M. B., Talan, T. N., & Masterson, M. (2017, Jan/Feb). Whole leadership: A framework for early childhood programs. Exchange(19460406), 39(233), 22-25. Bloom, P. J. (2016). Measuring work attitudes in early childhood settings: Technical manual for the Early Childhood Job Satisfaction Survey (ECJSS) and the Early Childhood Work Environment Survey (ECWES), (3rd ed.). Lake Forest, IL: New Horizons. Bryk, A. S., Sebring, P. B., Allensworth, E., Luppescu, S., & Easton, J. Q. (2010). Organizing schools for improvement: Lessons from Chicago. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Curbow, B., Spratt, K., Ungaretti, A., McDonnell, K., & Breckler, S. (2000). Development of the Child Care Worker Job Stress Inventory. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 15, 515-536. DOI: 10.1016/S0885-2006(01)00068-0 Ehrlich, S. B., Pacchiano, D., Stein, A. G., Wagner, M. R., Park, S., Frank, E., et al., (in press). Early Education Essentials: Validation of a new survey tool of early education organizational conditions. Early Education and Development. High/Scope Educational Research Foundation (2003). Preschool Program Quality Assessment, 2nd Edition (PQA) administration manual. Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope Press. Lower, J. K. & Cassidy, D. J. (2007). Child care work environments: The relationship with learning environments. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 22(2), 189-204. DOI: 10.1080/02568540709594621 Pianta, R. C., La Paro, K. M., & Hamre, B. K. (2008). Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS). Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. Talan, T. N., & Bloom, P. J. (2011). Program Administration Scale: Measuring early childhood leadership and management (2 nd ed.). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Whitebook, M., & Ryan, S. (2012). Supportive Environmental Quality Underlying Adult Learning (SEQUAL). Berkeley, CA: Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, University of California.