Laura Hawkinson

The New Mexico Public Education Department developed the Kindergarten Observation Tool (KOT) as a multidimensional observational measure of students' knowledge and skills at kindergarten entry. The primary purpose of the KOT is to inform instruction, so that kindergarten teachers can use the information about their students' knowledge and skills from the KOT to inform their curricular and pedagogical decisions. Stakeholders also are interested in using data from the KOT for other purposes, su...

This report describes the quality improvement efforts of early childhood education programs participating in Iowa's Quality Rating System (QRS). It identifies supports and barriers to quality improvement and examines how quality improvement supports and activities relate to changes in program quality ratings across time. The study team developed the following research questions for this study in partnership with stakeholders in Iowa. Among early childhood education programs participating in t...

A quality rating and improvement system (QRIS) is a voluntary state assessment system that uses multidimensional data on early childhood education programs to rate program quality, support quality improvement efforts, and provide information to families about the quality of available early childhood education programs. QRISs have two components: systematic ratings of program quality and integrated quality improvement support and activities. The latter component aims to help programs make impr...

This report describes common and unique approaches that Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Midwest Region states have adopted in developing and implementing their quality rating and improvement systems (QRISs). A QRIS is a method for assessing, improving, and communicating the quality of early childhood education and care providers. The study examined the ways that Race to the Top--Early Learning Challenge grants have shifted the QRIS landscape and how states have been influenced by the gr...