Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

By combining elements of program accountability and consumer education, Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) are now widely used by states to increase the level of child care quality available in the marketplace. Indeed, since 1997 (when the first QRIS was adopted) 40 states have implemented such a system. Although the specific features of QRIS vary from state to state, the goals are virtually identical: to establish a set of quality benchmarks that child care programs can meet; develop and utilize tools to measure program quality; produce rankings of quality; and communicate rankings to consumers. An important component of states’ QRIS relates to professional development. Specifically, states increasingly mandate or provide financial incentives for child care teachers to undertake professional development coursework, obtain post-secondary degrees in early childhood education (or a related field), and/or engage in on-going training. Thus it seems likely that QRIS has important implications for the characteristics, quality, and compensation of the child care workforce.

The goal of this project is to shed light on this question. In particular, I will draw on multiple sources to create a detailed database of states’ QRIS provisions. These state-level characteristics will be merged to micro-data from various sources that contain information on child care workers’ human capital characteristics and earnings (e.g., Current Population Survey, American Community Survey, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, and Quarterly Workforce Indicators). The empirical analysis will estimate reduced form (DD-type) regressions of educational attainment, turnover, and earnings (among other things) on various QRIS characteristics, controlling for demographic characteristics as well as unobserved state and year effects. Results from this study may inform the ways in which QRIS is altering the observable inputs to the production of child care quality. Furthermore, the results may shed light on the ability of QRIS to increase the incentives for high-skilled individuals to choose employment in the child care field.