It is nice to be validated! We are! QRIS is not – Yet !
Posted: October 10, 2013 | Author: Debbie Ellis | Filed under: "Race to the Top", Administration for Children and Families, Allies for Quality Care, CCPP-approved Provider, Child Care Advisory Council, Child Care Development Fund, Child Care Licensing, Child Care Mississippi, DECCD-MDHS, Delta Licensed Providers, Early Childhood Education Mississippi, Early Learning Guidelines (ELG), Head Start, Hechinger Foundation, Kellogg Foundation, Mississippi Building Blocks, Mississippi First, Mississippi Health Department, Mississippi Legislature, MS Department of Education, MS Department of Human Services, QRS Mississippi, Quality Rating System, School Readiness, School Readiness Mississippi, SECAC, SECAC Mississippi, Uncategorized | Tags: "Race to the Top", 2007 Market Survey Rates, Administration for Children and Families, Allies for Quality Care, CCPP-approved Provider, Child Care Licensing, child care licensing Mississippi, child care Mississippi, DECCD-MDHS, Early Childhood Education Mississippi, Early Learning Guidelines (ELG), equal access, Hechinger Report, Kellogg Foundation, Market Survey Rates, MDHS, Mississippi CCDF State Plan, Mississippi child care, Mississippi Child Care Quality Steps, Mississippi Child Care Resource and Referral, Mississippi early childhood education, Mississippi early learning system, Mississippi First, Mississippi Health Department, Mississippi State Early Childhood Institute, proposed amendments to the regulations governing child care, Quality Rating System, Quality Rating System; DECCD-MDHS; CCDF Quality Improvement, Quality Rating Systems, SECAC Mississippi, The Mississippi Center for Education Innovation |Leave a commentIt is nice to be validated! We are! QRIS is not – Yet!
At last year’s MsECA Capitol Day, Senator Brice Wiggins allegedly described the MALCCP lobby as “trouble makers” for removing Mississippi’s failed QRIS as a requirement for pre-kindergarten participation.
Congratulations to us! Our group of rabble-rouser has now joined the ranks of scientific researchers from several leading universities!
Education Week (September 11, 2013) reported the findings of the most recent QRIS study published in the journal, Science.
“Children attending highly rated pre-K programs did not have significantly better results in math, pre-reading, language, and social skills when they finished the programs, compared with the children attending lower-rated programs”.
(If that sounds familiar, these new results are much like the Rand Corporation’s study of Colorado’s Qualistar program conducted fourteen years ago!)
Study co-author Robert C. Pianta, the dean of the education school at the University of Virginia and the creator of the CLASS evaluation instrument, said:
“We’re really rolling out a big policy without knowing what the consequences of that policy might or might not be.”
Gail L. Zellman, the principal investigator on the Qualistar study for RAND, said:
“The field has not sufficiently determined how to evaluate quality and how to assess it in a valid way.”
During the 2013 legislative session, the Mississippi Association of Licensed Child Care Providers worked with Representative Toby Barker and other legislators to amend the Early Learning Collaborative Act – which is now law – to allow child care providers participating in state funded pre-kindergarten education until 2016 to select an acceptable measure of quality. It was our hope that in all that time, a measure of quality would be developed which could actually demonstrate improved outcomes for low-income children.
Sadly, after meeting with Senator Brice Wiggins and Representative Toby Barker following the close of the legislative session, the State Department of Education wrongly concluded that each Collaboration would select a required and current measure of quality for child care providers wishing to participate in state funded pre-kindergarten.
Once fully aware of that error, SDE continued as if the law didn’t matter. They spent State time and State money surveying other states on QRIS and began work to develop a pre-approved list of current instruments and selection criteria for Quality Classroom Measures designed to document classroom quality for childcare providers – without any input from MALCCP or benefit of administrative procedures.
That is the same conduct exhibited by Jill Dent and MDHS when it more than doubled its funding of Quality Stars ITERS and ECERS from $1,000,000 in FFY 2012 to $2,048,248 in FFY 2013 regardless of alleged disparate impact and very poor performance statewide after six years of implementation and before any kind of evaluation.
Now the plot thickens.
Well financed foundations and non-profits supporting ITERS, ECERS and other largely invalidated QRIS components are beginning a cycle of highly publicized speaking engagements throughout the state promoting such collaboration and laying the foundation for an expected request for still more pre-k funding for the same during the 2014 legislative session – before the first round has been funded or evaluated by PEER!
Who is to significantly benefit from such pre-k leadership if not low-income children?
Join the ranks of some of the greatest minds in education!,
Visit your legislators!
Make some “trouble” by sharing this information and hold your heads high!
We are right.
QRIS is not validated – yet!
No amount of debarment and disrespect for the capacity of self-employed child care providers will change that!
Delta Licensed Providers 
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