Improving preschool accountability systems: Bringing individual children's experiences back to child policy

2021

Authors: Terri J. Sabol
Published in: Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8(2), 217-224
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Affiliation: Northwestern University, School of Education and Social Policy

Summary

Preschool accountability systems, including Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS), seek to assess, monitor, and improve children's outcomes across the early care and education (ECE) landscape. This article considers how to build on the QRIS framework by treating children's individual experiences within classrooms as a key indicator of quality, alongside the more traditional classroom-level measures that current systems rely on. It sets out the theoretical rationale and the empirical evidence for that shift, drawing on recent insights from developmental science, and discusses what it would take for accountability systems to incorporate individual children's experiences in practice.

Editorial summary, not the publisher’s abstract. Read the abstract of record (opens in a new tab)

Relevance

Policy & Accountability

Child Voice

Keywords

Preschool accountability

Child voice

Program evaluation

Berkeley Puppet Interview

Early childhood policy

Child-centered assessment

Educational quality

Child perspectives

Publication details

Volume: 8
Issue: 2
Pages: 217-224
Rights: The Author(s) 2021
Correspondence: Terri J. Sabol: Northwestern University

Citation

Terri J. Sabol (2021). Improving preschool accountability systems: Bringing individual children's experiences back to child policy.Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8(2), 217-224 https://doi.org/10.1177/23727322211031591