Staff at the University Children’s Learning Center on the campus of the University of North Dakota were nervous when state evaluators walked through their door.

The evaluators came from Bright & Early, North Dakota’s child care quality rating and improvement system (QRIS). The “quality” in QRIS refers to program characteristics consistent with fostering healthy child development, such as skilled teachers, research-based curricula, and parent engagement.

These systems aim to establish standards of quality in the child care field to provide parents, policymakers, and child care providers with information for crucial decisions about the future of their children, their communities, and their businesses.

Looking broadly at the rollout of QRISs across the country, early evaluations have been mixed. Independent validation studies of QRIS rating tiers generally demonstrate positive associations between the stated rating and the observed level of quality. In other words, when independent assessors observe quality-rated providers in action, their findings likely reflect the child care provider’s QRIS rating.

In 2014, Congress reauthorized the Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG), a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services program that helps fund state-run child care subsidies.The shift in CCDBG policy is an example of the increasing visibility and popularity of QRISs in public policy circles. This is occurring in some part because policymakers at every level are more aware that child care quality plays an important role in supporting child development.

Even without reading the growing stack of research on early childhood education, most parents would probably express a preference for high-quality care for their children. But how can parents identify the best options in their area? And how can child care providers find out what constitutes high quality in their field? QRISs aim to address both of these issues.

Read the full article about the childcare quality rating and improvement system by Rob Grunewald, Ben Horowitz, and Lisa Bukingoltz at Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis