Developing Measures of the Implementation and Cost of High-Quality Early Care and Education

Early testing with a sample of 30 centers suggests that the ICHQ measures are capturing important information about implementation and costs and the variation that exists across centers. The measures are doing what they are intended to, and they hold promise for working together to inform pathways to quality.

The draft implementation measures have good psychometric properties and both the implementation and cost measures demonstrate validity based on patterns with observable characteristics. The report discusses key findings about the measures such as:

• The implementation scores for each of the five key center functions produced reliable scales. The items for each function measure the same thing in different ways and together they capture the essence of the function (they hold together).
• Implementation scores for each key function have distributions that can detect differences across centers. The scores for each key function have substantial variation; we are able to tell centers apart in the middle of the distribution as well as along the tails.
• Implementation scores for the key functions are related to each other, but each also provides distinct information. We found moderate, significant associations among the implementation scores of the five key functions.
• The cost measures show that the costs of staff compensation and facilities made up nearly 80 percent of total costs, on average, in line with past cost studies. Centers invest in staff compensation (salary and fringe benefits) as the largest proportion of costs (62 percent, on average). Facilities account for another 16 percent of costs, on average.
• Centers spent the largest portion of costs on the Instruction and Caregiving function. Centers in the sample directed 33 percent of costs to the Instruction and Caregiving function, on average, and 22 percent of costs to the Instructional Planning, Coordination, and Child Assessment function.
• Implementation and cost measures vary with center characteristics in ways we would expect. In our sample, centers with high QRIS ratings have higher implementation scores and costs per child care hour, on average, on each key function than centers with low QRIS ratings.
• The implementation and cost measures are related. The implementation scores and cost per child care hour for each key function are positively related, meaning the higher the implementation score, the higher the cost of the function.

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