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Afterschool Investments Project
Promoting Quality in Afterschool Programs Through
State Child Care Quality Rating Systems
March 29, 2007
Operator: Welcome to today’s conference call titled Promoting Quality in Afterschool Programs through State Child Care Quality Rating Systems. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session.
I would now like to turn the call over to Amanda Szekely. Ms. Szekely, you may begin.
Amanda Szekely: Thank you. Welcome, and thank you all for joining us for today’s audio conference. I’m Amanda Szekely from the Afterschool Investments project, and I will be moderating the call today.
Today we are very excited to be joined by speakers from three states. We have Leslie Roesler from Pennsylvania, Liz Nusken and Donna Ruhland from Ohio, and Terry Foulkes from Missouri, each of whom will share their experiences in adapting or developing a new child care quality rating system, so that it promotes quality in school-age as well as early-care programs.
If you have not already, I encourage you to view our project website where you can find our speakers bios and handouts to follow along with. You can find the link to our website in the invitation for this audio call.
First, we will begin with a brief introduction from Andrew Williams. Andrew Williams is acting Policy Director at the Child Care Bureau.
Andrew Williams: Good afternoon. The Child Care Bureau would like to welcome everyone to the call. Invitations for today’s call were sent to State Child Care staff who work on school-age issues, Administration for Children and Families Regional Office Child Care staff, as well as Child Care Bureau funded technical assistance partners.
The Child Care Bureau funds the technical assistance network to support states, tribes and territories that administer the child care and development fund subsidy program, and the Afterschool Investments Project is part of the network funded by the Bureau.
The TA contractor for the project is the Finance Project in partnership with the National Governor’s Association Center for Best Practices, and the project is designed to help state child care officials and their partners address the unique needs of school-age children and programs. For nearly the past five years, the project has developed a variety of written materials, created state profiles and provided state specific TA in response to requests, and all those resources and materials are available on the website that Amanda just referred you to.
As part of its latest work, the Afterschool Investments Project has researched how states are using existing or newly emerging quality rating systems to strategically promote afterschool program quality, and this is the topic of today’s call. Amanda will now start the call by sharing a brief summary of what the project has learned.
Amanda Szekely: Thank you Andrew. So the Afterschool Investments Project, one of the issues we’ve worked on over the years has been trying to help child care administrators and their partner agencies at the state level, to promote the quality of school-age care. We know that state leaders from various fields include child care and education are increasingly concerned about monitoring and promoting the quality of afterschool programs, and in some cases they are actually working together around these issues.
While there may be numerous potential strategies for states to promote school-age care quality, we developed this research brief that will be complete very soon, looking at one potential strategy: how can existing or emerging child care quality rating systems be adapted to support quality in the school-age field, as well as the early-care field for which they were initially typically developed?
As most of you probably already know, child care quality rating systems are an emerging trend nationally. Currently, there are 14 states that have five quality rating systems and many other states have pilot initiatives that are ongoing. Quality rating systems, or you may hear them referred to as QRS, they allow child care providers to voluntarily meet quality standards above a baseline that’s set by the existing licensing standards in the state, and then to earn a designation such as a star rating that help consumers to locate high-quality programs. A QRS also typically provides incentives and supports to providers in order to encourage them to meet higher level quality.
Most existing rating systems that we looked at actually do already apply to school-age programs as well as early-care programs. Technically, school-age programs are eligible to participate. However, we found in our research that the standards that guide these programs often came out of the early-care and education field, and were not always developed with the unique needs of school-age programs in mind. There are many similarities between what quality looks like for early-care and school-aged care, issues like health and safety and qualified staff are clearly important across all different age groups, there are key differences between what quality early-care and school-age care look like that are important for states to consider when developing a QRS. I’m going to give you a few quick examples of what these differences are or what these differences may look like, and then I will let our speakers share with you what this has looked like on the ground.
The one example is the standards around kind of activities and programming that takes place in quality programs. While quality early-care programs help children to be fully prepared to enter school, quality school-age programs have programming and activities complementing or connecting to school day learning. It may be important for states to develop standards that reflect these differences. We found and several of the states that you’ll hear from have found that it’s particularly important involve the school-age community and people who understand the existing research about what school-age care quality looks like when developing these QRS standards.
Another issue that states may need to address is thinking about the different settings that school-age care takes place in. Programs may take place in schools, community centers, Parks and Recreation, as well as the more traditional child care centers. One particular challenge for QRS is reaching out to school-based programs. In many states, school-based programs are license exempt, because they are monitored by a state education agency. Since licensing is usually the first step in a QRS system, states may need to consider how to bring these license exempt programs into a QRS system.
And finally, school-age providers have diverse professional backgrounds. They may not have the traditional training in early education that’s required by many QRS systems, but they may have other training such as an elementary education degree or a youth development credential. So it’s important that the states consider developing standards that are flexible enough to capture this range of qualifications that quality afterschool program providers may have
You are now about to hear more about what this all looks like on the ground from three states, in particular Pennsylvania, Ohio and then Missouri, that have really considered the differences between quality early-care and school-age care in a thoughtful and intentional way, when they developed their QRS. These states have either set up separate standards for school-age programs or built in adaptations for school-age providers, so that the QRS system truly applies to school-age providers.
So our first speaker today will be Leslie Roesler. Leslie is the Community Initiatives Project Manager at the Pennsylvania Key, and she will speak about how Pennsylvania developed the Keystone Stars Program, so that it would promote quality in school-age as well as early-care programs.
Leslie Roesler: Thank you Amanda. Keystone Stars is Pennsylvania’s comprehensive continuous quality improvement systems for both early learning and school-age programs, and it focuses on four key areas. Those areas are staff qualifications and professional development, program environment, partnerships with family and community and leadership and management. Keystone Stars in Pennsylvania has actually been operational since 2002
While Stars does not provide a separate track for school-age, it does address some of the variations for school-age programs that Amanda mentioned in their findings. Those of part-time staff, the range of professional backgrounds, the varying settings and also the thinking about in terms of balancing the activities that occur afterschool with the linkage to what occurs during the school day, and I will be sharing some of that later on in this conversation.
The school-age community was included in the planning process from the beginning through feedback from statewide school-age committee, which was made up of organizations that are providers of school-age, also included the affiliate for the National Afterschool Association and our regional school-age projects, which provide professional development and technical assistance throughout the state for school-age providers. By doing so, Pennsylvania has been able to address some of these variations in school-age care programs. Pennsylvania continues to convene this group and has recently convened additional individuals in the school-age community to further improve upon these adaptations.
The foundation for Keystone Stars Quality Rating System of course is research-based performance standards, which provide core definitions of program quality. Participating programs are subject to annual monitoring, additional training, professional development, technical assistance resources and supports are available that link the quality of the early childhood and school-age workforce to core definitions of program top quality. These resources to support and sustain and prepare school-age practitioners include merit awards, education and retention awards, a teach program, vouchers to reimburse coursework that earns college credit, and also a school-age credential.
We’re still improving on how to deal with some of the issues and some of our challenges, and I think that’s one of the things that sort of keeps this all alive for us, but some of the following examples that I’m going to share, I think will help to clarify how we have included the afterschool community and our quality rating system, and I will address these based on the four areas, beginning with staff qualifications and professional development.
We’ve created a career lattice that includes not only the early childhood community but also the school-age community. Staff in school-age programs may have degrees in related fields, not just in early childhood education but also credits in elementary education. Related fields that are recognized in the career lattice include human development, psychology, sociology, social work, education, pediatric nursing, home economics, family consumer science, recreation, child and family studies and business. So this has been one way that we’ve been able to address, sort of the diverse backgrounds
We also have in the Keystone Stars, as a part of the requirements and on the career lattice the child development associates. Knowing that there’s not a national credential for school-age practitioners and to meet the need for those folks to be able to meet some of the requirements in Keystone Stars, Pennsylvania created a school-age professional credential, which is in its pilot year this year. The credential is a competency based program modeled after the child development associate. The credential was developed to support school-aged practitioners participating in Stars, and is recognized in the same way as the CDA for the purposes of the merit award, education and retention awards and also the career lattice.
This credential currently articulates to credit at three colleges in the states and we continue to get inquiries from other colleges that are interested in offering the course work and offering this for credit. The regional school-age project in its pilot year, in partnership with the regional professional development committees are also responsible for negotiating with additional colleges with regard to college credit, and are responsible for putting this course work out on the ground throughout the state. We currently have approximately 100 people enrolled in the credential. The rigor of the credential requirements are written to appeal to the assessment requirements of colleges as well.
Additionally, Pennsylvania is currently into the final stages of revisions of its child care regulations. Actually, the revisions are finished but we need to put them before the state to be voted on, and the credential has been included as a part of that, as a part of the regulations and will be recognized in the same way as the CDA. We recognize with equivalent of nine credit hours from an accredited college or university in elementary education or child development, and also, and one year experience with children. So for the purposes of licensing, that’s how that would be recognized.
Additionally, with regards to the staff qualifications, we also have a requirement that individuals would need to get 15 hours of orientation training. We developed self-learning modules that are 15 modules, each about an hour in length that would equate to 15 hours for the staff orientation, that specifically address the needs of school-age programs. These modules build on one another, and are to be completed in sequence and help for programs to become familiar with their current setting, the children in their care, and also the school-age, school-age care in general, and supervisors of these individuals completing this are also required to review these modules, so that there’s some sort of interaction between these folks and meet the level one requirement on our career lattice
Additionally, program staff are required to obtain additional professional development as programs move up through the star levels, and as they move up, these hours increase. Taking into account the part-time nature of many school-age programs, staff working fewer than 500 hours have reduced annual training requirements.
We’ve created a career lattice that includes not only the early childhood community but also the school-age community. Staff in school-age programs may have degrees in related fields, not just in early childhood education but also credits in elementary education. Related fields that are recognized in the career lattice include human development, psychology, sociology, social work, education, pediatric nursing, home economics, family consumer science, recreation, child and family studies and business. So this has been one way that we’ve been able to address, sort of the diverse backgrounds.
Additionally, two observation training modules specific to school-age programs have been developed to support the core training requirements in addition to other observation modules who are addressing other age groups.
Child assessment at star four: the programs are to complete a child assessment twice a year and share with parents, and again, looking at the amount of assessment that programs get, the children get within the school and also the limited time that folks are enrolled in the school-age programs, again, school-age programs would only need to complete a child assessment once during the school year.
Curriculum: participating staff programs or stars programs are to use appropriate learning standards. For early childhood programs, these are state created early learning standards. For school-age programs we have encouraged school-age programs that they should be linking their afterschool activities to the Pennsylvania Department of Education Academic Standards, and while school-age programs are not expected to nor should they look like the school day, we do encourage them to be linking what they do afterschool to those standards. This actually has been one of our challenges and certainly has produced an opportunity for us to create some additional – and to be thinking about creating some additional professional development to help folks understand how to do that.
In terms of program assessment, we do use the environment rating scales. The school-age care environment rating scale is the tool that is currently used for school-age programs. This actually is the oldest tool of the environment rating scales, and as a result, the Pennsylvania ERS assessors have worked with the authors of the SACERS to do – to make some adaptations to the SACERS for Pennsylvania, to create some position statements that would be more appropriate for what it is that we’re doing, and this was also done in collaboration with the school-age advisory committee.
In terms of the partnership with family and communities part of the stars, stars does require programs to provide information regarding transitioning children to other classroom or educational settings. For school-age children, since they do spend some time in self-care, we have (inaudible) programs as a part of the requirements for stars to be sharing information within their programs, with the students but also with families about self-care, and to incorporate activities into their program day around life skills and self-care. Parent resources have been developed to support programs and meeting this standard as well.
More recently there has been some discussions started around this particular standard about further defining education setting in the context of school-age to include other community-based activities such as dance, or when a child kind of outgrows the existing program and how do we support transition to another type of program knowing that we don’t want to really have children in self-care for very long
And I think for us, one of the key important things in terms of the whole development of this is that you can never have too many of the stakeholders involved in this and making sure that that stakeholder involvement is involved and that you have a very, very diverse group of folks. The more voices, the better. And especially to be thinking about how higher Ed is included in these conversations as well, certainly makes the transition to articulating professional development to credit an easier transition.
And, I think I can pass it on and wait for questions.
Amanda Szekely: Thank you Leslie. I would now like to introduce our next speaker, speakers actually, Liz Nusken and Donna Rouland at the Ohio Child Care Resource and Referral Association. Liz directs the Ohio Afterschool Network, which is housed at the Research and Referral Association, and Donna is the Director of Professional Development at the association. They will discuss the Step Up to Quality System, which was recently implemented statewide in Ohio, and how the Step Up To Quality System now applies to school-age programs.
Liz Nusken: Thank you Amanda. This is a great opportunity for us to both learn from what’s going around the country and share what we’re doing. I have some prepared comments and then Donna, who’s the Director of Professional Development is available to answer some questions specific to professional development and our registry program
Step Up to Quality is our voluntary rating system for child care programs that are licensed by Ohio’s Department of Job and Family Services, and it measures and rewards quality above and beyond the basic licensing requirements.
We have five quality benchmarks. They are ratio, staff education and qualification, specialized training, administrative practices, early learning, and then each of those benchmarks has an indicator, and programs and centers can be rated one, two or three stars, with three being the highest, and for programs that aren’t quite ready to be rated with a star, we call them emerging stars, and those are centers that are assessed, they’re not ready for a star, but they receive technical assistance to get them ready to be rated.
The Step Up to Quality Program provides targeted support and resources to improve programs that includes technical assistance and incentives that include financial support for NAA accreditation and critical repairs and curriculum. All ODGFS centers that are licensed are eligible, whether it’s a center-base program or a stand-alone program, and all the staff in these programs are required to register with our professional development registry, which Donna can answer questions about when we get to the Q&A piece.
We have afterschool specialists in each of Ohio’s child care research and referral system that are available to conduct the assessments. We also use the school-age environmental rating scale, and then technical assistance and training is provided by our afterschool specialists where needed.
So, that being said, our program is very, very young. Ohio is only two and a half months into the implementation of Step Up to Quality. No school-age programs have yet applied. We did have a pilot period last year, but no school-age programs participated at that time. It was decided that we wanted to take time in developing the school-age piece and not try and fit it into the early-care and education piece, which was much further along. So, right now, our benchmarks and indicators are very general and they’re kind of placeholders for us while we take the time to do some research and make some decisions.
The afterschool and school-age care community involvement has been from the start, the Ohio afterschool network fiscal agent is the Ohio Child Care Resource and Referral Association, so we work very closely with the child care system, the R&R system and school-age providers.
In the fall of 2005, we actually had Amanda and some other folks from Afterschool Investments help Ohio to facilitate a focus group, which included funders, resource and referral associations and different kinds of programs, including both school-age programs and also community-based programs.
So now, the Ohio afterschool networks professional development committee is researching and it’s going to make decisions based on what we learn from the focus group, what we’ve learned from the implementation of the Step Up to Quality that’s happened with the early-care and education centers and programs, and then also we’re going to learn from this conversation and other conversations that we have across the country.
Some of the issues that have emerged in the focus group and conversations that have continued over the time is just the idea of, should we hurry up and get some more specific indicators in place for school-age or take our time and research them more carefully, and have a more – a process that engages all kinds of stakeholders and providers?
Another consideration too, we have one system of rating. The environmental rating system is what we’re using right now for all the different age levels and providers or should we have different rating systems that we use?
There’s a lot of conversation about adopting all or just some of the National Afterschool Association standards and the ratio element was one that had generated a lot of conversation. We have gone with, for the lowest star, the one star, a ratio of 1 to 18 and the NEA standards is 1 to 15, which we made our third star.
Considerations in terms of staff qualifications for full-time versus part-time staff, and then also, the lack of commonly accepted professional development and specialized training for afterschool professionals, generating – continues to generate a lot of conversation, and we are eager to see what our professional development committee is going to come up with.
Some of the challenges that we are anticipating is that not all afterschool programs are licensed through ODGFS here in Ohio. A number are licensed through the Ohio Department of Education, and there are also some that – lots of programs that don’t view themselves as child care providers, they should be licensed, but they’re not, and we need to bring them in and engage them in the system, and we think there are going to be issues probably related to the ratio that we have for the difference star levels.
And also, there are some in our tiers, there is some early learning education that may be to our school-age providers. So our lessons learned are very few at this point, but we hope to capitalize on what other folks have done around the country.
Amanda Szekely: Thank you, and I just want to remind everyone that you’ll have a chance to ask questions after all the speakers have spoken today.
And our next speaker today is Terri Foulkes from the Missouri Opportunities in Professional Education Network. Teresa is the Assistant Director of this network, and Missouri is currently in the early stages of implementing a pilot quality rating system in the state. You may have noticed that we’ve gone, we’ve gone in order today from the most developed systems to the systems that are still in development, and Missouri has developed a separate track for school-age program in their pilot system. Terri will now speak about these efforts.
Teresa Foulkes: Okay, thank you. There is a PowerPoint available on the website, which contains more information than what I’ll give you today. I’ll be using the PowerPoint as a framework, but to go into that level of detail, it takes much longer than 10 minutes. But you can use it as a reference.
Missouri’s quality rating system is a method to assess and continually improve the quality of early childhood and school-age/after school programs. One of the goals in Missouri’s QRS is to allow subsidy receiving children access to higher quality programs, by linking state child care subsidies to increase star ratings, pending state approval, and since over $3 million in subsidy goes to school-age children per month, the state QRS committee had a shared expectation that the QRS would apply to all licensed programs regardless of age groups.
In Missouri, programs can be licensed as family child care, group homes or centers based on their location and capacity regardless of the age groups served. School-based afterschool programs would be licensed as centers, and we also know that we have some home-based programs that serve only school-age children.
So, within those licensing types, we developed three models, a home-based program model, an early childhood center model – or center and group home model – and a school-age center and group home model. All three models are structured the same with eight components and five tiers. The individual differences are within the items and their placement within the components and the tiers, and I’ll talk about some of those in a few minutes.
I also wanted to briefly mention that our school-age representation on the QRS State Committee has included the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education-Community Education Division who administers or provides our state’s 21st century grants, the state afterschool network’s quality committee and our NAA affiliate called MOSAC2, Missouri School Age Community Coalition.
In the fall of 2005 and the summer of 2006, we held several work groups and focus groups to get input from the school-age community on the QRS. These invitations were sent out through the Network’s quality committee and also to MOSAC2 members. The input from the work groups was used to make some of the modifications that will be mentioned in the next section.
As far as our pilot, we are currently piloting the school-age model at approximately 30 sites. The pilot sites have a mix of programs, some are 21st-century and SAC grantees, some are corporate, some are school based, some are YMCA’s, Boys and Girls Clubs, home-based programs, middle school and high school programs. Participants in the pilot will participate in focus groups and also complete surveys about the process, and the data collected in all of these methods will be presented to our state QRS committee, so that modifications can be made to the model, if needed.
Next, I’m going to run through the components of the QRS, which are highlighted in the PowerPoint, if you happen to have printed that out and have it with you. It’s starting on slide 13 of that presentation. The items in red, as we go through, if you have it printed in color, indicate school-age specific ones, and I’ll highlight them in my narrative also. There are eight components of Missouri’s QRS. We’ve divided them into three categories, Program Personnel, Program Content and Program Management and I’ll walk through each of those sections.
We also have five tiers that range from Tier 1, which is licensing through Tier 5, which is accredited by a state approved accrediting entity. One of the items that we added based on input from the school-age workgroups and focus groups is the Pre-QRS designation. In Missouri, also, we have programs that are exempt from licensure or inspected, and we added a Pre-QRS designation so that programs could see themselves within the QRS model and know what it is that they need to do if they were to choose to participate, which would be to first get licensed and then move up the other tiers.
Missouri recognizes two accrediting bodies for the school-age programs or the school age classrooms within early childhood program. We have a Missouri Accreditation, which is a state accrediting body and also the NAA accreditation. It’s important to note that, let’s say that there was an early childhood program that had a school-age classroom, in order for that program to earn points at tier five, they would need to have all of their age groups accredited, so a combination of NAEYC accreditation and NAA accreditation or Missouri Accreditation, which covers both age groups.
I’m going to go through the program personnel section. There are four components within there. The first is administrator education and training. This looks at the administrator’s education and training based on capacity, the licensing capacity. One of the things that we designed for the school-age version is that we have included the youth development credential and two one year certificates that are available, specifically in the Kansas City area at this time, into Level 2 on our Career Lattice. So directors that have those credentials or certificates would be able to earn points associated with Level 2 on our Career Lattice, which is shown on the next slide. We also ask that directors be members of professional associations, and either NAA or a state affiliate would help to meet the requirement.
Staff education is another section within the Program Personnel section. In many of our work groups and focus groups, we struggled with the definition of lead and assistant staff for school-age programs. Do we go with the “youth workers”, do we go with the “senior group leaders”, the “group leader”, and what we have determined is that it is up to the individual programs, what they would like to categorize their staff as. In very small programs, there may be one administrator, and then all of the other staff are considered assistant staff. At some of the larger programs, they may have their administrator, and additional lead staff and then additional assistant staff. So we’ve allowed school-age programs to determine that themselves, whereas in our early childhood model, we do require that every classroom have a lead staff person designated. So in the school-age programs, that lead staff person could actually be the administrator, the person who is technically the site director, in a dual role.
Education specialization is the third of our eight components. The education specialization looks at either the relatedness of the college credits that were taken as part of official transcripts (by reviewing official transcripts) or a comprehensive training that would be in lieu of a certain number of college credits. For our Career Lattice, we do recognize additional fields of study. We look at college credits that have been taken in parks and recreation, courses in social work, psychology, and several areas that would be related fields. Annual training is our fourth component, but there’s no comments on that one.
For Program Content, we also use the SACERS assessment, and have developed what we are calling a curriculum checklist. It’s a supplement to SACERS as far as the youth development approach to working with children and youth. That checklist covers things such as choosing a variety of activities, being involved in the planning and leadership of activities and activities that address the recreation, fitness, academic, life skills, and personal growth and development areas.
As far as Program Management, we have two components. Family involvement - based on the feedback from the focus groups, we added a communications center to the school-age models, and having family conferences is one of many options as far as communicating with parents, whereas in the early childhood center based model, that’s an actual requirement that they have them at the higher tiers.
Some of our business practices are doing a site supply budget, and having a sustainability plan. That’s very important for our school-age program here in Missouri. Also, the benefits that are being offered to the staff can also include a reduced fee as one of the options.
It’s important to mention our lessons learned. One of the important lessons is how this ties in with the other programs. We also have our standards that are being developed, our Core Competencies have just come out, we have a Youth Development Credential, which is like the CDA, we have two certificates, we are holding regional summits all over the state and we have an annual conference, and for people in the field, we get the question a lot, ”Well what’s the difference between this and the standards?” And “You guys need to all get on the same page.” So, one of our big lessons learned is to try to market this so that professionals understand how the system fits together. I’ll save my other lessons learned for the question and answers. I think my 10 minutes are up.
Amanda Szekely: Thank you so much. Thank you all for sharing this great information about your experiences with quality rating systems. And before we do go ahead and open up the lines for questions, I just did want to pose one question to all of you today.
Some of you did start to address the lessons learned from your experience. I’m wondering if there’s one key lesson learned. I’m assuming that we have people on the line today who may be thinking about going through a similar process themselves or thinking about how their state’s QRS system might be adapted to work better for school-age. Is there one thing you would do differently when you, if you went about this process again, or one key lesson that you would pass on to these people? And, I’ll start with Leslie.
Leslie Roesler: Yeah, I think in terms of the school-age component for this, I think I shared that one of the key lessons for us was to make sure that we have a diverse group of stakeholders, and you know, hearing others speak in where they are in terms of their development, when we first started this, since we’ve been in operation since 2002, we actually didn’t have a statewide afterschool network, so we didn’t have that voice at the table and we’re now bringing that voice to the table. So, you know, I think, to really look at who’s out there doing this kind of work and making sure that their voice is heard.
Amanda Szekely: Thank you and Liz, did you have any lessons learned to share?
Liz Nusken: Well, mine is very similar. To include a diverse group of stakeholders, including state agencies, funders, R&Rs, as well as providers that represent child care centers, stand-alone programs, school-based programs, space-based programs, so that we have a very inclusive system.
Amanda Szekely: And, finally Terry.
Teresa Foulkes: Okay. One of our lessons learned deals with the licensing issue, as far as since not all the programs are required to be licensed, it’s easy to dismiss the school-age QRS, because it may be not for everyone. Whereas, we look at it as exempt programs could choose to participate in the QRS, if they were to choose to become voluntarily licensed. So, the QRS has really brought the licensing issue to the forefront as far as the conversations that are taking place within the school-age community, and our Department of Health and Senior Services-Section of Child Care Regulation has been working with the school-age community to help further that conversation, and to help make licensing more familiar to the programs.
Amanda Szekely: Great, thank you. I’m now going to turn this over to the operator who will help to manage a Q&A session.
Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If you’d like to ask a question, please press star, one on your phone now and you will be placed in the queue in the order received. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press pound. Once again, if you’d like to ask a question, please press star, one on your phone now. We are now ready to begin. At this time, we have no audio questions.
Dionne Dobbins: Hi, this is Dionne Dobbins a team member from the Afterschool Investment Project, and just listening to the folks who have been on the line, I had a couple of things that popped into my head, and one of them that I thought about was the fact that all of you have been using the SACERS rating scales, and one state is, you know, working to adapt it, another state has added another piece to it, the checklist, and another state is looking at other measures of quality or considering using other measures of quality, and I’m wondering if one or all of you could speak to what it is about the SACERS that you either like or don’t like, or what do you think is missing, and what kinds of things are you looking for with your adaptations or pulling in additional pieces?
Leslie Roesler: This is Leslie from Pennsylvania. And, I think the initial decision to use the SACERS was because we are using the other environment rating scales across other age groups and in the quality rating system, and so to be consistent in terms of how we’re collecting information to do a more comprehensive evaluation of Keystone Stars and we wanted to be consistent with the evaluation. But clearly, some of the challenges that we’ve had with it address, I think, some of the pieces that Missouri was talking about in terms of the development components, and looking at, you know, is it really getting at what we need it to be looking at, certainly in terms of involvement in the communities, service (inaudible) kinds of things and that kind of, which we know are very appropriate for this age group.
Dionne Dobbins: So you work with the developer to come up with some indicators for that?
Leslie Roesler: Well, I think part of – what we’re calling them are Pennsylvania clarifications, so that when we have folks going out and they’re looking at a particular item, you know, for Pennsylvania this is what it means. Okay. And, we’ve had the conversations with the developers about that without losing the intent of the tool, but this is what we need it to mean for Pennsylvania, and that’s where we are with it right now.
Would we consider another tool? If we find one that’s better, then I think the answer to that is probably yes.
Dionne Dobbins: Okay. And Ohio, you mentioned looking at other measures of quality. Where are you with that?
Liz Nusken: Well, actually we’re not at that point yet. We did select it for the same reason as Pennsylvania, you know, part of our complemented different assessment tools that we are using. We are in our first year of assessments, our first round of assessments using that instrument, and we will be conducting an evaluation of that later this year, and then we’ll go from there.
I know that the forum just put out a guide to assessment tools, and I know that the SACERS instrument is included there and I’m interested to see what they had to say about the other tools as well.
Dionne Dobbins: Clarification, for those who don’t know what the form it, you’re talking about the organization known as the Forum for Youth Investment.
Liz Nusken: Yes. Yes.
Dionne Dobbins: And so, is that available on line?
Liz Nusken: Yes it is.
Dionne Dobbins: Okay, and we’ll share that information with the group.
Liz Nusken: It’s called Measuring Youth Program Quality.
Dionne Dobbins: Great. Thank you for that resource. And then, really quickly, Missouri, you were mentioning a checklist that you’ve created, and can you tell us a little about how that’s different or what that’s capturing that’s not captured in the SACERS?
Teresa Foulkes: Okay. Yes, that checklist that we’ve developed, we’ve tried to capture what we consider the youth development approach, as far as involving youth in the program and helping youth to develop themselves through the process.
It is based on our state’s – the network has developed over the past year afterschool program standards, so we took those program standards and cross walked them with our QRS, and the SACERS instruments and took those standards that were not addressed in the SACERS and developed a checklist out of those. So, it directly relates to the state standards that have been developed, but it does take that approach as far as giving youth choice and having the opportunity to lead activities and evaluate the program, and many of those other things that are not included in the SACERS.
Dionne Dobbins: And so, it sounds like each state has really thought about how they can bring in other resources and other tools to help them make this a more comprehensive rating system for their state, and I think that’s probably a good lesson for other states to think about as well as they begin this work. I think maybe Amanda, we should turn it back over to the operator and see if anybody has come up with any questions in the time that we’ve been on the phone.
Operator: Great. Our first question comes from Christa Galloway. Please state your question.
Christa Galloway: This is a question for Leslie in Pennsylvania. We’re curious about, because your program has been operating for five years, how many school-age programs have you had involved in the process? At what levels? And, is there any, you know, what is the make up of those programs? Is there any kind of diversity in terms of, do you have any 21st century programs, other youth development type programs in that?
Leslie Roesler: I knew that that question was going to come up and I don’t have a full answer for that, but the programs that participate in the Keystone Stars need to be licensed by the Department of Welfare. So, if those programs are 21st century programs, and in fact are licensed, then they participate.
Many 21st century programs in Pennsylvania currently are not licensed. So, one of the things that we are looking to do over the course of this next year in partnership with our afterschool network is to look at how to expand our quality rating system to include other, other afterschool programs that would not necessarily fall under the domain of licensing that currently folks need to do, and we have done that with some of the early childhood programs, in terms of bringing head start into it, in terms of bringing a nursery school. So, there is a precedent there. We just need to look at how to do that for afterschool.
Currently there are about 68% of our programs are licensed programs that are participating, and those are centers participating in Keystone Stars, and we know in terms of subsidy that about 50% of the programs receive – serve school-age children.
In terms of, you know, whether they are stand-alone programs or whether they are early childhood with a school-age component, that’s a breakout I don’t have. It’s something that we are looking into doing in terms of our data collection. I just don’t have that number.
Amanda Szekely: Are there any other question with the operator?
Operator: Great. Our next question comes from Soumya Bhat. Please state your questions.
Soumya Bhat: Can you hear me? Hello?
Amanda Szekely: Yes, we can hear you.
Soumya Bhat: Okay. I was wondering, what kind type of technical assistance are you offering for programs in each of the states? If there’s any plans for offering technical assistance and what things you were thinking of at this point?
Leslie Roesler: Okay, this is Leslie. We have a whole Keystone Stars technical assistance component that is administered through our regional Keys that administer the Keystone Stars grants and whatnot. It’s available to all programs participating in Keystone Stars regardless of the level that they have come in at, whether they are with stars or a star one, two, three or four, and it is an intensive on site TA. We do have a process for folks in terms of developing a – yeah, it just went right out of my head, a service plan with action steps and whatnot, about how to move forward. And we have also a database to track that information.
Teresa Foulkes: This is Terry from Missouri. We have a bill that’s currently working its way through our legislature that would include a program improvement fund, but the actual training and technical assistance and program supports have not yet been determined.
Liz Nusken: This is Liz from Ohio. We do have a team of technical assistant advisors including a Step Up to Quality licensing specialist as well as within our child care resource and referral network.
Amanda Szekely: Great, are there any other questions at this time?
Operator: Once again ladies and gentlemen, if you’d like to ask a question, please press star, one on your phone now.
Andrew Williams: This is Andrew Williams from the Child Care Bureau. If I could ask a question about family child care homes participating in QRS - were there particular adaptations or considerations to address school-age needs related to family child care homes and the QRS system?
Leslie Roesler: In Pennsylvania, we have not addressed that yet.
Liz Nusken: Same for Ohio.
Teresa Foulkes: In Missouri, we have built in, for the learning environment assessment, either the FDCERS or the SACERS, depending on the age group present. So we do have one home based school-age only program that has committed to participating in our pilot process, and we will be doing both assessments on that program to see what the differences are.
Amanda Szekely: Great, there’s no other questions at this time. I just wanted to quickly ask. I’ve heard from a few of you that the process of developing a quality rating system has helped to highlight gaps in your professional development system, and potentially, it sounds like served as a catalyst for change for developing other types of quality systems like a school-age care credential. Do you think that – do you all think that that’s been the case for you? Do you think that going through this QRS development process has been a catalyst for change for creating a more comprehensive professional development system for school-age care?
Leslie Roesler: This is Leslie and the answer to that is absolutely yes. It certainly has. By, you know – and it has also helped to provide the demand for some things that maybe were already out there, that folks were not necessarily seeing the need for, but now by saying in the performance standards that, you know, this is something we think is really important and you need to pay attention to this, folks also are paying more attention.
Liz Nusken: This is Liz from Ohio. I think most definitely yes. I think our afterschool networks would be addressing that anyway, but this gives it a structure and a system of support.
Teresa Foulkes: I would agree with both of those comments from Missouri. It’s definitely helped to further the discussion about our state credential, the YDC and other opportunities.
Amanda Szekely: Great, thank you. Are there any other questions before we close up this call for today?
Operator: We do have a question Amanda.
Amanda Szekely: Great.
Operator: Our next question comes from Ruth Matthews. Please state your question.
Ruth Matthews: Hi everyone. I was curious to know, I heard a lot about SACERS, but how much did you look into the NAA standards in comparison? It didn’t seem to be a lot of emphasis on that. What might be barriers to using it?
Leslie Roesler: Well, in Pennsylvania, the NAA accreditation is recognized at our higher star, star four.
Ruth Matthews: Okay.
Leslie Roesler: So if programs get an NAA accreditation, then they’ve achieved a star four.
Teresa Foulkes: That’s the same for Missouri, that accreditation is necessary to earn points at our Tier 5, at our highest level. Whether it’s NAA accreditation or another accrediting organization, the program would still have to meet all of the requirements prior to Tier 5, so Tiers 1-4 and also be accredited. So we recognized going through that the accreditation process as an additional recognition of quality.
Liz Nusken: And for Ohio that also is an additional recognition of quality. Our indicators at this point though are very general. We did look at and include some of those in our quality indicators, but we will be developing those further, and I want to mention that they’re not on the Afterschool Investments website, but if you open up the Ohio document, there’s a link to it on the Ohio website.
Ruth Matthews: Great thanks.
Amanda Szekely: Thank you. Any other questions?
Operator: Our next question comes from Christa Galloway. Please state your question.
Christa Galloway: Hi, I was just wondering, back when we were talking about the technical assistance in all three states, if that is specific to school-age, particularly the legislation but also the Ohio state technical assistance. Is it broken out by age level?
Leslie Roesler: In Pennsylvania, we do have targeted technical assistance for school-age programs and we have professional development specific for school-age. We have six regional school-age projects that their primary responsibility is to provide professional development opportunities and technical assistance to those programs.
Liz Nusken: And in Ohio, we have 12 regions and each region has a full-time afterschool specialist that provides technical assistance specifically to this sector.
Teresa Foulkes: And in Missouri, the bill that I referenced would be, the program improvement fund would be for all age groups, early childhood and school-age and all settings. The home based programs, the school-age center based and the early childhood center and group homes.
Amanda Szekely: Great. Thank you. We are just about out of time. I think we have time for one more question, if we have one.
Operator: At this time, we have no further audio questions.
Amanda Szekely: Great. Then, I’m going to wrap up the call. Thank you all so much for participating. I think we’ve heard a lot of really useful information and I hope that you all who were participating and listening in on the call today, learned some useful information that you might be able to use in our states.
I encourage you to look at our project website for more information on the Afterschool Investments Project. Also, you are – feel free to e-mail us. We have an e-mail address on the Afterschool Investments website, if you have any additional questions that you weren’t able to ask today.
We would also love to hear your feedback on this audio call. We do have an evaluation form available on our website and that you’ll also be receiving by e-mail, and we hope that you will fill that out and let us know what you thought of this audio conference, anything that we might do differently for future audio conferences. And finally, this call has been recorded, so if you have colleagues who would still like to listen, we will have a transcript available on our website in coming weeks.
Thank you all so much for participating and have a great afternoon.
Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for attending.
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