News

Pennsylvania preschool programs are invited to join a research opportunity to improve the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale, Third Edition (ECERS-3).

About

The Pennsylvania Key Program Quality Assessment (PQA) Team is supporting researchers at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill to examine the widely used program observation instrument, ECERS-3.

The ECERS-3 is a global quality assessment used in classrooms serving children ages three to five years. It is currently used in the quality improvement systems of thirty states. This study examines how the measure considers the experiences of racially, culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse preschool groups.

Data collectors from the PQA Team will visit participating classrooms this spring and summer to complete an ECERS-3 observation and an observation using the Equity in Early Learning Assessment (EELA). Teachers will also complete a report on the demographic information for the group. For any participating classroom, it is a one-time observation that takes approximately three hours in total.

All Pennsylvania center-based programs serving three- five-year-olds can participate, and space is limited.

Questions?

Providers who would like to participate or who have questions should contact Rachel Kaplan, Pennsylvania’s primary contact for this research project, at Rachel.kaplan@unc.edu or 919-259-6235.