Child care quality matters for children’s growth and development and for families’ economic success. Across the United States, states have recognized this. They are engaging in ongoing efforts to improve the quality of their child care and early education systems through Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS). A QRIS is a system of assessing quality and offering improvements to expand the supply of quality care. In 2021, 45 states and the District of Columbia (DC) had at least one well-developed quality initiative, with pilot initiatives in the field in several additional states and territories.

In 2018, the District of Columbia’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) launched Capital Quality, an enhanced QRIS that replaced its old QRIS. Capital Quality measures the quality of early care and education programs and offers supports to improve quality over time.

In 2019, Urban Institute partnered with OSSE to study the roll-out of Capital Quality. Using surveys, interviews, and analysis of administrative data, we examined the supply of quality child care in DC after the implementation of Capital Quality. Urban researchers captured the perspectives of child care program directors, early educators, and parents about the new QRIS. It was the first federally funded partnership of its kind in the District of Columbia.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, our project focus shifted to address questions of concern regarding early educators’ well-being, work experiences and job satisfaction, and virtual training experiences, as well as parents’ child care searches in the wake of the pandemic. These efforts revealed new thinking on what program leaders and families value in child care and new roles for the District’s QRIS.