In March 2025, the District of Columbia Office of the State Superintendent for Education (OSSE) engaged the Urban Institute to comprehensively review Capital Quality—the District’s Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) for child care and early learning programs. The goal of this review was to assess strengths and challenges of the current system, explore how evidence and best practices in the QRIS design and implementation have evolved since Capital Quality’s launch in 2016, and offer actionable recommendations for updating and improving the QRIS framework and implementation.

This brief presents eight recommendations to help OSSE strengthen DC’s child care and early learning quality improvement efforts and more effectively communicate what high-quality care looks like across the District.

Why This Matters

This study aligns with a broader trend among states to reexamine and modernize their QRIS approaches. The recommendations in this brief offer OSSE a clear and actionable road map to make Capital Quality more responsive, practical, and effective for all stakeholders. This systems review, while not a validation study or an impact evaluation, surfaces key areas of friction and opportunity within the current model—grounded in the voices and experiences of providers, program leaders, and systems stakeholders.

Key Takeaways

This study points to several important tensions in Capital Quality—between quality assurance and quality support, between standardization and flexibility, and between accountability and trust. It aims to address these tensions by providing pragmatic strategies for near-term improvements as well as ideas to guide longer-term system design.

The eight recommendations in this brief offer a range of options for OSSE to explore, depending on its priorities, capacity, and timing. They are organized in order of the increasing level of effort needed for implementation.

• Recommendation 1 focuses on immediate, cross-cutting strategies that can improve clarity, transparency, and trust in OSSE’s systems, whether or not they are tied to Capital Quality.
• Recommendations 2 and 3 suggest connecting Capital Quality to OSSE’s other key initiatives and aim to improve coordination and alignment across the early childhood education system.
• Recommendations 4 to 7 highlight opportunities to refine and strengthen the core components of the current system, including its design, implementation, content, timing, and trade-offs.
• Recommendation 8 explores what a full system redesign could entail, along with practical cautions about transition time, provider fatigue, and funding.

How We Did It

Between May and September 2025, the Urban Institute research team conducted a mixed-methods study designed to ground these recommendations in both national research and local experiences. The study included

• a literature review of current QRIS models to identify innovative approaches across the country;
• an analysis of Capital Quality administrative data to track participation and patterns in quality improvement; and
• a qualitative data collection from 125 stakeholders via virtual interviews and focus groups to better understand their awareness of, experiences with, and perspectives on Capital Quality.

After analyzing the findings, the research team shared the preliminary set of recommendations with a group of invited stakeholders during a virtual listening session. Based on feedback from that session, the research team refined the recommendations to improve clarity, language, and grouping of key strategies.