QUALITYstarsNY partners with Children’s Institute as our independent assessment team to conduct Environmental Rating Scale (ERS) observations for eligible programs in the rating process. Learn more about Children’s Institute and how our partnership promotes high-quality early childhood education in New York State.
Thank you to Project Coordinator Linda Murray from Children’s Institute for providing the following words on this important partnership:
Children’s Institute (CI) is a proud partner to QUALITYstarsNY in the important work done throughout New York State to support children. We are a nonprofit organization based in Rochester, NY that strives to raise every child’s complete well-being. Part of this work is training and managing a cadre of master observers who use the Environment Rating Scale (ERS) tools, ECERS-3, ITERS-3, and FCCRS-3, to assess early childhood environments in QUALITYstarsNY programs.
CI’s role is to be an objective third-party observer who takes a snapshot of the programmatic experiences of children using the ERS tools. We have partnered with QUALITYstarsNY since 2016 and are honored to have completed observations in thousands of classrooms, provider homes, and childcare centers in that period, using various data systems, including Aspire. QUALITYstarsNY is key to success for our state in gathering and using data, providing resources and support, and improving the quality of childcare and education for our state’s youngest learners.
In November 2023, Children’s Institute entered its 1600th classroom observation score sheet into the QUALITYstarsNY system! (Many more observations were completed and tracked in older data systems). That indicates that CI’s observer team has visited that many classrooms and childcare environments full of children and the dedicated adults that work with them in just the last few years. Think of how many have been uplifted and supported by this work!
What an honor it is to witness the important work of early learning. We recognize that partnering with QUALITYstarsNY changes the world for the better every day, building the well-being of children throughout New York State.
