Early Education Essentials: Validation of Surveys Measuring Early Education Organizational Conditions

ABSTRACT

Research Findings: The Early Education Essentials surveys use teacher and parent perceptions to measure 6 organizational conditions of early childhood education programs, extending and complementing existing measures of early childhood care and education (ECE) quality constructs. This study tests the reliability and concurrent validity of the Early Education Essentials in 81 school- and community-based ECE sites in a large Midwestern city selected using a stratified random sampling method. Using a Rasch item response theory model, scales were created; theory and exploratory factor analyses combined scales into higher level constructs called essentials. Multilevel models took into account individual measurement error to create site-level essential scores and assessed relationships between programs’ essential scores and site-level teacher–child interactions scores and student attendance. Findings suggest that the Early Education Essentials is reliable in multiple ECE settings; it is sensitive to site-level differences; and some, but not all, organizational conditions measured are associated in expected directions with site-level metrics indicative of center-based ECE quality. Practice or Policy: The Early Education Essentials has the potential to provide leaders and practitioners with actionable data about organizational supports that enable ECE practitioners to be more effective in their daily work with children and families.

Acknowledgments

The work presented here was conducted while Stacy B. Ehrlich was at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research; she is now at NORC at the University of Chicago. We thank Chicago Public Schools and the City of Chicago Department of Family and Support Services, especially Samantha Aigner-Treworgy, Serah Fatani, Leslie McKinily, Elizabeth Stover, and the late Vanessa Rich, for their support of this work. We also express deep gratitude to the school principals and community-based center directors who invited us into their programs as well as the early education preschool teachers, staff, and parents who completed our surveys.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an anonymous funder, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, and the Pritzker Children’s Initiative.