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Quality Rating Systems (QRS) are currently operating, under development or being piloted in over 25 states or local areas. As the QRS model becomes integrated into the landscape of child care and education service delivery, policy and the decisions parents make about child care across the United States, there is an increasing need for descriptive and comparative information about QRS implementation and evaluation. Acknowledging this need, the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) in the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is supporting a project called the Child Care Quality Rating System Assessment (QRS Assessment). The goal of the QRS Assessment is to provide information, analysis and resources about QRS for states and other key stakeholders.

The Compendium of Quality Rating Systems and Evaluations is the first product of the QRS Assessment and is intended to serve as a rich resource for the other tasks in the QRS Assessment which include a multi case in depth study, secondary analysis of existing QRS data, an analytic paper, and a toolkit for designing research and evaluation of QRS. The Compendium is intended to be a source of detailed information about QRS that can be compared, analyzed and used to generate hypotheses or research questions that can be addressed in the other QRS Assessment tasks. Work on the QRS Assessment is informed by an Expert Panel convened for the project that provides guidance and input on the primary tasks and products.

The Compendium contains two different types of information about QRS. The first section presents descriptive information obtained by examining 26 QRS nationwide. Cross-QRS matrices are included to simplify the information and to facilitate a review across states. The second section contains individual profiles of the 26 QRS in which data were collected for the QRS Assessment. Data were collected from July to October, 2009 and were finalized in early 2010.