A critical fight over “quality” child care could shape millions of kids

America’s lack of affordable child care has brought a long-simmering question to a boil: What exactly makes child care “good”? Everyone wants quality care for kids, and the need for child care or preschool to be considered “high quality” has been embraced by researchers, providers, parents, and policymakers for years. But with rising costs and uneven availability, parents, providers, and policymakers find themselves increasingly divided over whether “quality” should be measured by caregivers’ credentials or by toddlers’ happiness, by structured learning outcomes, or by parent preference. Progressives generally champion credentialed and well-paid teachers, academic standards, and standardized ratings as essential for aiding children’s development. Conservatives counter that such requirements inflate costs while devaluing the nurturing care that parents and community caregivers provide. The answer to the question of what “quality” means shapes everything from household budgets to workforce participation to children’s school readiness — yet there is no clear consensus on what exactly that entails or how to measure it. “People know it when they see it, but it’s hard to define,” said Josh McCabe, director of social policy at the Niskanen Center think tank. As regulations shift with political winds, the question has become more salient: Who defines quality, and at what cost to kids, families, and society? Mixed-quality quality metrics States have sought ways to measure, improve, and communicate the components of quality to parents and providers alike. Their solution: developing rating systems that attempt to boil aspects of child care settings down into simple metrics, much like hotel or restaurant reviews. Over the past two decades, such Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) have become the primary method for assessing child care quality. These systems, which vary significantly across states, award ratings based on multiple dimensions, including teacher qualifications (such as holding a child development associate credential or a degree in early childhood education); learning environments (including safe teacher-to-child ratios, classroom cleanliness, and availability of age-appropriate books and toys); administrative practices (like documented emergency procedures and business management systems), and the caliber of child-adult interactions (measured through classroom observations). By 2020, nearly all states had implemented some form of QRIS, though participation remains voluntary in many areas. These systems vary widely — some use star ratings (one to five stars), others use tiers or categories. States prioritize different elements: Some emphasize school readiness, others focus on health and safety, cultural responsiveness, or infant and toddler care. Financial incentives also differ, with states offering a variety of supports, technical assistance, and bonuses for higher scores. The evidence is mixed, though, on whether these ratings actually predict better outcomes for children. “If we’re looking at what supports children’s well-being and development, it’s the quality of the interactions, the relations with the caregiver,” Steven Barnett, senior director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, told me. Yet these critical interactions carry relatively little weight in some QRIS systems, overshadowed by structural features that are easier to quantify and less costly to implement. The QRIS ratings nonetheless drive real behavior. “The scoring matters in that providers and parents react to it,” McCabe said. “But like the US News and World Report rankings, I don’t know if it actually makes them better colleges or students.” A 2019 Department of Education study found that children who attended higher-rated programs according to QRIS did not have better developmental outcomes than those attending lower-rated ones. This echoed earlier research that found that the overall QRIS ratings were less predictive of child learning than a single measure of teacher-child interactions. "“Quality, in some sense, can take many different forms, and perhaps it should, because child care and early learning is not one-size-fits-all.”" - Hailey Gibbs, associate director of Early Childhood Policy at the Center for American Progress Further research found “little evidence” that adopting QRIS in Head Start improved quality when measured against the Head Start Program Performance Standards — the quality benchmarks the federal preschool programs must meet. QRIS showed no significant boost to teacher qualifications or teacher-child interactions. More troublingly, research found that QRIS adoption actually increased annual teacher turnover — potentially undermining the very stability that quality programs need. These rating systems can also create a troubling cycle, said Hailey Gibbs, associate director of early childhood policy at the Center for American Progress. Lower-rated programs receive fewer resources, making it even harder for them to improve. Gibbs notes there’s “valid criticism” that QRIS systems often lack cultural sensitivity and tend to disregard the perspectives of enrolled families when adjudicating which programs are good or bad. This fundamental tension — between standardized measurement and the complex, relationship-based reality of quality care — remains at the heart of ongoing debates about how best to ensure positive outcomes for America’s youngest children. As sociologist Zach Griffen notes of performance measurement across other sectors like health care and K-12 schooling, quality assessment tools can be “wildly successful in policy research at the same time as they fall apart in real-world applications.” So what actually is quality? While the QRIS measure of “quality” might be contentious, the stakes are high because quality itself does seem to really affect kids’ life trajectories. Back in 2000, the National Academies of Sciences published a 600-page report concluding that both nurturing parenting and caregiving relationships were essential for early childhood development, and that well-designed programs could help improve the lives of kids growing up in poverty in particular. Another landmark federal study tracked more than 1,300 children from infancy through adolescence. Emerging from the contentious “day care wars” of the 1980s over whether maternal employment and non-parental care harmed children, the researchers found that “higher-quality” care predicted better cognitive and language development. The study highlighted responsive adult-child relationships as the most critical quality factor, with elements like staff ratios and group sizes also playing important roles. These early studies established a foundation for understanding quality, but even today early childhood experts describe different visions. Ruth Friedman, who directed the Office of Child Care during the Biden administration, defines quality as care that ensures safety, engaging activities, and “nurturing, consistent, and well-compensated caregivers who support development across multiple domains — including language, early math and science, social-emotional, and physical growth,” she told me. Some advocates stress that trained caregivers are essential for building the kind of stable, high-quality workforce that children need. “All teachers need to have a foundational knowledge of child development…[with] formal education and training in early childhood education,” the Center for American Progress wrote in a “Quality 101” report published in 2017. Other experts say the growing demand for professional training devalues the kind of care offered by parents, grandparents, and other informal community leaders. “What we realize [matters] is the quality of the relationship and [that isn’t] typically things you can measure in a simple way, like a child-adult ratio,” said Jenet Erickson, a professor of religious education at Brigham Young University and a researcher of maternal and child well-being. “It’s just not as simple as having trained caregivers. … We need more flexibility in who can provide care, so families can say, ‘We really like this neighborhood grandmother because of the way she relates to our children, and we’re less concerned about whether or not she got a degree in human development.’” There is perhaps more agreement, however, on what constitutes unacceptably poor care. Gibbs identified warning signs that cross cultural boundaries: “disorganized or unsafe spaces…young children wandering aimlessly.” These align with the National Academies’ findings about the lowest-quality settings: caregivers ignoring children’s bids for attention, few appropriate toys, and children spending time “unengaged with adults, other children, or materials.” Finding the balance between acceptable care and parent preferences can be tricky, especially when public funding is involved and lawmakers pursue multiple policy objectives at once, like promoting child development, supporting moms in the workforce, advancing educational equity, and even broader social concerns like reducing crime or increasing GDP. The Center for American Progress has grown somewhat less prescriptive about quality since it published its “Quality 101” report in 2017. “Quality, in some sense, can take many different forms, and perhaps it should, because child care and early learning is not one-size-fits-all,” Gibbs told me, noting that some home-based child care options “are extremely high quality” yet nevertheless are sometimes “viewed as second tier to school-like center-based care” when it comes to state ratings. The future of quality standards The landscape of child care quality measurement appears poised for significant shifts. The Build Back Better Act, proposed during the Biden administration, represented perhaps the most ambitious federal effort to date to elevate child care quality standards nationwide. States would have been required to develop tiered QRIS frameworks aligned with the federal Head Start preschool standards, and mandate child care provider participation in QRIS to receive federal money. Most significantly, payment rates would have been directly linked to quality ratings — so child care programs achieving higher QRIS scores would have received higher reimbursement rates. However, with the transition to a new administration, a fundamentally different approach is emerging, as states move to reduce restrictions conservatives see as driving up costs without improving outcomes or access. This regulatory rollback fits within a broader conservative vision reshaping child care — one that prioritizes less expensive home-based programs over professionally staffed centers, de-emphasizes academic credentials and curricula, and often encourages more mothers to stay home to raise their children. As Idaho Rep. Rod Furniss argued when promoting his deregulation bill, “perhaps the most important” small business is the home day care, “where moms can stay home and supplement the household income and watch a few kids.” This approach also aligns with principles outlined in the American Enterprise Institute’s 2024 “Three Principles for Conservative Early-Childhood Policy,” which advocated for subsidizing “lower-cost” options while keeping “children connected to their families.” Conservatives specifically warn against what they call the “Bill de Blasio model” — folding early childhood education into the credentialing, unionization, and compensation structure of K-12 teachers. This approach, which many progressive advocates view as essential for stable and quality care, is viewed by many on the right as a recipe for unsustainable costs. As control shifts in Washington, the very definitions of quality that have guided policy for decades may soon change. But the core questions remain unresolved: What matters most in determining quality and how do we capture it? How should we balance measurable outcomes with family preferences? What trade-offs between quality, affordability, and access are Americans prepared to make? And ultimately, what kind of care do American children deserve? This work was supported by a grant from the Bainum Family Foundation. Vox Media had full discretion over the content of this reporting.

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A critical fight over “quality” child care could shape millions of kids