(UK) Government quality ratings for daycare (0-2.5 yrs) are almost uncorrelated with scientific quality measures

[rockhopper72]

I recently ran across this:

a setting graded as outstanding by Ofsted would not necessarily receive a high score on the ITERS-R, and vice versa

Mathers et al, 2012. Improving Quality in the Early Years: A Comparison of Perspectives and Measures.

More generally, only one component of the Ofsted score had a significant correlation with the ITERS-R score at the 5% level, and that correlation was 0.12. Even that 'significant correlation' was probably an artefact due to not compensating for multiple hypothesis testing.

(ITERS-R is the Infant/Toddler Environment Rating Scale, and it's the one used in most research on childcare quality for children up to 30 months.)

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I was expecting a weak linkage, but I'm somewhat shocked at (essentially) non-correlation. As with many other things involving childcare, I feel like there should be more awareness of this, so we can make the world better for children and parents. But I don't know how to post about this outside @earvin without being rugby-tackled by people assuming I'm making some political point.

Thoughts would be welcome.

 

[amanda212]

@rockhopper72 Haven't had a chance to read this yet but I'm not particularly surprised - this is very common in education evaluations at all later stages, particularly the "audit mess" of UK post secondary education. This paper has a really strong critique of metrics being used to assess quality from an unusual source and I think you might be interested: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?...r+education&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&u=#p=wCUJ-0CT_V4J

 

[rockhopper72]

@amanda212 Thanks!