Head Start CARES (Classroom-based Approaches and Resources for Emotion and Social skill Promotion) is a national demonstration that tests the effectiveness of three program enhancements designed to improve preschool children's social-emotional competence. The project also examines the support systems (e.g., professional development model, technical assistance, monitoring) that are needed to implement the enhancements as designed within diverse Head Start classrooms across the country. This report describes impacts of the CARES demonstration, focusing on outcomes during the spring of the preschool year in: (1) teacher practices; (2) classroom climate; (3) children’s behavior regulation, executive function, emotion knowledge, and social problem-solving skills; and (4) children’s learning behaviors and social behaviors. The report also explores possible impacts on pre-academic skills during preschool and social-emotional and academic outcomes during the Kindergarten year. All three enhancements had positive impacts on teacher practice and on children’s social-emotional outcomes during the preschool year, although in varying degrees and not necessarily in the expected ways. (author abstract) 

States and the federal government have invested in early care and education programs with an explicit goal of improving school readiness for low-income children. These investments, aimed at strengthening the quality of care and supporting families’ access to high-quality settings, are based in part on a confluence of research findings showing a link between program quality and children’s outcomes.

While research to date is quite consistent in showing that measures of quality in early care and education settings and measures of children’s development are linked when examined in individual research studies, there has not been a systematic examination of the strength of these relationships across multiple studies. (author abstract)

This brief examines how provider training and education are related to parent- and provider-reported indicators of quality in home-based and center-based care for toddlers using data from a nationally representative sample of low-income children. (author abstract)

Interest in the quality of provider-family relationships in early care and education (ECE) settings has sharpened the focus on defining and measuring elements of these relationships across settings for program improvement purposes.  In this brief, authors examine the alignment of research-based elements of family-provider partnerships with professional and performance standards from three national ECE organizations as well as selected professional competencies and Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) family partnership indicators from two states. The purpose is to inform the development of common definitions, expectations about what providers need to know and do, and measures that more closely capture quality in this domain across systems. (author abstract)