Today, 282 child care centers in New Jersey are accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children and 5 child care centers were accredited by the national Early Childhood Program Accreditation Commission. Both organizations ensure that these centers deliver quality care; however, these numbers only represent a percentage of the active child care center sin New Jersey. With more women in the workforce and social policy change such as social welfare reform, New Jersey has experienced an increase in child care enrollment. With this understood, the question is not just how many children are going to be in child care. Te issue is: Ho do we make the child care and early education that children are in better?

Since the BUILD Project has launched, there has been consensus that improving
quality in centers and child care should be a priority. The BUILD Quality
Committee studied quality improvement strategies in four states – Pennsylvania,
Kentucky, Oklahoma and Tennessee – and developed a proposal to provide
incentives to child care providers to improve quality.

The goals of the quality incentive initiative that the committee drafted are:

1.  To improve the quality if child care programs through the development of a meaningful system of incentives and rewards for child care providers and

2. To provide a system for parents to evaluate the quality of child care in New Jersey. The proposed system includes six levels of quality in these seven areas: Programs/Learning, Family Involvement, Health and Safety, Professional Development and Business Practice.

To learn more about the goals of BUILD New Jersey as it relates to quality in child care, click on BUILD Policy Focus. For current research, relevant links and additional information regarding quality, click on Learn More.