Noa Elliott
The Challenge
The Bay Area Quality Early Learning Partnership has been a four-year regional approach to QRIS implementation. The regional partners–First 5 Alameda County, First 5 Contra Costa, First 5 San Francisco, First 5 San Mateo County, First 5 Santa Clara County, and First 5 Santa Cruz County–aligned efforts to jointly implement QRIS pilots, with the goal of creating QRIS rating consistency across the Bay Area, increasing operational efficiency, and learning from each other’s experience. At the culmination of the pilot effort, VIVA led the development of a report, topical briefs, policy recommendations, and a website.
VIVA researched, wrote, and designed a suite of tools to share achievements and lessons learned from the Bay Area Quality Early Learning Partnership and promote the partners’ vision and policy recommendations for California’s quality early learning system.
What do we need to turn meaningful research, planning, and discussion into policy change?
The Approach
To support the partners’ goal of “telling the region’s story,” VIVA conducted interviews with each of the executive directors of the six regional partners, key staff members, and partners. VIVA then synthesized the experiences and perspectives shared during these interviews, along with supporting documentation from the Partnership’s three years of collaboration, and distilled this information into five topical briefs each covering a key component of the QRIS implementation effort and sharing the region’s vision and recommendations for building a quality early learning system.
VIVA also created a policy brief, which serves as a key tool for the partners to share their recommendations with policy makers and industry partners across the state, and a website that shares the Partnership’s policy platform as well as supports their ongoing implementation effort. The topical briefs were also compiled into a comprehensive report. The Partnership’s implementation learnings, policy recommendations, and vision for a quality early learning system have been used to spearhead and guide state-level early learning policy discussions.
The change we saw from these communications came out of a partnership and planning process VIVA facilitated between sixteen counties who all received funding to build a robust, coordinated QRIS system. Read about everything that went into building this system here!
