Colorado sought to improve early childhood education quality and access through better use of administrative data.

High-quality early care and education (ECE) is essential for children’s development and for enabling families to work or attend school. The Colorado Office of Early Childhood (OEC) is responsible for ensuring the availability, safety, and quality of ECE programs across the state. To support this mission, the OEC needed a deeper understanding of how its licensing, quality rating, and professional development systems were functioning. Specifically, the OEC wanted to identify common licensing violations, assess the effectiveness of its Colorado Shines Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS), and evaluate user experiences with its Professional Development Information System (PDIS) and the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program (CCCAP). These insights would help the OEC allocate resources more effectively and refine its quality improvement strategies.

NORC analyzed administrative data to identify trends, challenges, and opportunities in Colorado’s early childhood systems.

NORC partnered with the OEC to conduct a comprehensive analysis of administrative data from three key systems: licensing violations, Colorado Shines QRIS ratings, and help desk tickets from PDIS and CCCAP. Using linked datasets, NORC examined the prevalence and types of licensing violations across child care centers and family child care homes, and whether these varied by QRIS rating level. NORC also analyzed which quality indicators programs were most and least likely to meet identifying “floor” and “ceiling” indicators to guide technical assistance. Finally, NORC reviewed over 14,000 help desk tickets to understand common user challenges with the state’s early childhood systems. This rigorous, data-driven approach provided actionable insights to inform policy and practice.