QI Summit 2024: Reimagining Quality in Early Care and Education

We are thrilled to share information with you about the QI Summit 2024: Reimagining Quality in Early Care and Education, which will be held at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Bloomington – Minneapolis South on August 6 – 8, 2024.

What is next for quality improvement in early care and education? Many state leaders are looking for innovative approaches to continuous quality improvement as we continue to face challenges in developing and implementing this under-financed system, economic disruptions, and an underpaid and under-supported workforce. How can we act more effectively with families and providers to create equitable policies and processes that will lead us to positive outcomes for young children?

Join colleagues and leaders who are working diligently to reimagine their Quality Improvement Systems (QIS). Learn about—and share your own—efforts to increase social-emotional and early learning interactions, improve child learning outcomes and early educator well-being, and increase educator retention. Discover innovations, adaptations, challenges, and successes in state and community QIS, as well as how states are re-evaluating or changing structures and funding allocations to be more equitable and supportive of programs across the entire continuum of quality.

At the Summit, state teams will share their victories, advances, and challenges and engage in peer learning and interactive sessions with researchers and other experts. This dynamic environment will allow leaders to examine the implementation strategies that are working and those that are not and co-create fresh approaches to aspects of quality improvement.

Target Audience

Attendees of this meeting include teams of state and community leaders, national experts, researchers, and leaders involved in:

• Early childhood systems leaders
• Quality Improvement System (QIS) policy, design, and implementation
• Coaching/Technical Assistance
• Children’s Social-Emotional Well-Being
• Reducing Suspension and Expulsion
• Other initiatives currently leveraged through the QIS

Goals for the Summit

Explore the current state of early care and education quality improvement systems (QIS). 

• Explore how states are rethinking their QIS to ensure they are racially equitable, family-friendly, and supportive of early educators/providers.
• Discover how states are transforming their work, changing their approaches, or adapting based on new understandings of family and community needs or a deeper understanding of racial and economic inequities.
• Discuss how state and community ECE quality systems connect with initiatives and early childhood resources in other child- and family-serving systems to meet whole child, whole family, whole community, and whole systems needs.

Strengthen statewide professional development systems to promote children’s social-emotional well-being and reduce suspension and expulsion.

• Discuss strategies to help states assess and strengthen their system of supports for ECE programs that promote children’s social-emotional skills and well-being.
• Learn how to leverage your state’s complete set of quality supports to provide rapid, tailored responses to program and practitioner needs and challenges.
• Explore the role of Infant-early childhood mental health consultation (IECMHC) and how states are using IECMHC to support providers, families, and children and reduce racial disparities in the use of exclusionary practices
• Examine different approaches to collecting data on ECE programs’ use of exclusionary practices and quality supports to inform states’ efforts to strengthen professional development systems.

Learn current thinking about early care and education practice. 

• Engage with peers, colleagues, and experts to discuss trends, research, and innovative strategies for delivering the highest-quality programs for young children and families.
• Consider state strategies for supporting programs and providers to strengthen practices for dual language learning.
• Understand what is working in technical assistance, coaching to support teachers and administrators, and innovations in building and sustaining leadership.

Discuss the latest ideas on the structure and implementation of QIS.  

• Uncover strategies to measure accountability and understand improvement.
• Discuss trends in financing and incentives.
• Understand how states are using data to inform changes and understand progress in their quality improvement systems.

Delve into the strategies to authentically partner with families, providers, and communities to ensure their voices inform the design and implementation of quality improvement efforts. 

• How are states addressing equity and creating family, provider, and community engagement and feedback loops?
• Explore strategies that lead to highly inclusive QIS, promote equity, and meet the needs of multiracial, multilingual, differently abled, and multicultural children, families, and early childhood workers.

The Summit will provide networking opportunities, thought partnership, problem-solving, and celebrating successes and innovation with peers, national leaders, researchers, and meeting sponsors.

Topical Strands 

1. State Sharing QIS Innovations and Challenges (MN, NM, VA)
2. Coaching/Technical Assistance
3. Continuous Quality Improvement
4. Financing and Incentives
5. QIS – Components and Topics
6. Leadership
7. Workforce
8. Promoting Social-emotional Well-being and Reducing Suspension and Expulsion
9. Sponsor Sessions
10. System Building and Change

BUILD can provide more details as session titles and descriptions are finalized. Here are a few session examples.

• Empowering Leaders Closest to Children: Strong State-Local Partnership Models: This session will feature leaders from Arkansas, Louisiana, Virginia, and Colorado as they highlight innovative state-local partnership models in early childhood. It will explore strategies for establishing state-local governance models, focusing on critical strategies, successes, and challenges and how these models drive quality improvement in early childhood classrooms.
• Innovative Approaches that States are Using to Grow and Sustain Quality Professional Development and Technical Assistance Initiatives: This peer-learning and interactive session will discuss innovative solutions to advance and sustain quality PD/TA. State leaders from Ohio and Tennessee will share their challenges and victories, dig into initiatives and strategies that are working and those that are not, and share how they measure success and plan for sustainability.
• Empowering Early Childhood Education and Care Program Leaders Using the Whole Leadership Framework to Build a Sustainable Workforce: Program leaders shape the workforce and environments within early childhood education and care organizations. This interactive session will explore how the Whole Leadership Framework promotes comprehensive program leadership to run fiscally sound and effective programs, reduce staff turnover, and build sustainable programs. A panel of leaders will share how their states use the framework as a mental model to strengthen program administrators’ leadership competencies and build equitable and accessible professional development systems.