BPA conducted a three-year evaluation of the Child Development Facility Accreditation Project (CDFAP), a statewide initiative to facilitate child care accreditation--a quality improvement process--for state subsidized child development centers and for family day care homes. The CDFAP, which is operated by the California Association for the Education of Young Children and its partners under contract to the California Department of Education, has the goal of recruiting for accreditation 370 child care centers in the attendance areas of low performing school districts, as well as 900 family child care homes, with a focus on homes that provide care for underserved populations.

BPA's evaluation assessed the effectiveness and efficiency of the CDFAP outreach strategies, technical assistance, and financial assistance; identified barriers to and successful outcomes of accreditation; and explored system impacts of the project such as improved collaboration and capacity-building of existing accreditation systems. Evaluation methods included interviews with CDFAP staff statewide, intensive case studies of five counties with active project participation, assessment of changes over time in quality of child care programs in the case study counties, development and analysis of a database on characteristics and progress of participating child care providers, and a survey of a statewide sample of participating providers.

Two partners worked with BPA on this evaluation. Carollee Howes, Professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies of the University of California, Los Angeles, served as consultant on evaluation design. Stanfield Systems designed a Web-accessible database for project reporting on participating providers.

Evaluation of the Child Development Facility Accreditation Project Final Report (Dec, 2004) (PDF:437KB)
Presents evaluation findings of the California Child Development Facility Accreditation Project (CDFAP). Includes both process and outcome study findings, in addition to key lessons learned and recommendations for future accreditation support projects and other child care quality improvement projects.