What is it about the education field that makes acronyms so appealing? We sprinkle our conversations, our writing, our planning, and our research with a heaping spoonful of DAP, ECE, CDA, OCDEL, CQI, and more. Keeping the letters, nicknames, and acronyms straight is a challenge, and that challenge can get in the way of seeing...Read More

Aimee Currier Keystone STARS quality indicator EC 3.4.5 requires STAR 3 and STAR 4 early childhood and school-age programs to partner with their Quality Coach and a Program Quality Assessor to develop and implement a plan to complete internal assessments in their classrooms. Since the internal assessment process came about, there have been a few...Read More

By Amy Hoffman Have you heard the news? The Program Quality Assessment (PQA) team at the Pennsylvania Key has a lot to offer to programs. You may already know that we (usually) conduct external assessments to support early learning and school-age programs; this involves an assessor visiting your program and observing a wide range of...Read More

By Stefanie Camoni   Will my program have external assessments conducted by a program quality assessor this year? Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, external assessments are temporarily suspended for the program year. No external assessments will be conducted by program quality assessors through June 30, 2022. Instead the assessment team will partner with quality coaches...Read More

By Stefanie Camoni How long have you been a Quality Coach/STARS specialist? Meet Aubryn Wojtkielewicz. She started with Community Services for Children in October of 2015. When she first started with the agency, Aubryn was a Race to the Top Specialist. She was later promoted to an RTT Coach and is currently a Quality Coach...Read More

As part of Keystone STARS Revisioning, OCDEL and stakeholders involved in the process want to make sure that limited resources are being used as effectively as possible to provide quality early learning opportunities especially to at-risk children. As a result, OCDEL is proposing the following adjustments to financial supports: Maintain funding for teacher higher education...Read More

Happy New Year!! I can’t think of a better way to kick off 2017 than with the launch of “Let’s Talk Quality! Program Quality Assessment in PA!”Read More