V. QUALITY THRESHOLDS, FEATURES, AND DOSAGE IN EARLY CARE AND EDUCATION: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS.
By providing an in depth examination of thresholds of quality, specificity of quality measurement, dosage operationalized in several ways, and interactions of dosage and quality, the secondary data analyses reported here sought to extend the understanding of how early childhood care and education quality and child outcomes are related. We report findings from analyses that included the child's entry skills and family demographic characteristics as covariates and only report findings that were replicated across studies or across measures as a means to reduce, but not eliminate, potential biases. The results of these analyses are described in detail in the previous two chapters and summarized in the table below (Table 14) Results from the threshold analyses suggested that children experience larger gains in language and literacy skills when the quality of instruction is higher, but only when the quality of instruction is in the moderate to high range. This conclusion was supported by the meta analysis involving measures of instructional quality based on CLASS Instructional Support and the analysis of the quality of literacy instruction based on the TBRS This article is part of the issue "Quality Thresholds, Features, and Dosage in Early Care and Education: Secondary Data Analyses of Child Outcomes," Burchinal, Zaslow, and Tarullo (Issue Editors) For a full listing of articles in this issue, see: http:/onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/ 10.1111/mono.v81.2/issuetoc.
Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development