On today’s episode of Impacting the Classroom, we have a fascinating conversation with Kris Meyers, the Director of Quality Measurement and Improvement at the Virginia Department of Education. Kris sheds light on the Virginia Quality Birth-to-Five System (VQB5) and the transformative role of the CLASS® tool in early childhood education. Listen in as we explore the substantial changes brought by Virginia's 2020 state law, which unified child care and early childhood systems under the Department of Education.

Kris walks us through the development and implementation of Virginia's comprehensive quality early childhood system. We discuss the importance of classroom observations by familiar observers, supplemented by external quality assurance checks, early childhood education's critical importance, and the impactful shift towards focusing on meaningful interactions. We also touch on the upcoming public quality ratings, designed to raise awareness among families about the importance of quality interactions in early development.

Topics Discussed in This Episode

• [00:00:00] Introduction
• [00:00:28] Kris’s role and work at VDOE
• [00:01:16] The beginning of Kris’s career as an elementary school teacher
• [00:02:28] Kris’s first impression of CLASS
• [00:04:08] Why CLASS is about more than just skills
• [00:05:23] Where CLASS fit in with the QRIS system
• [00:07:08] The values that guide Virginia’s quality early childhood system
• [00:09:39] How CLASS observations are implemented
• [00:12:38] The features of an external observation system
• [00:15:40] Who's responsible for collecting the data in Virginia and who coordinates classrooms
• [00:18:51] What decisions are influenced by CLASS data
• [00:20:45] Impacts Kris has seen since the implementation of CLASS
• [00:22:39] Whether classrooms are moving away from focusing on the easy things and focusing on the things that matter
• [00:24:13] Why families should be excited about public ratings and the implementation of CLASS
• [00:27:39] Helping families understand what can do at home to build on what children learn in school
• [00:29:03] What Kris would like to have known from the beginning of the CLASS implementation
• [00:32:38] What professional development opportunities and coaching cycles might look like
• [00:35:17] Surveying the educators to find out how the implementation and rollout are working for them
• [00:38:38] Kris’s plans for the summer

Resources

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