Does Childrens Behavior Reflect Day Care Classroom Quality?
Focusing on one aspect of a study examining the child-staff ratio in California state-subsidized day care centers, this paper explores the relationship between indicators of quality and the behavior of children in day care centers. In fall 1990, trained observers spent a week in 122 day care classrooms throughout California. During this time they rated teachers and aides, counted students, recorded interactions and activities, and coded children’s behavior for 4 consecutive mornings. Two months later classrooms were randomly assigned a child-staff ratio configuration that they would be required to achieve and maintain for the spring session. One-third of the classrooms were asked to increase their ratio to 9:1; one-third to increase to a 10:1 ratio; and the final third to maintain an 8:1 ratio. Two months after the ratio change, observers returned and repeated the same observations in 112 classrooms. This paper presents findings from the spring data collection only. Analysis revealed t
