What is the Maryland State Department of Education’s Early Childhood Accreditation Project?
In 2000, the Subcabinet on Children, Youth, and Families noted the disparity of quality among Maryland’s early care and education programs. Its report, entitled, Children Entering School Ready to Learn, explained that too many programs are mediocre or poor. A strategy for improving the quality of care is to encourage programs to seek accreditation. In this process, a program voluntarily pursues self-study, program improvement, and external program review in order to achieve and publicly confirm that it meets national or state quality standards. To encourage this practice, the General Assembly charged the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) to establish the Early Childhood Accreditation Project.
