School-Age Care Environment Rating Scale (Sacers Spiral Edition)

Product Information

In both the United States and Canada, elementary schools, community and recreation centers, preschool child care centers, and family child care homes have responded to this obvious need for supervision during out-of-school hours by developing school-age care programs. Both the facilities and the program content differ from one program to another. Some programs focus on recreational activities so that the children can have the same extracurricular opportunities that are available to children who return home at the end of the school day. Others focus on enhancing children's learning by offering a more academically oriented program. In yet other programs, there is an emphasis on the creative arts including the visual arts, music, and drama. One must also consider that school-age child care programs enroll children from 5 to 12 years of age. Given this broad age range, it is essential to offer activities that meet the widely differing needs and interests of children over a 7-year age span. Prepare your facility to maximize the assessment process through quality enhancements. Any changes should reflect the best practices for young children and should improve the quality of the program on an ongoing basis. Remember, it often takes time to change behaviors and practices, so assessment preparation should be viewed as an ongoing process, rather than a short term activity. For NC's assessment process, items that directly reflect children's daily experiences are scored. There are some items and subscales that are not scored and these are: The ECERS-R is used in classrooms where the majority of children are 31 months old and older. The ITERS-R is used when the majority of children are younger than 31 months of age. If a classroom enrollment is exactly half and half (e.g., 3 of 6 children are 30 months or younger and 3 children are 31 months and older) then the ITERS-R will be used. School age children need to be in care for at least two hours each afternoon before a SACERS-U assessment can be completed. Beyond that consider the following:

Most important, the SACERS is an adaptation of the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS) (Harms & Clifford, 1980). The SACERS is similar in format to the ECERS, the Family Day Care Rating Scale (FDCRS) (Harms & Clifford, 1989), and the Infant/Toddler Environment Rating Scale (ITERS) (Harms, Cryer, & Clifford, 1990), but the content is specific to the school-age care group. SACERS-U, Staff Development subscale, items 39-41. Additionally, SACERS-U items 12, 14, and 43-47 are not scored.

How many children need to be present for an assessment to be completed?

The Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale – Revised (ECERS-R) is designed to evaluate quality of provision for children aged 2½ to 5 years in centre-based settings.

If additional assessments are needed to reach 1/3 of the total classrooms, additional assessment(s) will be needed starting with the age/scale group that has the most classrooms. When 1/3 of that age group has been represented, additional assessment(s) will be added for the next largest age/scale group, as needed, until the total number needed is reached. For programs that include a specific curriculum day (e.g., 8:00-2:30), wrap-around or before/after care hours operated under the same license will be considered, even if separate fees are required. Therefore, it is important for teachers to be aware of what the children enrolled in their classroom experience or would experience at these other times if they attended the extended day programming, even when another teacher is responsible for the children. This helps insure that children have appropriate experiences, indoors and outdoors, with much time for child-selected learning and consistent expectations. Programme structure (e.g. opportunities for children to access their own curriculum, planning schedules/routines to meet children’s needs) Language and reasoning (e.g. supporting children’s communication, language and literacy development; critical thinking) The ERS are reliable and valid instruments with many uses, including program enhancement, regulation, and research.

For the ERS assessment process, a program’s operating hours are determined based on when the program opens and closes, rather than a shorter time period when specific programming occurs. Therefore, the earliest time any children are allowed to attend, until the time the program closes are the program’s operating hours.

When there are multiple classrooms, the classroom(s) to be assessed will be selected on the day of the assessment by the assessor(s). All classrooms that are in operation will be included in the random selection process.Administrators are likely to have discussion with teachers in each classroom and encourage staff to share their experiences and strategies with each other. Group problem-solving can be helpful. If there are times of the day that tend to be more challenging or there are other predictable "higher need" times or situations, consider whether other program level resources, such as strategically using additional staff at these times, could be used to support teachers and enhance the functioning of each classroom. To determine how many assessments are needed, first consider the age ranges of the different classrooms and which rating scale they fit into (e.g., infant and toddler rooms use the ITERS-R, older two-year old rooms and preschool rooms use the ECERS-R). Then consider the total number of classrooms in operation. Use the steps below:

Both the ECERS-R and ITERS-R were developed by Thelma Harms, Richard Clifford and Debby Cryer at the University of North Carolina. Personal care routines (e.g. welfare requirements such as health & safety and provision for sleeping) Highly trained assessors record the daily activities and interactions observed in a child care setting using the items found in one of the following four rating scales: No one component is more or less important than the others, nor can one substitute for another. It takes all three to create quality care. Each of the three basic components of quality care manifests itself in tangible forms in the program's environment, curriculum, schedule, supervision and interaction, and can be observed. These are the key aspects of process quality that are included in our environmental rating scales.

Typically, most programs that choose to complete the assessment process for the Star Rated License will be assessed every 3 years, unless otherwise specified by their DCDEE Child Care Consultant. However, after a program’s star rating is issued, the program may decide to be re-assessed for a higher star rating. If the previous rating scale score was less than 4.0, on one or more assessments, the program may be eligible for onefree re-assessment per applicable scale.If a program that scored at least 4.0 on each rating scale assessment wants to reapply for a higher star rating, the facility will be responsible for the cost of the re-assessment(s). It is important to discuss either option with your child care licensing consultant. ERS Virtual TA Cohorts: Participants have the opportunity to collaborate with peers, as they obtain resources and support through professional development and technical assistance in a cooperative group setting. Cohorts have specific application periods where you can sign up. For example, if a facility has 1-4 preschool classrooms then 1 ECERS-R assessment is needed. However, if there are 5, 6, or 7 preschool classrooms then 2 ECERS-R assessments are needed. Family Child Care Environment Rating Scale, Revised - Multi-age care for children birth through 12 years old, located in a home environment