Ensuring Quality Across Participating Early Learning Programs

NAEYC’s Early Learning Program Quality Assessment and Accreditation System strives to be a standard bearer for high-quality early care and education programs. NAEYC has established policies and procedures to ensure that its recognized and accredited programs maintain substantial compliance with current NAEYC’s Early Learning Program Quality Assessment and Accreditation assessment items and critical practices during a program’s term. 

Critical practices are those related to the well-being and safety of children or the regulation of the program. They coincide with NAEYC’s required assessment items relating to adequate child supervision, appropriate guidance practices, safe infant sleep, and licensing status. 

NAEYC expectations for verification of continued quality assurance includes: 

• 72-Hour Incident Reports - A requirement for programs to promptly report critical incidents based on the 72-hour notification policy 

• Annual Reports - A requirement for programs to annually confirm licensing/regulatory status and submit annual reports 

• Responding to Feedback - A requirement for programs to respond to public feedback of possible noncompliance 

72-Hour Incident Reports

Recognized and Accredited programs are expected to report program status changes and critical incidents within 72 hours.