Parents’ Perspectives on Child Care Quality and Quality Ratings in Maryland

This infographic highlights themes from interviews and focus groups with 37 parents from various regions of Maryland from November 2021 to May 2022 conducted as part of Child Trends’ Maryland Child Care Policy Research Partnership project. All parents were receiving child care scholarships (i.e., subsidies) at the time of the interviews/focus groups. We asked parents how they defined high-quality child care and the extent to which they considered provider quality ratings designated through Maryland EXCELS when searching for and choosing a child care provider. Six key characteristics of high-quality child care emerged across the groups, as shown below. We then reviewed Maryland’s public consumer education website to see what aspects of high-quality child care mentioned by parents were apparent from the QRIS rating information provided online, and compared this to the aspects parents identified.