DAY-CARE QUALITY AND REGULATION - A QUEUING-THEORETIC APPROACH

Establishing national quality standards has become a central issue in the national debate about child care. Advocates of expanded regulation argue in favor of lower child-staff ratios, higher educational standa rds for caregivers, and smaller group sizes, bur these tighter standar ds do not come without costs. We develop a formal model of the child c are environment, concentrating on the impact that child-staff ratios, group size, and caregiver ability have on the amount of time children spend on-task and the intensity of caregiver-child interactions. The m odel clarifies the role of these variables and provides guidance conce rning the potential costs and benefits of regulation. A major policy i mplication of this research is that regulation of child-staff ratios, group sizes and caregiver qualifications is too blunt an instrument fo r improving the overall quality level of child care. The model present ed in this paper has wide application to other educational and related human services, since new technology makes it more economical to prov ide these services with individualized components. (C) 1998 Elsevier S cience Ltd. All rights reserved.