Coaching as Part of a Pilot Quality Rating Scale Initiative: Challenges to—and Supports for—the Change-Making Process

Several nonprofit agencies in a large Midwestern city provide assistance to early care and education programs participating in a pilot Quality Rating Scale (QRS) initiative by pairing them with itinerant consultants, who are known as coaches. Despite this assistance, not all programs improve their QRS score. Furthermore, while pilot stakeholders know how much time a coach has spent working with a particular program, little is known about the consulting process itself and the additional challenges that can impede coaches’ attempts to bring about change. As a result, QRS stakeholders lack a clear understanding of the assistance that coaches might need, as well as the additional programmatic interventions that could augment coaches’ work. This article reports on a study focusing on the QRS consulting process, as well as some of the factors that present challenges to that process. The article concludes with recommendations for addressing these issues and in turn enhancing the QRS coaching process.