The City of Toronto validated the AQI (Assessment for Quality Improvement) to test whether it can accurately measure program quality in early learning environments.
The City partnered with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. OISE used the AQI in child care centres along with the following validated quality rating improvement systems:
The assessment results were collected from all the different systems and the data was anlayzed in various ways to determine if the AQI results were similar to the results from the other systems.
The outcome was positive. The City of Toronto has the only Canadian validated quality rating improvement system that is able to measure program quality in early learning environments.