American families struggle to find quality, affordable child care and preschool close to home. More and more parents and educators are realizing that children have a better chance of success in school and life if they are enrolled in effective programs in their earliest years.

To help families succeed and low-income families thrive, quality child care is critical. Yet too many of America's children are in early care settings that lack well-prepared teachers, lack the infrastructure to do background checks, and lack the ability to offer safe child-to-adult ratios that give children the attention they need to learn and explore.  Parents worry about the quality of care their children receive, yet often can't afford better programs and feel powerless to do anything about it.

Debates rage over how to identify good teachers, but few consider using information that can measure effectiveness while also helping teachers improve. New York City is a recent flashpoint with the controversial publication of flawed data rating the city's public school teachers. The time is ripe for a conversation that envisions new ways of evaluating teachers using results from standardized, valid and reliable observations.

How to identify good teachers — and how to help them improve — will be a hot topic in 2012, especially as states upgrade their teacher-evaluation systems. The Early Education Initiative hosted a panel that delved into recommendations from New America’s latest paper on teacher effectiveness, Watching Teachers Work: Using Observation Tools to Promote Effective Teaching in the Early Years and Early Grades.