The focus of this dissertation was to explore the importance of high quality early education in later secondary education development, quantifying quality in early childhood education programs, and examining how teacher education contributes to quality of early childhood education programs. For phase I, early childhood education positively associated with improved eighth grade state proficiency percentages in the mathematics and writing summative assessment scores. When examining scoring procedures for "Colorado Shines" QRIS in phase II, programs that accepted Colorado Child Care Assistance Program (CCCAP), were not part of Colorado Preschool Program (CPP), had children that spoke more than one language, and accepted infants overall scored the lowest scores of early education programs. Phase III results showed that teachers with bachelor's degrees did not significantly improve overall student mathematics and literacy scores under "TS Gold" compared to students of teachers that did not have bachelor's degrees. Three appendices are included. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]