This research, conducted by a bipartisan team of FM3 and Public Opinion Strategies, and generously supported by the Richard W. Goldman Family Foundation, explores three critical and interrelated issues: 1. How parents and educators think about quality in early childhood education; 2. How and whether their understanding of quality influences their choice of an early learning program, either as a place for their children to be cared for and educated, or as a place of employment; 3. How their personal stake in the issue of early childhood education translates to their appetite and capacity for civic participation that advances the issue. (author abstract)