This is a friendly planning guide for any child care program that wants to keep strengthening its services so staff are sure they are providing best practices for the care and education of young children; can recruit and retain families and teachers with the assurance of quality-focused practices; can prepare themselves for QRIS projects by practicing an action plan they choose; get connected to the wealth of free and low-cost resources for many identified elements of quality, such as social-emotional competence, that are often beyond the attention of many QRIS projects. For Quality Improvement professionals, this suggests a shift from top-down, external compliance and assessment-initiated strategies to an approach that empowers and strengthens teachers and directors by giving them choice and agency. A premise of this work is that an early education staff that is confident and treated professionally can implement QRIS standards and sustain them successfully