The NECPA has a heritage of supporting the profession of early care and education by encouraging the availability of high quality, affordable child care and preschool programs for children, families and communities. Its early years began in 1991 when leading industry professionals of the National Child Care Association envisioned a valid and reputable Accreditation choice that promoted all eligible programs to raise their quality bar, bringing tangible benefits and experiences to the lives of the children and families they served each day.  Founding the NECPA required extensive research followed by pilot testing to ensure the commitment to rich standard components.  Since this time, we have promoted the most reliable measures of quality in the early childhood field both nationally and abroad. Transitioning from one generation to the next requires pursuance of comparisons to various accepted quality assessments to ensure NECPA is offering programs current research and best practices for their early childhood settings.