Reflecting the growing momentum in support of quality rating and improvement systems (QRISs) as a key strategy to improve early care and education quality, significant amounts of public dollars have been devoted to their development and implementation. In this brief, the authors report on their investigation of both quality rating and improvement system supports for professional development and on rating rubrics related to staff formal education, compensation and benefits, and adult work environments in center-based programs. Here, they examine the extent to which these key ingredients for program improvement are included within and vary across quality rating and improvement systems. They anticipated that staff qualifications and professional development, as they have largely been the focus of improvement efforts in the early care and education field, would be consistently included in systems. As QRISs are becoming the primary strategy for quality improvement, they were also interested to learn the extent to which QRISs attend to the other key ingredients--compensation and factors related to work settings--that have been linked to quality. This investigation describes the variety of ways in which different QRISs identify and define these key elements associated with supporting staff, both as individuals and as a group, to improve and sustain quality. The authors used the Child Trends "Compendium of Quality Rating Systems and Evaluations" as their major source of information of QRISs. To gain additional insight into how systems are operationalized, they conducted interviews during spring and summer 2010 with key stakeholders from four jurisdictions with varying QRISs characteristics, Colorado, New Mexico, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia (D.C.). To clarify particular elements of some QRISs, they also reviewed individual QRIS websites and corresponded with administering agency directors. Four components of QRISs as described in system plans constitute the focus of this investigation: 1) Staff qualifications; 2) Financial incentives for professional development; 3) Direct compensation, including salary and benefits; and 4) Adult learning environments. Appendix includes: Quality Rating and Improvement Systems by Resources and Indicators of Support for Professional Development, Direct Compensation, and Supportive Adult Learning Environments. (Contains 4 tables, 1 figure, 4 boxes and 80 endnotes.)