BrightStars Program Evaluates R.I. Child-care Providers

Journal staff report
The Providence Journal
Projo.com
December 10, 2009

Colleen Dorian, of Coventry, who has 22 years’ experience as a child-care provider, says she wasn’t afraid to have an outside evaluator assess her program.

She said she welcomed BrightStars, Rhode Island’s new rating and quality-improvement system for early childhood programs, because she wants “to continue to improve what I’m offering.”

Dorian’s is among 20 early education centers and homes — a tiny fraction of 1,148 licensed providers in Rhode Island — which have voluntarily joined BrightStars.

The program, a public-private initiative in the planning for four years, aims to drive up the quality of early childhood care and improve the odds that youngsters will arrive in kindergarten ready to learn.

Parents “really want information about what constitutes high-quality child care,” said Elizabeth Burke-Bryant, executive director of Rhode Island Kids Count.

“The biggest return on investment is in very small children,” said United Way CEO Anthony Maione, whose agency has taken the lead in financial support for the program.

The United Way spent $344,000 for planning from 2005 to 2008. The Rhode Island Foundation and the Nellie Mae Education Foundation contributed an additional $390,000. BrightStars, formally launched at a reception at the Providence Marriott Wednesday night, has an annual operating budget of $250,000. That allocation is funded by the United Way, CVS Caremark Charitable Trust, Nellie Mae, the Rhode Island Foundation and the state Department of Human Services.

BrightStars is run by the Rhode Island Association for the Education of Young Children. It awards up to four stars on the basis of nine criteria, supports child-care operations in enhancing their programs, and plans a push to reach parents in 2010.

Evaluators look at the child-teacher ratio, the staff’s level of academic education and training and the interactions they have with the children and their parents, as well as classroom materials, the design of indoor and outdoor play areas, curriculum, health and safety considerations.

A nationally prominent researcher in early childhood development says the Rhode Island effort is part of a fast-moving national trend that has sprung up to define good conditions for young learners and raise the bar in programs available to parents.

Anne Mitchell, of New York, who helped plan BrightStars, says 21 states, including Rhode Island, have put quality improvement and rating systems in place since 1998, and most of the rest of them are headed that way.

Most of the programs have voluntary membership, she said. The highest participation — as much as 70 percent in Pennsylvania — occurs in states which have a “generous and wide array of financial incentives” that fill the gap between the amount families can pay and the cost of quality child care, Mitchell said.

The incentives range from small grants to new members for improvements, to scholarships for staff to further their education, and even bonuses for achieving higher standards. Louisiana has school-readiness tax credits which go to parents, depending on the quality rating of the child-care or early education center their child has attended.

Of all the components to a successful program, Rhode Island is weakest on financial incentives, Mitchell said. “Rhode Island has to work on that,” she said.

For the ratings online, see brightstars.org.

http://www.projo.com/education/content/BRIGHT_LIGHTS_12-10-09_U1GO8P3_v15.3a64c1e.html

© 2009 , Published by The Providence Journal Co., 75 Fountain St., Providence, RI 02902.