BrightStars: Where “quality matters” in child care and early learning programs
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| At the Brown/Fox Point Early Childhood Education Center, young students get a head start on learning in a "four-star" environment, monitored by BrightStars, a national quality rating and approval system brought to Rhode Island in 2009 with funding from the Foundation. Photo courtesy Brown/Fox Point | Adam energetically shows visitors around his classroom at the Brown/Fox Point Early Childhood Education Center in Providence. He moves quickly from the reading area where moments earlier he was engaged in a book about a pigeon driving a bus, to the building blocks center, to the back of the classroom where he and his classmates are growing plants in small, individual containers. Adam proudly points out that his plant is the biggest.
Adam’s guests are visiting his classroom to learn about BrightStars, a national quality rating and improvement system for child care and early learning programs that Rhode Island Kids Count, the state’s venerable expert on issues concerning children, brought to Rhode Island in 2009 with financial support from the Foundation.
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| Brown/Fox Point students learn in a safe and nurturing environment. "We decided we really stand for quality," notes Center Executive Director Chris Amirault. Photo courtesy Brown/Fox Point | Leeanne Barrett, policy analyst at Kids Count, explains that BrightStars is a research-based approach to measurement that rates providers across six quality domains: child’s daily experience, teaching and learning, staff-child ratio and group size, family communication and involvement, staff qualifications, and program management. “From the beginning, providers were eager to cooperate. They saw participation in BrightStars as a way to distinguish their programs,” Barrett states.
One of those providers is Chris Amirault, executive director of the center Adam attends, Brown/Fox Point. “We decided we really stand for quality and that it was important to be one of the first to participate in a statewide program devoted to providing kids with the best education and care they can receive,” Amirault explains, adding that it also contributes to the “trust factor” so important to parents seeking child care services.
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| Rhode Island KIDS COUNT, Elizabeth Burke Bryant. Recipients of The Rhode Island Foundation’s 2010 Community Leadership Award. | In Rhode Island, BrightStars is managed by the Rhode Island Association for the Education of Young Children (RIAEYC). Tammy Camillo, director of BrightStars, says that in the past parents have not been able to learn much about a child care center. “I can easily access information that helps me decide what kind of vacuum cleaner to buy,” says Camillo, adding, “but it is tough to find that kind of detail about child care centers.”
Kids Count, RIAEYC, and the 35 programs, licensed by the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) participating in BrightStars are determined to fill the information gap while also improving the quality of child care.
“A child care center with only one star may well be better than a center that’s not participating in BrightStars. Participation in itself is a sign of quality. The one-star center is thinking about how it can do things better,” Amirault says. (Brown/Fox Point is a four-star center and is working to earn a five-star rating.)
Camillo agrees, stating, “What’s important to us is that any provider that comes in is doing so voluntarily. That center already is light years ahead of one that isn’t willing to go through the program. Centers do this because they care about quality.”
“From the beginning, providers were eager to cooperate. They saw participation in BrightStars as a way to distinguish their programs.” - Leanne Barrett, policy analyst, Rhode Island Kids Count
A BrightStars pamphlet for families explains, “High quality child care and early learning programs provide a safe and nurturing environment while promoting the physical, emotional, and intellectual development of young children.”
Along with the Foundation’s support, BrightStars in Rhode Island has received funding from United Way of Rhode Island, Nellie Mae Foundation, and the Rhode Island Department of Human Services. Other partner agencies include the DCYF, the Rhode Island Department of Health, the Rhode Island Department of Education, and various state associations for providers. Another partner is the Frank Porter Graham Center at the University of North Carolina, “responsible for analyzing the data and making recommendations to ensure BrightStars measures are reliable, valid, efficient, and effective at measuring program quality.”
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| Students experience firsthand the joys of cooking as part of their "four-star" education at Brown/Fox Point. The Foundation is a lead funder of Rhode Island KIDS COUNT, which was instrumental in bringing BrightStars to Rhode Island. Photo courtesy Brown Fox/Point. | In 2010, BrightStars is working toward enrolling 50 programs, after which it will expand marketing efforts to parents. In 2011, the quality rating system intends to grow from its current services for center and family-based providers to also include providers of before and after-school child care services.
“We feel that BrightStars is an extremely helpful way for us to take a look at the areas we can be proud of and areas we can improve. We’ve used the program to do that and to move forward,” states Amirault.
Anna Cano-Morales, associate vice president for grant programs at the Foundation, comments, “The work being done through BrightStars is aligned with the human services priority to support the development of effective and efficient systems that look at best practice and positive outcomes for children and youth. This project also has the potential to have statewide impact as well as to leverage state and federal funding to Rhode Island to improve current child programs.”
For more information,www.brightstars.org
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