At the state and federal level, policymakers are invested in improving the quality of early childhood education settings. Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) address the need for systematic and widespread improvement of quality and push beyond basic licensure requirements within individual states. QRIS provide the metrics and levers to improve quality by  assessing programs based on quality standards and converting to star quality ratings; and then incentivizing and supporting quality based on programs’ star quality ratings.

Almost every state in the U.S. is developing or implementing a QRIS (QRIS National Learning Network, 2013). Yet, there is very little evidence on the extent to which star quality ratings relate to child outcomes. The present study examines the extent to which star ratings from Virginia’s pilot QRIS, the Virginia Star Quality Initiative (VSQI) relate to children’s development among state-funded, targeted pre-kindergarten programs. We capitalize on data collected by the state regarding children’s literacy performance, and investigate the extent to which the rating structure in the VSQI relates to children’s growth in literacy across preschool and kindergarten.  

The Virginia Star Quality Initiative offers a useful setting for QRIS validation work as it defines ratings using quality standards with strong empirical support and uses a somewhat untraditional approach to create star ratings (i.e., a point system instead of a building block approach; Halle, Vick Whittaker, & Anderson, 2010). The four quality standards in the VSQI are: (1) staff education and qualifications; (2) teacher-child interactions (CLASS; Pianta et al., 2008); (3) structure (i.e. staff-to-child ratio); and (4) environment and instruction (ECERS; Harms et al., 2005). Centers’ performance on each quality standard is summed and converted to star ratings, with 1-star indicating low quality and 5-stars indicating superior quality.

Our analytic sample included 2,448 children in 71 state-funded targeted pre-kindergarten programs in 14 communities in Virginia. Centers had approximately 41.58 children enrolled with a fair amount of variation (SD = 63.11). Fifty-four percent of the children were non-white, 50% were boys, 7% had disabilities at pre-kindergarten entry, 8% had limited English Proficiency and 12% of children received Title-I funding.

We estimated the relation the relation between programs’ ratings and children’s growth using piecewise linear regressions, which included controls for initial performance, a vector of child and center covariates, and community and year fixed effects. Children in higher-rated pre-kindergarten programs had sharper literacy growth in the preschool year compared to children in lower-rated pre-kindergarten programs. There was no difference in children’s growth from the spring of preschool to the fall of kindergarten or during the kindergarten year as a function of pre-kindergarten programs’ ratings.

Our evidence suggests that higher star ratings are related to stronger growth in children’s pre-literacy skills in pre-kindergarten year. However, there are many other important targets of QRIS, such as unifying early childhood education programs, which should be the focus of future investigations.  Overall, much more work is needed in understanding the implications of measurement and rating choices across multiple states’ QRIS.