Idaho's Childcare Quality Rating System: What It Means for Directors and Staff

Idaho's quality rating system is Quality Achievers, a voluntary Quality Recognition and Improvement System run by IdahoSTARS.

IdahoSTARS is not the licensing agency: it is a University of Idaho organization funded by the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare and CCDBG, while daycare licensing itself sits with the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare under its basic daycare license rules.

Participation is voluntary.

To take part, a program must be a licensed home- or center-based child care provider, so both centers and licensed family child care homes are eligible.

Quality Achievers recognizes programs at two designations.

A Growing Star is a program that meets the baseline Quality Essentials.

A Star Achiever is a program recognized for its own combination of Quality Essentials and high-quality Achievements.

There is no numbered ladder of levels in the material our research read: a program is recognized either for the baseline essentials or for a combination of essentials and achievements.

What either list contains was not detailed in the material our research read; IdahoSTARS' current criteria are the place to check.

The staff-credential and training criteria behind the Quality Essentials and the Achievements were not detailed in the material our research read, so this page names no credential, degree or training hours that earn standing at either designation.

What is established is where the professional development structure sits: IdahoSTARS runs Idaho's professional development system, which includes a statewide registry, an educational pathway, training approval and scholarships.

For what a Growing Star or Star Achiever application asks of your staff roster, use IdahoSTARS' current Quality Achievers criteria rather than any secondhand list.

The Quality Achievers material our research read names no specific classroom observation instrument, and our research did not confirm whether an on-site observation is part of an application at either designation.

Treat any tool you have heard named for Idaho as unconfirmed, and ask IdahoSTARS what a current application involves before you schedule staff training or buy instruments around a particular tool.

Quality Achievers offers participating programs coaching and incentives, including funding opportunities when programs meet quality goals.

The amounts behind those funding opportunities were not published in the material our research read, so this page states no figures.

For individual staff, our research found no Quality Achievers provision that pays a named staff bonus tied to a designation.

Separately from the rating, IdahoSTARS' professional development system includes scholarships and professional incentives; our research did not confirm how or whether those connect to a Quality Achievers designation.

The sequence a director can read out of the published material is short.

Confirm your program is a licensed home- or center-based provider, which is the stated eligibility requirement.

Read IdahoSTARS' current Quality Achievers criteria to see what the Quality Essentials and the Achievements ask of your program, since the details were not verified in our research.

Use the coaching Quality Achievers offers participating programs rather than guessing at the criteria, and expect funding opportunities to be tied to meeting quality goals.

Because IdahoSTARS also runs the statewide registry, the educational pathway and training approval, any credential or training records your staff hold there sit in IdahoSTARS' system, and our research did not confirm exactly which records an application requires.

IdahoSTARS runs Idaho's professional development system: a statewide registry, an educational pathway, training approval, and scholarships.

It sits within the University of Idaho's Center on Disabilities and Human Development and is funded by the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare and CCDBG.

Our research did not confirm how registry records feed a Quality Achievers application, so use IdahoSTARS' current criteria for what documentation a designation requires.

The system our research read is Quality Achievers, and Idaho's quality recognition runs under that name.

Directors may still hold older program documents, binders or training certificates that use different Idaho rating language; before acting on any of it, confirm the current designations and criteria on IdahoSTARS' Quality Achievers pages or with IdahoSTARS directly.

This page does not describe any earlier Idaho rating scheme, because our research did not verify one.