Children who attend high-quality early learning programs, especially at-risk children, can make significant gains in their knowledge, skills, and abilities. In Texas, early learning programs can pursue higher quality through several avenues. Texas Rising Star is one of these options for early learning programs, and for parents looking for high quality child care for their children.
The Texas Rising Star program is a quality rating and improvement system (QRIS) for child care programs participating in the Texas Workforce Commission’s (TWC) Child Care Services program. Texas Rising Star certification is available to licensed centers and licensed and registered child care home facilities that meet the certification criteria.
The Texas Rising Star program offers three levels of quality certification (Two-Star, Three-Star, and Four-Star) to encourage child care and early learning programs to attain progressively higher levels of quality. These certification levels are tied to graduated enhanced reimbursement rates for children receiving child care scholarships.