This column first appeared in the “Cincinnati Enquirer” Sunday Edition on July 14, 2024
Preparing a child for success in school and life is a lot like getting an athlete ready for the Summer Olympics. You seek out the best trainers and coaches, and you invest your time and resources in efforts that will maximize performance. You acknowledge that the commitment is great and the road is long, but achieving your goals of success will yield strong rewards for years to come.
Just like an athlete’s inner circle of trainers and coaches, your child’s teachers can have a dramatic effect on helping them reach their full potential, too. A quality early childhood professional can help infants and toddlers learn foundational skills that have the potential to catapult them into success for the rest of their primary and secondary education years. And that’s why so many families are focused on finding the best child care environment possible for their little ones: families know that quality early education and care is critical to a child’s development, and it starts at birth.
For years, families in Ohio have used the Step Up To Quality five-star rating system as a measure of the child care programs that go above and beyond licensing requirements. Now, the State of Ohio is making a change to those rankings, and it is leading families to forego the notion of stars, and instead look for Gold, Silver, and Bronze designations.
The timing of this change – officially in effect July 7 – as a precursor to the 2024 Summer Olympics is purely coincidence. But just as athletes spend years preparing for the biggest competition of their lives, quality child care has the potential to make a dramatic difference in the success of a child as they prepare for their own future accomplishments.
Now, programs that were previously classified as one-star or two-star will be recognized as Bronze programs; three-star programs will be recognized as Silver programs; and four- and five-star programs will be recognized as Gold programs. Programs that are rated as Silver and Gold are regarded as ‘Highly Rated.’ This modification isn’t just about relabeling the signage outside a program – it increases requirements by adding additional quality standards to all rating levels. By making these changes, child care programs in Ohio will do more to help every young child reach their full potential and be a winner in life.
Here’s a look at what those ratings mean in terms of the kind of care families can count on from area child care programs. In order to be licensed in the State of Ohio, child care programs have to meet specific health and safety standards. Unrated programs are not required to implement curriculum and staff are required to obtain minimal professional development training. In contrast, implementing curriculum is now required in all rating levels in the new system. Continual assessment of children will also be required in all highly rated programs to create intentional learning objectives.
This ranking system is more than a tool to recognize quality child care programs (though I can attest to the pride that child care providers feel for the ratings they achieve through hard work and diligence of their own accord), but a critical way for families to easily discern which programs offer the highest quality learning environments available for their children. The new Gold, Silver, and Bronze rating system will allow families to quickly determine the quality of care they can count on at a local child care provider.
We all know that the hurdles of being a working parent are ever-present. And the quest to find child care has become a sprint that many working families find exhausting, especially in the new norms of a constant child care crisis. Thankfully, these changes to Ohio’s Step Up To Quality rating system will help parents quickly assess which programs offer quality child care and the greatest potential of victory for their children.
Vanessa Freytag is the president & CEO of 4C for Children, a Child Care Resource & Referral Agency that supports everyone who cares for young children, from parents to child care providers, to ensure high-quality early education and care for all children.