Texas Rising Star & quality care
Texas Rising Star is the Texas Workforce Commission’s quality rating and improvement system for child care programs participating in Child Care Services. At Future Scholars, its standards help guide educator preparation, teacher-child interactions, family partnership, and learning environments.
The Texas Rising Star framework
Texas Rising Star combines required structural measures with points-based quality measures. These four categories organize what assessors review across a child care program.
Measures include director qualifications, staff qualifications, orientation, training, education, and experience.
Prepared educators, clearer expectations, stronger professional development, and consistent classroom practice.
Measures include group size and staff ratios, warm and responsive style, language support, play-based interactions, guidance, regulation, and approaches to learning.
Teachers who engage, guide, talk with children, respond to cues, and support learning through everyday interactions.
Measures include family education, family involvement, and program management.
Clear communication, family information, organized systems, and more intentional partnership between home and center.
Measures focus on the equipment, materials, and arrangement of indoor and outdoor learning environments.
Spaces and materials arranged to support safe exploration, development, engagement, and age-appropriate learning.
What carries the greatest weight
For families, quality shows up in everyday moments: a teacher listening, a child receiving patient guidance, and play that encourages conversation and discovery. Ask us about our current Texas Rising Star status when you visit.
That weighting reflects something families feel every day: the way teachers speak, respond, guide, play, support regulation, and invite children into learning matters deeply.
READ THE OFFICIAL GUIDANCE
Explore the state’s Texas Rising Star guidance, then ask us how these practices support your child. Our office can confirm the center’s current certification status.
Continuous quality improvement
The program includes assessment, monitoring, mentoring support, and continuous quality improvement processes designed to help child care programs maintain and strengthen quality over time.
