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Helping Idaho’s Children Thrive Through High-Quality Early Learning & Care
Quality Achievers is Idaho’s Quality Recognition and Improvement System (QRIS), a statewide initiative led by IdahoSTARS. This program supports child care providers in creating nurturing, engaging, and high-quality environments where children can learn and grow.
Through Quality Achievers, early childhood programs receive training, resources, and recognition for their commitment to continuous improvement and excellence in care and education.
Programs in Quality Achievers build upon foundational quality practices required for licensing and participation in the Idaho Child Care Program (ICCP). As they grow, providers choose specific areas to focus on called "Quality Achievements" to define what quality means for their program.
These achievements include:
Business Practices
Programs demonstrate financial stability, effective marketing strategies, the reduction of risks to their business, a focus on staff retention, and the development of leadership skills.
Health, Safety, and Wellness
Programs demonstrate they keep the children in their care healthy, reduce health and safety risks, ensure mealtimes are positive and responsive and sleep times are safe and healthy, and support the social development and emotional wellbeing of their staff and the children.
Environments, Curriculum & Instruction
Programs who can demonstrate a high-quality environment for the children in their care, the use of a high-quality curriculum, and high-quality instruction.
Child Development
Programs demonstrate how child development is incorporated into their structure, ensure teacher-child interactions are developmentally appropriate, use data to make decisions, and engage families.
Partnerships with Families and Community
Programs demonstrate they promote social connections between their families, promote parenting resilience, provide concrete support in times of need, promote knowledge of parenting and child development, incorporate families into the development of their program, and connect with their community to strengthen the families in their care.
Early Childhood Positive Intervention & Support
Programs demonstrate they use data to monitor their program and classroom effectiveness, conduct developmental and behavioral monitoring and screening and refer when necessary, have policies and practices that create a conducive learning environment, provide Positive Behavior Intervention Support for children with persistent challenging behaviors, and use data to identify and ensure teachers are using consistent Idaho Positive Beginnings Collaborative practices.
National Accreditation
Programs demonstrate they have a valid accreditation from NAEYC, AMS, IMC, AMI, NECPA, NAC, NAFCC or are an Early Head Start or Head Start grantee.
To explore programs participating in Quality Achievers near you or get a child care referral, call 211 and ask for IdahoSTARS. You can also reach out directly to any participating Quality Achievers program listed below.