YoungStar, Wisconsin’s new quality rating and improvement system for licensed child care programs, suffered a major setback in the Governor’s budget. Incentives for higher quality providers were either eliminated or reduced significantly. For example, a three- star (out of five) rated child care provider would receive no bonus payment at all, instead of the 5% increase passed in 2010 by the Joint Finance Committee. Higher quality in early childhood education deserves to be rewarded with higher payments, and unfortunately this budget decimates those incentives.

After several unsuccessful attempts, Wisconsin finally joined 20 other states by establishing a quality rating and improvement system (QRIS) for child care. The program, YoungStar, was originally passed by the Joint Finance Committee in a bi-partisan unanimous vote last year.

YoungStar will help child care centers and family child care homes provide effective early learning programs, with an emphasis on those receiving Wisconsin Shares funding. A well-designed child care program is an effective vehicle for providing children with essential early learning experiences and for strengthening families. The state should have an interest in ensuring that tax dollars paid to child care programs are going to programs that meet reasonable standards of quality, and not going to programs that could be harmful to children. YoungStar helps accomplish this.Before the Governor’s debilitating cuts, YoungStar was set to pay progressively higher Wisconsin Shares payments to programs meeting higher quality standards—those rated as three-star, four-star, and five-star. While the plan was initially approved in 2010, tiered reimbursement was not yet funded going into the 2011-13 budget.

The Governor’s budget dramatically changed all that. Now, two-star programs are to be penalized, and incentive payments reduced, effective July 2011. However, the Joint Finance Committee delayed tiered reimbursement until July 2012 (though they did increase quality incentive payments to 5-star program higher than the Governor had proposed, effective January 2013).

The net effect of tiered reimbursement in the second year of the biennium is a reduction of $5.5 million in payments to providers, because a large percentage of programs are expected to be two-star as YoungStar gets underway. Here’s a summary of impacts on child care program payments by star level, as we understand it at this time:

Program Rating Impact on WI Shares Payments

• One star Prohibited from receiving Wisconsin Shares payments
• Two star Minus 5% effective July 2012
• Three star No change
• Four star Plus 5% effective July 2012
• Five star Plus 10% effective July 2012 (Increasing to 25% effective January 2013)

Wisconsin should build on incentive payments that were approved in the 2011-13 budget, starting in July 2012. For YoungStar to be as effective as possible in improving the quality of early learning in Wisconsin, a more robust incentive system is needed. Already, 3,944 child care programs from across the state have applied to participate in YoungStar (as of June 16, 2011).

The best way to help those programs improve is to offer bonus payments for three, four, and five star quality ratings. Then we will really be doing something to improve the lives of our youngest citizens, help these children grow up ready for school, and guarantee a well prepared workforce for Wisconsin’s future.

Daithi Wolfe

Tomorrow—Way #18: Cuts to K-12 Education Jeopardize Educational Opportunities for Wisconsin’s Future Workforce

About the series: “31 Ways in 31 Days” is a series of posts to the WCCF blog exploring the recently-passed biennial budget’s impact on children and families in Wisconsin. Each day in July, we are posting a description of one way the budget will affect kids and families, with an eye toward what should be done going forward to help improve outcomes and move us closer to the goal of making Wisconsin a place where every child has the opportunity to grow up, learn, and thrive in a safe, healthy, economically secure home and community.