Texas Rising Star Program

In September of 2010 the Parent Advisory Team and staff determined
that some sort of accreditation was desired for the preschool,
especially to attract new parents searching for a place to enroll
their children. Years ago the school was NAEYC accredited but the
expense and time involved in maintaining that certification became
prohibitive for most half-day programs, including ours. The Texas
Rising Star program has since become the standard for most half-day
preschools as a result. The PAT voted to increase the staff training
hours and to participate in the Texas Rising Star Certification
process in the 2011-2012 school years.

The Texas Rising Star program is sponsored by the Texas Workforce
Commission (TWC) and is for child care providers that voluntarily meet
requirements that exceed the State’s Minimum Child Care Licensing
(CCL) standards. Four Star Certification applies to those providers
whose programs represent a superlative level of quality in the TRS
Provider system. There are eight areas of Certification criteria:
Licensing Compliance, Director Qualifications, Caregiver Staff
Qualifications, Staff Orientation, Staff Training,Group
Size,Curriculum/Activities, Caregiver-Child Interaction, Indoor and
Outdoor Environment, Health and Safety, Nutrition and Meal Time, and
Parental Involvement. Perhaps the most extensive area of assessment is
conducted through the Early Literacy Addendum which was added to TRS
in 2008. This tool was adapted from the Texas Education Agency’s
“Impacting Student Achievement Through Language and Literacy
Prekindergarten Guidelines.” It measures nine different areas of
curriculum: Motivating Children to read, Listening Comprehension,
Vocabulary, Written Expression, Verbal Expression, Developing
Knowledge of Literary Forms, Phonological Awareness and Speech
Production and Discrimination, Print and Book Awareness, and Letter
Knowledge and Early Word Recognition.

Over the past year-and-a-half our Director, Christy Milam, has worked
to fill out copious amounts of paperwork, provide extensive
documentation, conduct classroom observations and phone interviews,
and gotten feedback from other preschools who have been through this
process. Throughout this process the PAT was kept abreast of our
progress and the teaching staff was given the additional training
required for certification. The staff worked hard to bring all the
classrooms and playground into compliance to meet the highest
standards. In May of this year our final inspection was completed and
Covenant Presbyterian Preschool was given its Texas Rising Star
accreditation and the highest rating of Four Stars. This
accreditation is good for three years and the preschool will be
inspected by the Texas Rising Star program every four months in order
to maintain the four star rating.

More detailed information regarding the program can be found here:
http://www.twc.state.tx.us/svcs/childcare/provcert.pdf