Missouri child care rating system on the rocks
Charlie Shields
This post is from education writer Nancy Cambria.
Looks like it could be once, twice, three strikes you’re out for a proposal to create a 5-star quality rating system for Missouri’s licensed child care facilities.
Equating it with restaurant and hotel reviews, proponents want the rating system to give parents a better gauge of the overall quality of a facility for their children.
But the proposal got a very poor reception on the Senate floor Tuesday. Even the person charged with stumping for it didn’t want to touch it. Sen. Jolie Justus, D-Kansas City, told her colleagues she reluctantly attached the QRS proposal to her child care subsidy bill at the demand of Senate President Pro Tem Charlie Shields - the QRS sponsor - in exchange for him giving floor time to her subsidy bill.
Justus then asked fellow senators which bill they preferred, and QRS was given a verbal thumbs down by three senators. One of them, Sen. Jason Crowell, R-Cape Girardeau, threatened to filibuster it. That was enough for Justus, and she scrapped the QRS.
With that kind of reception, it’s doubtful whether it will be readdressed by the Senate.
This is the third year in a row that proponents have tried to get such a star system on the books. Centers would be evaluated on curriculum, facilities, provider education and even bookkeeping to get the stars. Only centers with significant accreditation would be eligible for the highest star ranking. Seventeen other states currently have some sort of rating system in place.
Backed by several children’s advocacy groups and Missouri Child Care Resource and Referral Network, the proposal isn’t popular among some providers of smaller centers who argue a 5-star ranking is unobtainable for most operators, especially those serving lower income populations.
The QRS proposal had a rocky start this year. At Shields’ request, Justus had already tried to attach the bill in the Senate Education Committee, but committee members stripped it out.
Justus’ child care subsidy bill is asking for income modifications for low-wage parents seeking child care subsidies. In addition to loosening the purse strings on income eligibility, the bill proposes a sliding scale for families that increase their income up to 45 percent above the subsidy’s cap.
> a 5-star ranking is unobtainable for most operators,
> especially those serving lower income populations.
So is it better to have no ratings, so that poor people continue to be uninformed about the poor quality of care their children are receiving? Some of the daycare centers I’ve seen in low income areas are truly frightening.
My only concern here is that you must have “significant accreditation” to get five stars. The state should establish its own criteria, not offload the judgment to other, unnamed groups. If you run an excellent facility, you should get 5 stars, period.
Check out that picture of Senator Shields. I notice he always wears that little stick pin in his dress shirt collar. Is this a foppish affectation, or does it have some special significance, like his grandma handed it down to him? You see watches, cufflinks, tie tacks and lapel pins, but you don’t often see men wearing stick pins. At least not since the late J.B. “Jet” Bank left the Senate.