News Releases
More Quality Choices for More Families
Virginia Elevates Excellence in Early Childhood Care and Education with the Release of VQB5 Quality Ratings and New Honor Rolls
For Immediate Release: October 14, 2025
Contact: communications@doe.virginia.gov
kenita.matthews@doe.virginia.gov
RICHMOND, VA — Governor Glenn Youngkin and the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) announced today the release of 3,293 early childhood site quality ratings via VQB5, Virginia’s statewide early childhood measurement system. Along with the Governor’s Building Blocks for Virginia Families initiative which invests $1.2 billion in early childhood slots this biennium, VQB5 enables more Virginia working families to choose and access high quality birth-to-five experiences that prepare their children for kindergarten.
As of Tuesday, parents can easily find quality information online for 3,293 public and private early childhood sites, including child care centers, family day homes, Head Start programs, and public schools, which is approximately 200 more sites than last year. Parents can find quality options no matter where they live or work in Virginia; 99% of publicly-funded sites met or exceeded state expectations last year, which is an increase from 98% in the prior year. VQB5 measures teacher-child interactions and use of quality curriculum for more than 11,300 classrooms and puts this information at parents’ fingertips via a one-stop portal (EarlyChildhoodQuality.doe.virginia.gov) for health, safety and quality information. Since launching last October, the portal has received more than 100,000 views. With the addition of a second year of ratings, Honor Rolls, and enhanced search features, families will find it even easier to search for and choose the public or private early childhood option that best meets their needs.
“Virginia is setting the national standard for its robust, public-private early childhood system. By measuring what matters most for child outcomes—teacher-child interactions and curriculum quality—VQB5 provides essential information to families to help them choose the best option for their children, which is especially important for working families who need safe, quality and affordable full-day, full-year options,” said Secretary of Education Aimee Guidera.
Virginia’s early childhood programs demonstrated both excellence and improvement in 2024-2025. This year, Virginia launched three VQB5 Honor Rolls to recognize 494 early childhood sites:
- Excellence Honor Roll – These 101 sites earned Exceeds Expectations, the highest possible rating in VQB5. This year, the number of sites that exceed state expectations grew by 28% to 101 sites. Considering Virginia uses a rigorous national tool to measure classroom quality, these sites may be considered national exemplars. These exemplars include child care, family day home, Head Start and school sites and are located in all of Virginia’s nine Ready Regions.
- Infant-Toddler Quality Honor Roll – These 216 sites demonstrated top performance in infant/toddler classrooms (top 10% in the state).
- Improvement Honor Roll – These 294 sites showed significant year-over-year gains in teacher-child interactions (top 10% in the state).
Honorees will receive Honor Roll certificates and be recognized on their online VQB5 Quality Profiles.
“Honor Rolls are Virginia’s new way to elevate both excellence and improvement. With its focus on teacher-child interactions, VQB5 sets high expectations for care and instruction for our littlest learners and then ensures that educators across more than 11,000 classrooms receive individualized feedback multiple times a year,” said Jenna Conway, Chief of Early Learning and Specialized Populations at the VDOE. “Honor Rolls show how much Virginia’s early childhood educators and leaders have embraced and use this information to strengthen their teaching. In turn, more Virginia children are benefiting from learning experiences that will prepare them for kindergarten.”
In fact, Virginia’s statewide average site score increased with the largest average improvement in family day homes. Virginia is also raising the floor on quality so that all families can choose a child care setting that works for them with peace of mind that their children will be safe and receiving excellent care. Virginia provided intensive supports to the 50 sites that received Needs Support in 2023-2024 to help them earn Meets Expectations ratings in 2024-2025. Less than 1% of sites were identified as Needs Support in 2024-2025 and VDOE is already working with those sites to improve.
This year, Virginia also launched VAConnects to link information about early childhood experiences to school readiness and K-12 outcomes. Specifically, VAConnects integrates early childhood data with the Virginia Kindergarten Readiness Program (VKRP) and Virginia Language & Literacy Screening System (VALLSS). Virginia is the only state in the nation that measures quality at the classroom level for 11,300+ classrooms and connects that data to a longitudinal data system, enabling Virginia to understand the impact of early childhood experiences on children’s growth and learning over time.
Providing quality and affordable child care options is critically important because seven out of ten Virginia children under the age of six have all available parents in the workforce. Through Governor Youngkin’s $1.2 billion Building Blocks for Virginia Families initiative, more children have access to publicly-funded slots than ever before. Virginia currently funds more than 74,000 slots across Virginia through state Pre-K (Virginia Preschool Initiative), the Child Care Subsidy Program, and Mixed Delivery. Two-thirds of Virginia families are now choosing public-private early learning options. Even with higher quality expectations, more private providers are choosing to take public funds, meaning more options for families. These investments are paying off - recent increases in early childhood enrollment are correlated with an increase in labor force participation and a decrease in unemployment.
“Through Building Blocks for Virginia Families, Virginia ensures that working families can afford and choose the child care option that best meets their needs so they can work and pursue greater self-sufficiency for themselves and their families” noted Superintendent of Public Instruction Emily Anne Gullickson. “Virginia is also developing innovative new tools like the nation’s first early learning digital wallet that will make it easy for employers to contribute to the cost of child care for their employees.”
When launched statewide in spring 2026, the digital wallet will include a family portal where parents can receive funds for child care costs and make payments directly to the child care provider of their choice, a provider portal for receiving payments and confirming services, and a donation portal for employers and other third-party funders like philanthropy.
The VDOE, in partnership with the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation (VECF) and the nine Ready Regions, administers VQB5. Through this public-private partnership, Virginia has built capacity to capture data about 11,300 classrooms, observe and provide feedback to 27,000 early childhood educators and engage families as children’s first and most important educators.
“Virginia’s public-private partnerships at the state and regional level put children, their families and local communities at the center of this work,” said VECF President Kathy Glazer “Ready Regions help ensure statewide consistency in measurement and accountability to improve outcomes for all children while enabling family input and local innovation to address the unique needs of different communities.”
To learn more or explore early childhood site ratings and honor rolls, visit EarlyChildhoodQuality.doe.virginia.gov and refer to the following documents:
To learn more about Virginia’s Ready Regions, visit https://vecf.org/ready-regions/.
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