YoungStar Five Year Plan

The Department of Children and Families received approval from the Joint Committee on Finance for a five-year sustainability plan that outlines YoungStar policy and implementation. Read about DCF's Five-Year Plan at each link below.

• Overview Letter to Co-Chairs
  • A November 2010 letter from DCF to the co-chairs of the Joint Committee on Finance providing an overview of the YoungStar Five-Year Plan. It describes the rating system design, implementation, and provider and parent outreach information.
• Financial Request Letter to Co-Chairs
  • A November 2010 letter from DCF to the co-chairs of the Joint Committee on Finance requesting release of federal funds for continued support of YoungStar.
• YoungStar Five-Year Plan
  • A 38-page PDF document of the YoungStar Five-Year Plan submitted to Wisconsin's Joint Committee on Finance on November 22, 2010.
• Five-Year Plan Appendices
  • A 36-page PDF document with a selection of maps and charts providing a variety of YoungStar details, including locations of colleges and universities with T.E.A.C.H. scholarship recipients, listing of trainings provided by Supporting Families Together (SFTA) and Wisconsin Early Childhood Association (WECA), county maps showing households receiving and providers accepting Wisconsin Shares, and more.
• YoungStar Appeals Process
  • A PDF document outlining the YoungStar appeals process that a child care provider/program will follow to appeal a star rating.
• Other YoungStar History and Background Details

Continuous Improvement – YoungStar Validation Study

DCF contracted with Dr. Katherine Magnuson (UW-Madison), an expert in early childhood policy and programs, to conduct an independent study to “validate” the YoungStar rating scale. This validation study was designed to examine whether the YoungStar rating scale is working as intended and thus asks two main research questions:

• Does the YoungStar rating scale accurately identify high-quality child care programs?
• Are providers with higher YoungStar ratings better able to promote children's healthy development and learning?

To learn the answers to these questions, the validation study randomly selected approximately 160 child care providers (serving approximately 800 three- to five-year-olds) to participate in the study. Trained project staff twice assessed the development and learning of these 800 children - once in the fall of 2013 and once in the spring of 2014. The results of the study can be found here. With these results and additional analysis, we will be able to continuously improve and refine YoungStar based on research and data.