08/21/2026
How Many Stars Does Quality Get?
I recently read The Anthropocene Reviewed, by John Green. In one of the essays, Green talks about the history of the five-star rating system and how, somewhere along the way, we started using stars to rate just about everything.
Hotels. Restaurants. Books. Uber drivers. Amazon purchases. Doctors. Businesses.
We have become a society obsessed with stars.
This got me thinking about how the five-star rating system has shown up in my own life, specifically in my life as the owner of a childcare center.
First, can we all just take a moment to appreciate the irony that my childcare center is named, STARS Early Learning Academy?
Stars are a BIG part of my work life these days.
A few years ago, Alabama began expanding a program called Alabama Quality STARS, which rates participating childcare programs on a scale of one to five stars.
When the program was introduced, providers were reassured that one star wasn't bad. In fact, earning the first star basically meant opting into the program. We were told to think of it as the first step on a journey toward quality.
And that is where I struggled.
Because that assumes we weren't already quality.
It suggests that quality begins when you enter the state's program and that the path to quality is the one the program has laid out for you.
For many childcare centers, including mine, that simply wasn't true.
Quality had always been our focus.
But there was another problem with stars.
Once you put stars beside the name of a business, people already know what they think those stars mean.
One star? Bad.
Two stars? Not much better.
Three? Average.
Four? Pretty good.
Five? Excellent.
So, for a childcare center in the heart of Fairhope that touts quality and asks parents to pay tuition that reflects that quality, what rating could we reasonably accept?
Five.
Anything less would feel like failure.
We jumped into the program early. We were determined to be one of the first centers in our area to receive a rating, and we jumped from zero stars to four.
Then it took us another year to earn that fifth star.
Did the quality of care at STARS suddenly improve during that year?
Not really.
What improved was our ability to "prove it".
We purchased curriculum because what we were already doing didn't fit neatly into the state's requirements. We implemented assessment systems. We added LAP. We added ASQ. We purchased materials, furniture and equipment. We completed training.
And we did paperwork.
So. Much. Paperwork.
Because ultimately, an assessor can't spend weeks inside our building.
They don't see the teacher who knows from across the room that a child is having a hard morning.
They don't see the parent who lingers at pickup because she trusts her child's teacher enough to ask for advice.
They don't see the thousands of tiny decisions our teachers make every day.
They don't interview our families. They don't ask the parents who have trusted us with multiple children over many years. They don't even look at our five-star Google rating, which is another interesting five-star system all on its own.
They have a limited amount of time to determine whether we are meeting the standards.
So we have to document it.
Then document that we documented it.
And put it in a binder.
That binder took about a year to build.
And that brings me to something we don't talk about enough when we talk about childcare quality.
Quality costs money!
It costs money to purchase approved curriculum and assessments.
It costs money to buy materials and equipment.
It costs money to provide additional training.
It costs money to pay someone for the hours and hours required to document everything.
And perhaps most importantly, it costs money to operate at ratios lower than the ratios Alabama licensing already considers legal.
Those empty spots in a classroom represent hundreds of dollars in lost tuition every single week.
The state essentially says, "This is the legal ratio." but quality program says, "But if you want us to call you high quality, you should do better."
Maybe we should.
But someone has to pay for "better."
And in childcare, there aren't many places for that cost to go.
Eventually, it lands with the center and with parents.
We have now maintained our five-star rating for several years, and each year seems to bring a new requirement, a new expectation or a new way we must demonstrate that we deserve to keep those five stars.
And yes, I am proud of them.
I worked hard for those stars. My staff worked hard for them. We earned them.
But I also know something that the stars can't tell you.
STARS was a quality childcare center before Alabama gave us five stars.
A rating system can measure certain pieces of quality. It can create standards. It can encourage improvement. It can give parents another tool when choosing care.
But it cannot create quality simply by measuring it.
And it certainly cannot capture all of it.
Right now, Alabama is experiencing a childcare crisis. Providers are trying to hire and retain qualified teachers, keep tuition affordable for families, meet increasingly complicated regulations and somehow keep their businesses financially sustainable.
At the same time, some of us are also spending enormous amounts of time proving that we are doing the very thing we came to work this morning to do:
Take good care of children.
Maybe that's the strange thing about our obsession with stars.
Once we create a five-star system, nobody wants one star anymore.
One star may technically mean "the first step toward quality," but that's not how the world understands stars. John Green's essay made me realize just how deeply that little symbol is embedded in the way we judge things.
So what does a five-star childcare rating really mean?
It means something. I believe that.
But it doesn't mean everything.
Some of the most important parts of quality childcare will never fit neatly into a rubric, an assessment or a three-ring binder.
And, perhaps appropriately, I give the five-star rating system...
four stars
