Tennessee Daycare Star Quality Program: How Ratings Work and Why They Matter

Quality Ratings Start After Year One

Tennessee's Star Quality Program is a quality rating and improvement system (QRIS) that evaluates licensed child care providers on a scorecard from 0 to 100. You won't receive a rating during your first year of operation — the scorecard assessment begins after you've held a license for at least 12 months.

The rating isn't just a badge. It directly affects how much you earn from CCAP subsidy reimbursements. Higher scores unlock bonus payments that increase your per-child weekly revenue by 15% to 20%.

How the Scorecard Works

The Star Quality scorecard evaluates your program across multiple domains including staff qualifications, learning environment, health and safety practices, parent engagement, and administrative compliance. Scores map to quality tiers:

• Scorecard 80–89 (1-Star Equivalent): 15% quality bonus on CCAP reimbursements
• Scorecard 90–100 (2/3-Star Equivalent): 20% quality bonus on CCAP reimbursements

The bonuses compound with other CCAP differentials. A high-scoring family child care home provider in a top-tier county caring for an infant could receive the base rate plus the 20% quality bonus plus the 15% infant care differential — a meaningful increase over the base reimbursement.

What the Bonus Means in Practice

Take a family child care home in a top-tier county serving infants. The base CCAP weekly rate is $200 per infant. With a 20% quality bonus (scorecard 90+), that becomes $240 per infant per week. Add the 15% infant differential on the base rate, and you're looking at $270 per infant per week compared to $200 without any bonuses.

Across a full enrollment of infants and toddlers, the difference between no quality rating and a top rating can mean thousands of dollars per month in additional subsidy revenue.

How to Improve Your Score

The scorecard isn't graded on a single inspection day — it reflects ongoing compliance and program quality. The strongest levers:

Staff qualifications: Complete training beyond the minimum 18 annual clock hours. Courses in child development, early literacy, and behavior management through the TrainTN platform or the Tennessee Child Care Resource & Referral (CCR&R) Network carry the most weight.

Learning environment: Set up intentional activity stations rather than a single open play area. Assessors look for evidence of structured activities — art materials, books accessible to children, age-appropriate manipulatives, and outdoor learning opportunities.

Documentation quality: Keep clean, complete records. The quality assessment looks at the same records TDHS licensing checks — attendance, health screenings, immunizations, emergency plans — but evaluates whether they're thorough and consistently maintained, not just present.

Parent engagement: Maintain written daily communication with parents about each child's activities, meals, and milestones. A simple daily report sheet showing what the child did, ate, and how they behaved goes a long way.

Free Support from CCR&R

Tennessee's Child Care Resource and Referral network provides free quality coaching for licensed providers. A CCR&R quality coach can visit your home, review your setup, identify specific improvements that would boost your scorecard, and help you structure your environment and curricula to hit the 80–100 range.

This coaching is state-funded and available to all licensed providers. Use it — the financial return from bonus CCAP payments more than justifies the time spent with a quality coach.

The Tennessee Home Daycare Licensing Guide covers the Star Quality Program alongside CCAP enrollment, with a breakdown of how quality bonuses interact with other reimbursement differentials to maximize your subsidy revenue.

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