Early Childhood Education

One of the best ways to ensure that children succeed in school is to provide all children with access to high-quality programs for early learning.

To meet this goal, we work with public and nonpublic schools, community-based organizations, and home-based child-care providers to continuously improve the quality of early-learning programs and to expand opportunities for early learning across our state.

The early childhood work in the Office of Instruction, Assessment, and Curriculum supports four primary goals:

1. Increasing access to high-quality early childhood education programs for all children
2. Supporting the professional development of early childhood professionals
3. Providing information to families about supporting their child's learning
4. Ensuring that children with developmental delays or disabilities are identified and have access to specialized services and supports

Learn more about Early Childhood Education

• Workforce - developing a highly qualified workforce with access to a high quality professional development system
• RI Early Learning and Development Standards (RIELDS) - what children should know and be able to do between the ages of Birth and 60 months.
• Child Outreach - programs and services to identify and evaluate young children with disabilities
• Family Engagement - programs to support families as they prepare their children for school success
• Early Childhood Special Education - individualized special education preschool programs and services for 3-5 year olds

Rhode Island is a member of EXCEED, Rhode Island’s Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge state agency cross coordination effort. EXCEED supports the children of Rhode Island to achieve new heights in their learning and development. RIDE is partnering with The Executive Office of Health and Human Services, The RI Department of Health, The Department of Human Services and The Department of Children Youth and Families.

Check out Exceed’s website, search for an early learning program, and sign up to receive updates on Facebook. 

BrightStars Public Comment and updated LEA Framework

BrightStars is the state’s Tiered Quality Improvement System for all early programs.  By June 2025, all public and non-public schools approved by RIDE that serve children between the ages of 3 and 5 will participate in BrightStars. Participation supports preschools in delivering high-quality early education. 

Tasked with developing a new Quality Framework for Public and Non-Public Approved Schools, RIDE, in partnership with RIAEYC, held 3 stakeholder meetings throughout Fall of 2023 to solicit feedback on BrightStars' Child Care Center Quality Framework. Feedback was additionally collected through a Google Form survey where participants used a Likert-Scale to respond to prompts about each of the 10 BrightStars standards and provide suggestions for how these standards may be renvisioned for the Public- and Non-Public Approved school context.

The documents linked below reflect the updated BrightStars Quality Framework for Public and Non-Public Approved Schools and the Summary for Stakeholder Feedback for BrightStars Framework.