VAAEYC works with the VDOE to provide information and resources for Early Childhood Educators in Virginia.

Virginia Launches Online VQB5 Portal to Help Families Learn about Early Childhood Options

Families can now access information about quality and safety for more than 3,000 publicly-funded early childhood sites across the Commonwealth via the Virginia Department of Education’s new, easy-to-use online VQB5 portal. With information on public and private early childhood sites in every city and county in Virginia, the new tool helps families learn about the quality of the sites to help them choose the best option for their birth-to-five children.

Virginia Quality Birth to Five (VQB5) is a nation-leading statewide quality measurement and improvement system providing information about child care, family child care, Head Start, and preschool. VQB5, created by state law in 2020, includes all public and private programs that use public funds to serve children from birth to age five.

The VQB5 portal includes information on all publicly-funded sites and any non-publicly-funded sites who opt-in. It enables families to:

• Easily find out whether a site has chosen a quality curriculum and access links to health and safety inspections.

• View sites’ quality rating and performance information.

• Review up-to-date data and information. The VQB5 portal will be updated annually and shared publicly each fall.

• Easily search for a site or program by program name, address, city, or zip code.

VQB5 results show that Virginia’s public-private programs positively impact more than 130,000 children under age five by providing warm, caring, and organized classroom experiences that actively promote learning, with 98% of 3,121 sites meeting or exceeding state expectations. VQB5 includes data from more than 28,000 rigorous classroom observations of teacher-child interactions completed in schools, child care centers, and family day home settings in 2023-2024, representing 2.1 million minutes of insight into what Virginia children experienced in infant, toddler and preschool classrooms last year.

To help all providers make improvements to their programs, VQB5 Site Quality Profiles provide site leadership with specific information on their strengths as well as their opportunities for growth. All sites in VQB5 are eligible for statewide improvement resources including an online Early Childhood Education Hub, classroom observer training, infant and toddler coaching, and free curriculum and assessment tools.

Prior to the launch of the VQB5 portal, most families could access very little information on early childhood quality; five out of six Virginia programs did not participate in the previous optional quality rating system. Now families can access more information than ever before with data on 3,121 sites available.

The VQB5 portal is located at earlychildhoodquality.doe.virginia.gov