More than 200 early childhood sites in the Ready Region Capital Area (RRCA) have been named to the 2024-25 Virginia Quality Birth to Five (VQB5) Honor Roll by the Virginia Department of Education (DOE), recognizing them among the 10% in statewide VQB5 ratings for excellence and improvement.

These child care centers, public schools and family child care homes, earned a spot on the 2024-25 VQB5 Honor Roll announced by VDOE in October 2025.

The Commonwealth also announced VQB5 Quality Ratings for 3,293 early childhood sites statewide. The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE), in partnership with the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation and the nine Ready Regions, administers VQB5..

VQB5 uses Classroom Assessment Scoring System observation scores and use of an approved curriculum to determine the ratings. VQB5 measures and helps improve the quality of all publicly-funded birth-to-five classrooms and support families to choose quality programming across program types.

VQB5 Quality Ratings are based on results from teacher-child interactions and curriculum measurements gathered from every birth-to-five classroom. These measures are predictive of school readiness; children in classrooms that score higher will likely learn more. 

In the 2024-25 school year, Virginia introduced three Honor Rolls to recognize 494 early childhood sites across the Commonwealth. Impressively, 201 of these sites - 41% of the statewide total - are located in the Ready Region Capital Area, encompassing Arlington, the City of Alexandria, the City of Falls Church, the City of Fairfax and Fairfax County. Among the recognized sites are 18 public schools, 51 centers and 132 family child care homes with several earning recognition across multiple categories.  

• Excellence Honor Roll – These 38 sites earned Exceeds Expectations, the highest possible rating in VQB5. The sites include center based, family child care home, Head Start and public school sites.

• Infant-Toddler Quality Honor Roll – These 101 sites demonstrated top performance in infant/toddler classrooms (top 10% in the state). 

• Improvement Honor Roll – These 118 sites showed significant year-over-year gains in teacher-child interactions (top 10% in the state). 

Honorees will receive Honor Roll certificates and be recognized on their online VQB5 Quality Profiles. 

See the full list of Ready Region Capital Area honorees.

NCS' Early Childhood Programs and Services is the lead agency for Capital Area. RRCA ensures all components are in place to coordinate quality measurement and guide improvement in publicly funded classrooms as part of the Unified Virginia Quality Birth to Five System (VQB5). For more information on the Ready Region Capital Area, visit Ready Region Capital Area.