2025
Annual Report
A thousand reasons to
celebrate this past year
In early 2025, Step Up to Quality reached an exciting milestone: more than 1,000 providers participating in our program. This is a great achievement not only for our expanding community of providers but for elevating the overall caliber of early childhood education in Nebraska. Since launching our program in 2014, more than 50,000 children in the state have benefitted from these enriched learning environments.
This accomplishment is only possible because of our dedicated educators, caregivers and child care directors. Your important work is actively making a difference right now while supporting a thriving future for our state, one child at a time. The children in your care are learning, socializing, developing and growing because of your hard work.
Just as we encourage Nebraska providers to become better and better with Step Up to Quality, our team is also committed to continual improvement, which led to a complete redesign of our website. We refreshed our navigational structure, added a search function, consolidated parent and provider resources, and created a comprehensive blog page with filters for content types.
We also partnered with an accessibility consultant to audit our two previous websites and conduct user testing to ensure the new site was as accessible as possible, including color contrast, image descriptions and short summaries at the bottoms of main pages to help minimize cognitive load. All of these updates not only improve our website’s experience for people with disabilities — they benefit every site visitor! Moving forward, we will continue to implement updates that increase accessibility even further.
Thank you for being part of the Step Up to Quality family. We’re excited to continue our own journey of quality improvement while supporting yours, and we can’t wait to see how many more providers step up in the future.
Our impact
As of June 2025
Going above and beyond
Child care providers who participate in Step Up to Quality are committed to defining and elevating quality for Nebraska’s children. They exceed licensing requirements by attending extra training, analyzing their business operations, updating their educational offerings to match industry best practices and continuously improving the quality of the care they provide.
Providers enrolled each year
Step Up to Quality began in 2014 as Nebraska’s Quality Rating Improvement System (QRIS). Not all states had a QRIS at the time — now, nearly all do. The commitment Nebraska providers make to provide high-quality care continues to deepen and grow.
Benefits for providers
In addition to joining a community of supportive, like-minded professionals in the early childhood education field, Step Up to Quality offers many advantages to participating child care providers.
Quality incentive bonuses
$542,550
Awarded program-wide since 2014
Free training
4,820
People have completed Step Up to Quality’s orientation
Free coaching
361
Programs have received guidance from a professional coach
1,036 child care
programs from across Nebraska are participating in
Step Up to Quality
53,796 children
served in participating
Step Up to Quality programs since 2014
Every provider counts
High-quality child care can be found all over Nebraska — more than
1,000 child care providers throughout the state participate in Step Up to Quality.
Enrolled programs
Step Up to Quality serves all types of early childhood
education programs throughout Nebraska.
Steps achieved
Every step is significant, and no matter where providers are in the process,
they are congratulated for their commitment to high-quality care.
