What “Accredited” Actually Means for Your Child’s Preschool
Walk through enough San Antonio preschool websites and you’ll see the same words everywhere: “accredited,” “award-winning,” “top-rated.” But most parents are never told what those words actually mean — or which ones are backed by an outside reviewer versus simply printed on a page. This guide breaks down the two credentials that genuinely matter in Texas early education, how to tell an accredited program from one that just says so, and where Edquisitive Montessori stands.
Licensed, accredited, and rated are three different things
Start here, because most confusion lives in this distinction:
- Licensed — the baseline. Every legitimate Texas preschool is licensed and monitored by the state, meeting minimum standards for safety and operations. This is required, not optional.
- Accredited (Cognia) — voluntary, and reviewed by an outside organization against international standards for educational quality and continuous improvement.
- Rated (Texas Rising Star) — voluntary, and scored by the state’s quality system on a scale where 4-Star is the highest.
The key word in the last two is voluntary. A program doesn’t have to pursue accreditation or a star rating. The ones that do are choosing to be held to a higher bar — and verified by someone other than themselves.
What is Texas Rising Star?
Texas Rising Star is the state’s quality rating system for early learning programs, run by the Texas Workforce Commission. It certifies programs at progressive levels — Two-Star, Three-Star, and Four-Star — based on quality standards that go beyond what’s required for a basic license. The rating looks at the things that actually shape your child’s day: teaching, curriculum, classroom environment, health and safety, and how the program partners with families. To earn it, assessors come in, observe classrooms, review documentation, and interview staff. It’s verified, not claimed.
What does a 4-Star rating mean?
Four-Star is the top. It’s the highest level a program can earn, reflecting exemplary practice in teacher-child interactions, curriculum, and overall program quality — well above the state minimum. When you see a 4-Star program, you’re looking at one that’s been measured against the highest tier of the state’s system and met it.
How a Texas Rising Star rating is actually scored
This is the part most parents never see, and it’s the part that makes the rating trustworthy. Texas Rising Star scores programs across five quality categories:
- Director and staff qualifications and training
- Caregiver-child interactions
- Curriculum
- Nutrition and indoor/outdoor activities
- Parent involvement and education
Some requirements within each category are simple pass/fail. Others are scored on a points scale during an on-site visit by a trained assessor who observes classrooms, reviews documentation, and verifies what’s actually happening — not what the program claims. That’s why a program can’t talk its way to a high rating; the score comes from a standardized rubric, not a sales pitch.
Here’s the detail that makes 4-Star genuinely hard to earn: a program’s overall level is held to its weakest category, not its strongest. A program can’t coast on one excellent area while another lags. Reaching the top tier means hitting the 4-Star threshold — a category average of 2.40 or higher, which is 80 percent of possible points — consistently across the categories an assessor examines, with no single area allowed to fall behind. In other words, 4-Star isn’t “great at one thing.” It’s consistent, above-average quality across nearly everything that’s measured.
What is Cognia accreditation?
Cognia is an organization that accredits schools and education programs against internationally recognized standards for educational quality, accountability, and continuous improvement. The important word is external — accreditation is a review conducted by an outside body, not a self-assessment a school grants itself. That outside scrutiny is exactly what makes it worth something. A program carrying Cognia accreditation has opened its doors to independent evaluation and passed.
Accredited vs. non-accredited: how to tell the difference
A non-accredited preschool isn’t automatically a bad one — but here’s the honest difference. With an accredited, highly-rated program, an independent reviewer has looked at the teaching, the curriculum, and the outcomes and verified them. With a non-accredited program, you’re relying on what the program tells you about itself. Both can be good. Only one comes with outside proof. When you’re comparing options, ask each program directly: Are you accredited, and by whom? What’s your Texas Rising Star rating? The speed and specificity of the answer tells you a lot.
Where Edquisitive Montessori stands
We hold both credentials, and we’ll tell you exactly where each campus is. Our Fair Oaks, Stone Oak, and Northwest Military campuses are Cognia-accredited and Texas Rising Star 4-Star rated — held to both standards and verified on both. Our Medical Center campus, Little Red Caboose, is currently working toward both. LRC came into the Edquisitive family more recently, and both Cognia accreditation and the 4-Star rating involve rigorous review processes that take time. We’re applying the same standards there that earned those designations at our other campuses — and we’d rather tell you plainly where we are than blur it.
See it for yourself
Credentials tell you a program cleared a high bar. A tour tells you what that looks like in practice. Come visit any of our San Antonio and Boerne campuses, ask about our accreditation and ratings, and see the quality those standards are meant to measure.
