Texas Rising Star 4-Star & IB PYP Candidate School: Quality You Can Verify, Ages 0–5
Every preschool says it offers quality care. At INIC, we think you deserve more than our word for it. That’s why we’ve put our program in front of two independent outside standards: the State of Texas’s highest quality rating, which we hold today, and the International Baccalaureate’s Primary Years Programme, which we are actively pursuing as a Candidate School. One is earned; one is in progress — and both are things you can look up for yourself.
Texas Rising Star — The State’s Highest Rating, Earned
Texas Rising Star is the State of Texas’s official quality rating system for early childhood programs, administered by the Texas Workforce Commission. It sits on top of standard childcare licensing — licensing is the floor; Rising Star measures how far a program rises above it. INIC has earned the 4-Star rating, the highest tier the state awards, at our South Austin campus — the same curriculum and teacher training now guiding our Round Rock campus through its own certification process.
Reaching 4-Star isn’t a self-nomination or a paid badge. An outside assessor came into our classrooms, observed our teachers with your children, reviewed our records, and scored us across four weighted categories:
- Teacher–Child Interactions (40% of the score). The single most heavily weighted category — deliberately — because research shows the way teachers talk with, listen to, and respond to children is the strongest predictor of good outcomes.
- Director & Staff Qualifications and Training (20%). Teachers and leadership meet elevated education and ongoing-training requirements, well beyond the licensing minimum.
- Program Administration (20%). Staff ratios, family communication practices, curriculum planning, consistent policies.
- Indoor & Outdoor Environments (20%). Classrooms and play spaces assessed for safety, learning materials, and whether the environment invites children to explore.
Why This Matters for Families
What you'll notice day to day: teachers who greet your child by name and can tell you something specific about their morning; classrooms stocked and arranged for real hands-on learning, not just supervision; a staff that is trained, stable, and held to a documented standard — verified by someone who doesn't work for us. See it firsthand in our Infant & Toddler classrooms or our Pre-K3 and Pre-K4 program.
Highly trained teachers
Educators who receive ongoing professional development
Language & cognitive growth
Classrooms designed to support strong language, social-emotional, and cognitive development
Warm, responsive care
Caring interactions between teachers and children, every day
School-readiness by design
An environment intentionally structured for kindergarten readiness and lifelong learning
Our South Austin campus holds the Texas Rising Star 4-Star certification. Our Round Rock campus follows the same curriculum, teacher training and standards and is currently working through its own certification process.
IB Primary Years Programme — Where We’re Headed Next
A 4-Star rating tells you our care and classrooms meet the state’s highest bar. The next question we asked ourselves was about curriculum: what should learning itself look like for a young child? Our answer led us to the International Baccalaureate’s Primary Years Programme (PYP) — and INIC is now a Candidate School working toward authorization.
“INIC Preschool is a Candidate School for the Primary Years Programme. This school is pursuing authorization as an IB World School. These are schools that share a common philosophy—a commitment to high quality, challenging, international education that INIC Preschool believes is important for our students.”
*Only schools authorized by the IB Organization can offer any of its four programmes. Candidate status gives no guarantee that authorization will be granted. For further information about the IB and its programmes, visit www.ibo.org.
What the PYP actually is: an inquiry-based curriculum framework used by schools around the world, built on one simple idea — children learn best when they’re investigating questions that matter to them.
- ✓Inquiry, not memorization. Children investigate real questions instead of memorizing answers handed to them.
- ✓Learning through child-led play. In the early years, social-emotional and cognitive skills develop together rather than separately.
- ✓Every child at their own pace. No marching every three-year-old through the same worksheet.
- ✓Results that hold up. Independent studies commissioned by the IB have found PYP students outperforming peers in reading and numeracy — and 89–93% of PYP students across study schools say they’re proud of their school.
See exactly what this looks like day to day on our curriculum page.
Pursuing candidacy is real work, not a name on a plaque. Here’s what that looks like at INIC right now:
- ✓Teachers in IB training. Our teachers are completing official IB training.
- ✓Classrooms aligned to the framework. We’re aligning our classrooms and our planning around the PYP framework.
- ✓The IB Learner Profile. Ten attributes — inquirer, caring, open-minded, risk-taker and more — that describe the kind of person we’re helping your child become.
You can read more about that ongoing work below.
This is the official IB Primary Years Programme (PYP) curriculum model — the framework our teachers are training toward as we pursue candidacy.
- ✓Six subject areas. Language, mathematics, science, social studies, the arts, and personal, social and physical education.
- ✓Six transdisciplinary themes. Real-world questions like “Who We Are” and “How the World Works” that connect learning across subjects instead of isolating it into separate periods.
- ✓The IB Learner Profile at the center. The ten attributes — inquirer, thinker, communicator and more — that every PYP classroom is designed to build.
Tap the image to view it full-size.
What This Means for Your Child
Put the two together and here’s the plain version.
- ✓Verified today. The 4-Star rating means the fundamentals are independently verified: attentive teachers, trained staff, safe and well-equipped classrooms, in English and Spanish, every day — delivered through our 100% Spanish immersion approach and social-emotional readiness curriculum.
- ✓Where we’re headed. Our PYP candidacy means we’re not stopping there — we’re building toward a curriculum where your child’s natural curiosity drives the learning, and where “why” is treated as the beginning of a lesson rather than an interruption to one.
A child who spends ages 0–5 in that environment walks into kindergarten confident, curious, bilingual, and used to being taken seriously as a thinker.
Real Classrooms, Real Teachers
No stock photography here — this is what a day at INIC actually looks like, from infant sensory play to Pre-K writing activities.
Frequently Asked Questions: Verifying Our Credentials
How We’re Continuing to Invest
Earning a rating is a moment; keeping our promises is a habit. Right now, that means our teachers are actively completing IB coursework toward PYP training, our classrooms are being reorganized around inquiry-based units, and our Round Rock preschool campus is moving through its own Texas Rising Star review — all using the same standards our South Austin preschool campus already meets. We’re not attaching specific dates to any of this. Promises to your family should be kept, not just made, and we’d rather show you real progress than a calendar we might not hit. Ask us anytime where things stand — we’re glad to walk you through it.
Ready to see it in person? Schedule a tour of INIC and meet the teachers behind both credentials.
You can also compare preschool tuition and admissions for both campuses.
Prefer to look before you visit? Families watch real classrooms through our live classroom cameras for parents.
