Amid all of the economic rubble, Washington State is expanding a new child care rating system, one of Gov. Christine Gregoire’s boldest early learning proposals, which she cut back last year amid the financial collapse.

This week, Thrive by Five Washington announced it will add three more counties – Clark, Kitsap and Spokane - to its test of the Quality Rating and Improvement System, known as Seeds to Success.

It is a dramatic turn of events because ten months ago Gov. Gregoire’s administration announced it was suspending its work on the rating system as it struggled to cut the state budget. It was big news at the time, with my editors pushing the story to the top of A1 without a lobbying effort from me, rare for early learning developments.

The state had a good reason for cutting funding, though. It decided the priority in this recession was to preserve services - subsidies to help poor parents pay for child care and expansion of the state-funded preschool program.

Months later, the state Legislature stepped up with another $1 million for the rating system – a sign of the depth of support for early learning among Washington lawmakers - that allowed those three counties to join the test.

Thrive and the state Department of Early Learning are working together to test a voluntary rating system, essentially a scorecard that will rate child care facilities from 1 to 5 in key categories. Only yesterday, the two groups testified before a state House committee on the status of the effort.

Providers can use the ratings to recognize where they are strong and what they need to work on.

But parents may be the big winners. Moms and dads could use a scorecard because they spend, on average, more than $7,600 a year on child care in Washington, yet it isn’t always clear what they get for all that money. As they look for child care they are often forced to rely on other parents and tours.

"You really don't have anything to judge decisions, just word of mouth," Cynthia Engel, a 38-year-old mother of two, told me for my story last year.

"You can look at Consumer Reports if you want to buy a VCR."

Read more about the rating system at the Department of Early Learning’s summary.