Hawaii submitted its proposal Wednesday for how it would spend a $50 million federal grant to improve the state’s early education system, saying it plans to institute a quality rating system for child care providers, make reforms to improve outcomes for at-risk students and improve coordination among multiple state agencies.

The federal Race to the Top Early Learning competition drew applications from dozens of states, all vying for federal money to improve services for their youngest residents. The winners are expected to be announced before the end of the year.

Terry Lock, the governor’s early childhood coordinator, said that even if Hawaii isn’t selected as a winner, the plan for making reforms to early childhood education in the islands will go forward. Already, she said, some elements of the plan are being implemented, including the rating system, which will be piloted this spring.

The plan comes as the state is working to develop a universal preschool program, which would ensure that all young children have access to quality child care services.

Officials say Hawaii’s proposal for the Early Learning competition moves the state toward that goal by focusing on reforms aimed at beefing up existing services offered through a host of providers and improving student readiness for kindergarten.

In the state’s application for the federal Race funds, Gov. Neil Abercrombie wrote Hawaii "is well on the way" to creating an early childhood education system that will "result in all children being ready to learn and succeed in school and beyond."

"Hawaii now has a comprehensive plan for systemically coordinating and implementing an early care and education structure that focuses on the whole child," he said. "Race to the Top funds will ensure this plan gets executed with expediency."

The 2010 census estimated the number of children in Hawaii under 6 years old at nearly 90,000, a 12 percent increase from a decade earlier. About 47 percent of those children are believed to be low-income, the state said, so their families would have difficulty paying for high-quality preschool programs. Meanwhile, about 13,000 children under 6 come from homes where English is not the first language.

The state sees its early learning initiatives tying in with ongoing Race to the Top reforms at public schools, which are aimed in large part at closing the achievement gap among minorities and low-income students and boosting teacher effectiveness. In August, Hawaii was awarded $75 million over four years as one of 10 winners (nine states and the District of Columbia) of a second round of Race to the Top grants.

Karen Lee, executive director of the P-20 Partnerships for Education, a nonprofit group working to strengthen the "education pipeline" from early childhood to college, said the state’s early learning plan has brought together providers and advocates like never before, all committed to improving the system and expanding services.

"We want to use the Race application plan, whether or not we get the grant," she said.

The plan calls for:

» The implementation of a new rating system that would be based on early childhood education standards, still being drafted. The ratings would have five "tiers" of quality, with the most basic tier being that health and safety needs are met.

Lock said the rating system, when fully developed, will be a way for parents to determine the quality of the educational experience their child will get at a particular early learning program and will stress "culturally competent" services. The system will begin as a pilot with a small group of providers in the spring and expand to all state-licensed and regulated child care providers by the end of 2015.

» Improved efforts to measure children’s outcomes, including a proposed longitudinal data system that will link information from students in public school and information from the labor force.

The state also plans to put into place — by the 2014-15 school year — a new kindergarten entry test that will determine a child’s readiness for the first year of school. The test will build on readiness evaluations already conducted by teachers.

» The creation of a new state Department of Early Childhood in 2015.