Parent Aware is Minnesota's voluntary Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) for early care and education (ECE) programs. In 2015, Parent Aware became available statewide after a gradual rollout that began in 2012 with the support of Minnesota's Race to the Top -- Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) grant and quality funds from the Child Care and Development Fund. The primary goal of Parent Aware is to improve young children's school readiness by helping families "identify programs using the practices that best prepare children for kindergarten" and by providing improvement resources to participating programs. The Parent Aware evaluation tracks the implementation and outcomes of Parent Aware and is designed to provide research results that inform continuous improvement of the system. The purpose of this Initial Validation Report is to describe the extent to which the Parent Aware rating process is producing ratings that meet interrelated criteria for being fair, accurate, and meaningful. (author abstract)