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Engine 1
50-State Child Care Transparency Scorecard
We do not rank daycares. We grade the states on how well they honor their federal obligation to make monitoring and inspection results public — record depth, downloadable data, severity, complaints, coverage, and access friction.
8
States that assign severity levels
4
States capping history near 3 years
9
Roster-only / no inspection feed
11/51
Jurisdictions graded A or B
National ranking
Download CSVScoring rubric
Record depth (25 pts)
How far back public inspection history goes. 5+ years = full credit; 36–60 month caps = partial; roster-only = 0.
Downloadable data (20 pts)
Bulk export or open data = full; scrapeable search form/API = partial; CAPTCHA/IP-block/FOIA-declined = 0.
Severity levels (15 pts)
Whether the state assigns an explicit per-violation or per-visit risk/severity tier.
Complaints published (15 pts)
Whether complaint records exist and dispositions (substantiated / not) are published.
% with any inspection (15 pts)
Share of licensed providers with at least one inspection on file in the public dataset.
Access friction (10 pts)
No barriers = full; gated PDFs/quotas = partial; blocked portals = 0.
Letter grades: A ≥ 85, B ≥ 70, C ≥ 55, D ≥ 40, F below. Publication speed is intentionally excluded — states rarely stamp when an inspection was posted online, and we will not grade what we cannot measure.
Editorial facts are drawn from state agency portals and our data sources notes. Computed fields use countable violations and live import rollups. Methods overview: methodology.