Reimagining State Child Care Licensing: Improving the Foundation for Quality and Equity in Early Care and Education Environments
September 2024
Authors: Dr. Rosemarie Allen, Dr. Eric Bucher, Dr. Shantel Meek, Dr. Brittany Alexander, Dr. Afua Ameley-Quaye, Dr. Xigrid Soto-Boykin, Dr. Darielle Blevins and Mario Cardona
State licensing systems are critical levers to ensure child care settings keep children safe and healthy. But they are only effective if we measure the right indicators. Too often, licensing systems don’t include standards that directly and severely impact child health and safety, like ensuring bottles are filled with safe drinking water. Standards to safely, fully, and meaningfully include children with disabilities are often lacking. Emotional safety is often left out completely. Yet, too many systems include trivial standards that do not directly impact children and families, and overburden and overpenalize child care providers. Child care state licensing systems in the United States need a significant overhaul, laser focused on ensuring healthy and physically and emotionally safe places for children and the adults who care for them.
This report from the Children’s Equity Project provides states with recommendations to enhance their child care licensing systems, aligning them with recent research and effective practice, across 1) licensing content, 2) licensing process, and 3) governance and coordination in state early childhood systems. With updates and key modifications, states can improve experiences and outcomes and advance equity by reimagining their child care licensing regulations and systems to serve as the bedrock on which to build quality early care and learning.
Suggested citation:
Allen, R., Bucher, E.Z., Meek, S., Alexander, B., Ameley-Quaye, A., Soto-Boykin, X., Blevins, D., & Cardona, M. (September, 2024). Reimagining state child care licensing: Improving the foundation for quality and equity in early care and education environments. The Children’s Equity Project at Arizona State University. https://cep.asu.edu/resources/reimagining-state-childcare-licensing.
How can states improve child care licensing?
State child care licensing sets the baseline for health and safety in early care and education settings. The Children’s Equity Project’s report, Reimagining State Child Care Licensing, examines how states can strengthen that foundation while making licensing processes fairer and more supportive for providers. cep.asu.edu
The report organizes its recommendations into three areas: what licensing standards cover, how licensing processes work, and how state early childhood agencies coordinate. It calls on states to focus standards on conditions that affect children’s physical and emotional safety, reduce emphasis on requirements with little direct connection to health and safety, and give providers a fair and transparent path to compliance. cep.asu.edu
What should child care licensing standards address?
The report identifies seven priorities for licensing content:
- Clean water and protection from lead exposure
- Indoor and outdoor air quality
- Adult-to-child ratios and group sizes
- Emotional safety and well-being
- Inclusion, safety, and accessibility for children with disabilities
- Support for emergent bilinguals and dual language learners
- Provider qualifications, training, and working conditions
The report also recommends aligning licensing regulations with Caring for Our Children Basics and developing a plan, informed by early childhood professionals, families, and community partners, to strengthen standards over time.
Frequently Asked Questions
State child care licensing establishes health and safety requirements for many settings that care for and teach young children. Requirements commonly address ratios, group sizes, physical space, staff training, and program policies.
The report finds that some licensing systems give too little attention to conditions that affect children’s health, safety, and inclusion while placing too much emphasis on requirements with limited direct impact on children. It recommends updating both the standards and the processes used to apply them.
The report recommends stronger attention to clean water and lead exposure, air quality, and adult-to-child ratios and group sizes. It also recommends retaining foundational health and safety requirements, including safe sleep practices and building safety.
The report recommends licensing standards that address inclusion, safety, and accessibility. It identifies gaps in existing standards and notes that some program policies can exclude children with disabilities from early learning settings. cep.asu.edu
The report examines pre-licensing training, applications, investigations, and adverse licensing actions. It recommends processes that are fair, transparent, responsive to providers, and attentive to bias.
The recommendations are intended to help states improve child care licensing systems. The report also addresses how licensing agencies and other agencies within state early childhood systems can better coordinate their requirements and support for providers.