Every year in the United States, millions of parents send their children to formal childcare centers or local family facilities.

To enforce safety standards, each state has their own system to license these facilities. Routine inspections, conducted by state or local government bodies, play a role in confirming adherence to state guidelines. These inspections occur at varying frequencies, depending on individual state regulations.

Notably, around 43% of these inspection rounds uncover compliance issues. These issues can range widely in severity and may include anything from outdated paperwork to hazardous materials to too few supervisors to safely monitor the number of children present.

According to data compiled by USAFacts from over 148,000 childcare facilities across 41 states, one in ten licensed facilities are overdue for an inspection.

One in ten licensed childcare facilities across 41 states are overdue for an inspection

Based on inspection data reported by each state. Represents 140,000 facilities with reported inspection dates.

States set their own inspection schedules, resulting in varying definitions of when facilities are overdue for an inspection. Among the 41 states in our dataset, only New York and California require inspections less frequently than once per year. The remaining states require annual or more frequent inspections.

Which states were not included in this analysis?

USAFacts made every effort to collect data from all 50 states. However, data was either unavailable or inaccessible in 9 states:

  • Hawaii does not publicly share inspection information.
  • New Hampshire only provides data up through 2021.
  • Illinois and West Virginia only provide inspection data for instances where there were compliance issues.
  • Florida, Kansas, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania make their data visible in search tools, but their websites prevented us from collecting the data either programmatically or semi-manually. We subsequently submitted public records requests to each state but were also unable to acquire the necessary data this way.


Which childcare facilities were not included in this analysis?

We collected data for every facility publicly available in each state’s public-facing search tools. We then excluded facilities that did not meet the following criteria:

  • The facility was either a licensed childcare center or a licensed home facility. All license exempt or otherwise unlicensed facilities, as well as those that were solely after-school programs, summer programs, or only for school-age children were removed from our analysis.
  • The facility was open or actively operating.
  • The facility’s inspection dates were in a computer-parsable format.

How did USAFacts determine which facilities were overdue for inspection?

First, we calculated how much time had passed between when each facility was last reportedly inspected and when we collected our data for that facility’s state. We refer to this as the “time since the last inspection”.

The majority of the states in our data require an annual inspection. For these states, any facilities where the time since the last inspection was over 365 days ago were considered “overdue for an inspection.”

Some states (Alaska, Georgia, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oregon, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wyoming) required more than one inspection per year. For these states we assumed a policy where inspections were evenly distributed throughout the year. For instance, in states that require two inspections per year, facilities were considered “overdue for inspection” if the time since the last inspection was over six months.

The specifics of the policy implementation and the realities of on-the-ground scheduling may differ from this assumption. However, internal analysis suggests that the data broadly supports these assumptions and we don’t anticipate that it will significantly impact interpretation.

Across the 23 states that require annual inspections, around 10,000 facilities are overdue. Of those, approximately 2,500 – 4% of all facilities in those states – haven’t been inspected in 2 years or longer.

California stipulates that an inspection occurs at least once every three years. Yet, at the time of writing, over 2,300 licensed childcare facilities, or 10% of operating facilities in the state, have not been inspected since before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic three and a half years ago. This lag in inspections may be due to the state suspending inspections from March 18, 2020, to June 1, 2021, as a pandemic precaution.

Are childcare facilities inspected at the regulated rate for each state?

State legislation dictates how often inspections should be conducted. Tennessee has the shortest time between inspections, requiring them to occur quarterly — or approximately every 90 days.

New York, on the other hand, requires 50% of their facilities to be inspected each year – roughly one inspection every two years. California allows the longest time to pass between inspections, requiring only that they occur at least once every three years.

Regardless of the legislation, some states are more successful than others at inspecting facilities on time. Eighteen of the 41 states in our dataset were able to inspect 90% or more of their facilities within their legislated time frame.

Not all states inspect the majority of their childcare facilities as frequently as regulations require

Some states include large numbers of facility records in their public-facing search tools that don't specify any inspection history. For instance, out of the 2,901 open, licensed facilities in New Mexico’s public portal, 35% had no inspection history listed.

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Are childcare facilities inspected at the regulated rate for each county?

In some states, the frequency of inspection can vary widely between counties. For instance, California’s San Francisco and San Joaquin counties have similar numbers of facilities that need to be inspected (594 and 552, respectively.) But, 91% of facilities in San Francisco were inspected on time compared to just 65% of San Joaquin facilities.

In some states, the percentage of childcare facilities overdue for inspection varies widely between counties

When was my childcare facility last inspected?

The information provided in this article outlines inspection frequency for licensed childcare facilities in 41 states between late June and October, 2023. Despite our comprehensive approach, inspections are an ongoing daily practice throughout the country.

For the most recent facility insights, including the date of the latest inspection for individual facilities, use your state's search tool:

Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts. Michigan. Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming

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Page sources and methodology

All of the data on the page was sourced directly from government agencies. The analysis and final review was performed by USAFacts.