How to choose good-quality childcare

Sara shares her fantastic research process for finding good-quality daycare for her daughter:

I was a bit thorough about researching childcare for my daughter.  Questionaires?  Check.  Spreadsheets?  Check.  State licensing & inspection reports?  Check.  What I learned from the whole process is that you can short-cut a lot of analysis with a short set of criteria (this applies to child care centers more than in home care or nannies):

1. Is the center NAEYC accredited?  I started my list with these centers.  NAEYC looks at things you wouldn't even think of when they are evaluating centers for accreditation.
2. How long has the staff been there?  The best way to identify a well-run center is to find staff that is happy enough to stick around for a long time.  One of my daughter's teachers has been there for 7 years -- I'm told that kind of longevity is unheard of in the childcare business.

Those are the 2 most important ones -- not because they are important on their own, but rather they are indicators of a whole bunch of other quality issues.  If you want my two bonus questions:

1. Look at teacher-child ratios on the older classes.  Most states have pretty small ratios for infants, but the differences between centers (and their cost) can usually be seen in ratios for the older classes.
2. My favorite management question (inspired by Neal Pollack's article on the topic in Salon about the same time I was evaluating all these centers...):  What do you do about biting?  (It's kind of open ended, and there isn't a clear cut "right" answer, but you'll want to see empathy for both the biter and bitee -- after all you don't know which one your kid will be -- combined with a strategy for managing it and reporting it.)

Tags: Childcare, Daycare, Parenting

Comments

[Jill]

While many parents choose a private school based almost entirely on test scores, those same criteria continue to be important. While our public schools in Georgia aren't great, our local elementary school has teachers who have been there for more than ten years. A friend of mine who teaches asked for a transfer there and says that for the first time in her teaching career she loves her job. That's a school for my kid!

[Dawn]

Thank You. perfect timing, as we are in this process.
Our 1st daycare didnt work out, so we are starting all over!

[Jonathan]

We are so very lucky to have found our pre-school. 3 of the teachers have been there for -- get this -- over 25 years!

One of the teachers was also a student there over 20 years ago.

All this, and the center's primary mission is to serve low-income families in Fairfax, helping working families with a safe, productive and fun environment for their children during the day.

[Charisse]

Great ones. I would also add, take a tour with the director and see how both the staff and the children greet that person. You want a place where the relationship with the staff is collegial as opposed to hierarchical, and where the children know and enjoy the director.

In some ways, the "gut" factor for me is whether the teachers appear to genuinely enjoy their jobs--that says 2 things--one, they're decently taken care of and two, they actually like hanging out with little kids. It shocks me how many people in the childcare field don't.

[Sara in Austin]

I agree with Charisse's director tour advice as well -- I toured one place where the director couldn't remember her employee's names! Needless to say, that came off our list very quickly, despite have wonderful physical facilities.

My other small piece of advice is to go somewhere where you know the other parents (my center is sponsored by my employer, so there's a lot of people around who have kids there). The biggest benefit -- you know *everything* that goes on, even in the older/younger classes.

[Sara in Austin]

A year later, here's another thought on the biting issue. Ask how many "incident reports" or "biting reports" a particular classroom issued in the last week/month. My husband was talking to our doctor the other day, and her children had been getting ongoing biting and pushing reports for the last 5 months... ours has had "flare ups" (say a week when it happens a lot), but good teachers and management will nip it in the bud and keep it under control.