How to Read a Daycare Inspection Report — Classes, Status Words, and Patterns
Every state must publish its daycare inspection results. What no state does is teach you to read them. A report mixes severity classes, status words, and rule numbers into one document where a missing CPR card can sit a page away from a child left in a vehicle — and nothing on the page tells you which one matters.
Move one: the class comes before the story
- Florida classes findings I (most serious) to III. The state's own Class I examples: a child left behind in a vehicle; discipline by spanking. Its Class III examples: a CPR training record not on file; a first aid kit within children's reach.
- California cites Type A (immediate threat to health or safety) and Type B (potential threat, including some record-keeping) under Title 22.
- Texas weights every rule Low, Medium, Medium-High, or High — the crib safety rule carries a High weight; vehicle documentation carries a Low one.
- Washington marks findings Short Term or Long Term risk under WAC 110-300.
- Illinois prints status letters: S means the evidence supported the violation (a finding, not a grade), C means corrected, O means corrected while the inspector was still on site.
The decoder on this site takes your state and the class, status word, or topic on the report in front of you and returns the plain meaning and the severity band — paperwork, environment, supervision, or safety-critical.
Move two: status is half the meaning
"Substantiated" means the evidence supported the allegation — not that it is happening today. "Corrected" and "corrected on site" mean fixed and verified. A plan of correction (Pennsylvania publishes each one and its status) is the center's written fix, and its status tells you whether the fix was accepted and completed. A corrected paperwork lapse from two years ago is history, not a live danger.
Move three: patterns outrank incidents
One supervision citation, corrected, is a bad day. The same supervision citation three visits running is a culture. Read down the dates: repeat findings on supervision, ratios, or safe sleep outweigh any single older incident that was corrected and never returned. Complaint inspections (visits triggered by a report) that end with no findings cut the other way — someone looked, specifically, and found nothing to cite.
Move four: know what the record cannot show
The next guide in this series covers the archives' blind spots — what New York hides by design, what a federal review found missing in Washington's, and the questions that cover what no record can.