Methodology

Every number on DaycareLens comes from official state licensing agencies, and every record links back to its source. This page explains exactly how we process that data and score facilities.

Where the data comes from

State childcare licensing agencies are federally required (CCDBG Act, 42 U.S.C. §9858c) to publish facility-level inspection results. We ingest each state's official feed or portal daily, normalize the records into one schema, and never edit the underlying facts. The coverage page lists every state we ingest and how deep its published data goes.

Severity normalization

States grade violations differently (Texas uses five levels, others use "high/medium/low" or no scale at all). We map every state's scale onto a common 1–5 severity, where 5 is the most serious (health/safety risk). When a state publishes violations without any severity scale, we treat them as moderate (severity 2) rather than guessing.

The compliance score

Each facility starts at 100 and loses 3 × severity points per recorded violation, with a floor of 0. A facility with one severity-5 violation scores 85; one with repeated serious violations falls fast. Grades: 90+ Excellent, 75–89 Good, 50–74 Fair, below 50 Poor.

No data is not a perfect score. Facilities with no inspection history in our data show “No inspection data” instead of a number — an unknown, not an endorsement. Similarly, in states that don't yet publish violation records (listed here), an empty violation table means the data isn't available, not that the facility is violation-free.

Known limitations

Violation counts reflect what each state publishes, which varies in history depth (typically 2–3 years). Corrected violations still count toward the score — a corrected violation is still part of the inspection record. Scores are comparable within a state; cross-state comparison is weaker because inspection regimes differ. We publish the full dataset (CC0) on the data page so anyone can audit our numbers.

Corrections

If you operate a facility and believe a record is wrong, the fix happens at the source: contact your state licensing agency, and our next daily refresh will pick up the correction. Every facility page links its official state record.