Methodology
We don't grade childcare. We take the government's own records, make them easy to read, and tell you exactly what each number counts.
What's in the data
NYC Daycare Check covers three clearly-labeled tiers of New York City childcare providers:
- Loading current inventory…
We include only childcare providers. NYC Parks "playground condition" records — park-cleanliness ratings, not childcare inspections — are excluded entirely and never appear, score, or rank anywhere on the site.
The spine: NYC DOHMH licensed centers
Licensed group childcare centers are inspected by the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), often unannounced, one to three times a year. Each inspection lists violations, and DOHMH assigns every violation its own severity and an OPEN or CORRECTED status. That is the record we display, verbatim.
The record band
The colored band on each center is a one-line summary of its public inspection record. It is computed by a single fixed rule (below) and shown identically everywhere — search, map, facility page, and comparison.
The band reflects a center's current standing: a violation that has been corrected is recorded as resolved, while one that remains open is what the band highlights. Because the City cites critical violations frequently, we focus on what is still unresolved and how a center's record compares with others in its borough.
| Band | Exact rule (last 36 months) |
|---|---|
| Open critical violations | ≥1 violation with DOHMH severity Critical/Serious and status OPEN |
| Open violations | ≥1 open violation, none of them critical |
| Past critical — corrected | Critical violation(s) cited in window, all recorded corrected |
| Minor — corrected | Only lower-severity violations in window, all corrected |
| Clean recent record | Inspected in window, zero violations cited |
| No inspection in 3 years | Has older records but none in the last 36 months |
Active-license check
A center can sit in the inspection data long after it stops operating. Every day we cross-check our centers against NYC DOHMH's official Active Health Code Regulated Child Care Programs roster. Centers on it show an ✓ Active license badge; centers not on it are flagged "Not on current active roster" (they may have closed or let their permit lapse), and you can hide them with the "Active license only" filter. We never silently present a closed program as open.
Borough comparison
On each center we show how its 3-year critical-violation count compares with the median for its borough, so a number like "4 critical violations" can be read in local context.
Home-based providers (NYS OCFS)
Home-based providers are licensed by New York State OCFS, not NYC DOHMH. We draw on two public OCFS sources: the statewide licensed-provider registry (refreshed daily — license status, how long the provider has operated, the license validity window, and licensed capacity by age group) and the provider's official state record of inspections and any uncorrected violations. Where we show inspection history, each entry is dated and reproduced as the state published it; OCFS does not assign a severity level to home-based violations, so we report only what the state publishes. OCFS redesigned its lookup tool in 2026 and per-provider pages are no longer directly linkable, so we show each provider's Facility ID and link the state's search tool for verification; histories shown carry the date we last captured them.
When the state lists a provider under an enforcement action — for example a license suspension or pending revocation — we surface that prominently at the top of the provider's page. A suspension means the state has barred the provider from operating while it is in effect. This status comes directly from the OCFS licensing record. Where we don't yet have a provider's full history, we say so rather than imply a clean record.
Pre-K / 3-K programs (NYC DOE)
DOE Pre-K / 3-K programs have no childcare-style inspection record. DOE has not refreshed its open-data site directory since 2017, so we also check every program against the DOE's current MySchools directory (the city's live enrollment portal): programs found there carry an "In current DOE directory" badge with the check date, and programs missing from it are flagged so no one plans a visit to a program the DOE no longer lists. Seats and enrollment always belong to MySchools / Pre-K Finder, which each program page links.
For Pre-K programs inside public schools, we also show the school's own public record where it exists: state report-card figures (test proficiency, chronic absenteeism, teacher experience) and DOE class sizes for the earliest grades, each labeled with its school year. These describe the school overall — not the Pre-K room — and are context, not a program judgment.
Building-level records (building, lead-paint, rodent, complaints)
For licensed centers we can match to a building, we also check public records tied to that building — not to the childcare program itself: housing and lead-paint violations, building violations, active construction permits and stop-work dispositions, vacate orders, the most recent DOHMH rodent inspection, and public complaints. We match them to the center's address by its building identifier, note each finding's record type, and link you to verify. Two limits matter, and we state them wherever this data appears: the match can be imperfect, and a building-level record may concern a part of the building unrelated to the childcare space — an apartment upstairs, for example. Treat these as questions to raise on a tour, not as conclusions about the provider.
Two additions are scoped differently. Day-care complaints are the city's dedicated complaint category for childcare at an address; they are unverified reports by callers, so we show the count and dates, never the caller's claims as fact. Stop-work orders come from city building-complaint dispositions, and a rescission is not always linked to the original record — so we date the order and say "verify current status with the city" rather than assert it is still in force. Federal child-nutrition program participation (a positive signal: meals must meet federal nutrition standards) comes from a public participant list, which publishes names without street addresses — we match it by name and borough and only when that match is unambiguous, so some participating centers may not show the badge.
We report the record — we don't grade it
Every figure on this site is a count of a government agency's own published determinations, attributed to that agency, with a link to verify. We do not assign a single "safety score." Instead we present the public record in context, with the provider's own response shown beside it wherever they've given one.
The paid Safety Analysis
The records are free. What we sell is a Safety Analysis — original analytical work computed from those records, not access to them. It includes a peer ranking (a mid-rank percentile of a center's 3-year critical-violation count against the roughly 30 geographically nearest centers, whatever radius that covers), a multi-year trend, repeat-pattern detection, an open-vs-corrected responsiveness read, a cross-agency check that joins DOHMH inspections, state licensing, and building, rodent and complaint records to the building, a plain-English summary, and a tour checklist generated from the record.
This is interpretation and comparison of public determinations — still not an invented safety score. Every figure traces back to a government source you can verify yourself for free; the analysis does the cross-referencing, ranking, and explaining. Percentiles compare DOHMH's own "critical" counts and are not a judgment of overall quality. We could be wrong about any individual record — tell us at corrections@nycdaycarecheck.com and we'll fix it.
Updates & corrections
Records are refreshed regularly from their official sources. Operators can claim their center to add a response, and anyone can report an error at corrections@nycdaycarecheck.com. Methodology version —.
This site is an independent guide built on public records. It is not affiliated with the City of New York or NYS OCFS, and nothing here is a substitute for verifying licensing and visiting in person.