Child Day Care-Leaving Children to Chance-Washington State and Oklahoma

This report "Leaving Children to Chance" by the National Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies (NACCRRA) left their methodology to chance.  All this report highlights to begin with is just what is written down on a piece of paper (otherwise known as standards) and then the individual states saying to the NACCRA, "yes, what I am reporting is true."

Therefore, this is not an actual look to see if states enforce day care standards, it is only, did the states write down a standard (or requirement) on a piece of paper?

What NACCRA wrote about their methodology:

"In November 2011, NACCRRA sent a request to child care licensing directors in all 51 states (including the District of Columbia) and a representative from the Office of Family Policy/Office of Children and Youth in the Department of Defense (DoD). We asked them to verify the accuracy of information we had gathered about specific licensing regulations in their state related to small family child care homes."

Well, just looking at the states ranked in the top two, Oklahoma and Washington State the information is not accurate.

One NACCRRA category is: "Online inspection and complaint reports are available to parents on the Internet."

For Washington State inspection reports are not available to parents on-line as reported in "Leaving Children to Chance".

For Oklahoma complaint inspections are not available to parents on-line as reported in "Leaving Children to Chance."

That immediately reduces the scores for those top two states. This report lacks validity and reliability in the outcomes of NACCRA's research and analysis. They could have at least gone to the websites of Washington State and Oklahoma to do some independent verification, but they didn't.

Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies are funded by the feds and the states. They don't have access to the information the state licensing agencies have nor do they provide accurate information to parents. Most of these agencies are subordinate to the federal and state governments to keep their money, keep the funding going on the taxpayers dollar.

The most accurate part of NACCRA's report is, indeed, parents are "Leaving Children to Chance" when they look for day care.

http://www.naccrra.org/about-child-care/state-child-care-licensing/2012-leaving-children-to-chance

Smoke and mirrors; and a waste of the taxpayers' money.