When AJC reporters started looking in January into how Georgia regulates childcare, they came across a curious detail: The state rated and advertised thousands of daycares as quality programs, but hundreds of them had serious health and safety violations.
To find out why, reporters Samantha Hogan, Katherine Landergan and Justin Price spent several months investigating a daycare industry that working parents rely on across Georgia.
Since February, the team has filed more than 40 open records requests with state regulators at the Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning. They analyzed a decade of data to examine the relationship between quality ratings and incidents where children were seriously injured or put at risk of harm. They reported out these findings through dozens of interviews with parents, childcare center owners and employees, lawyers, state lawmakers, researchers, doctors, child welfare experts, regulators in other states and leaders of nonprofit organizations focused on quality childcare access.
Reporters read thousands of pages of police reports, court records and state investigations detailing incidents where children were hurt or put at risk of harm at their daycares. The team also read research studies about Georgia’s early childcare system and the state’s own policy and rule manuals.
The news organization then did a data analysis that involved reviewing thousands of citations issued by state regulators over the past decade. That review revealed hundreds of daycares were cited for severe rule violations while being rated favorably in the state’s Quality Rated program, a three-star rating system meant to demonstrate quality commitments beyond basic licensing.
The analysis revealed that children suffered a range of harm at these places, from crushed fingers to physical abuse to death. Other children were put at risk of harm when they wandered away from their daycares and were found in the street or parking lots. Reporters found that these serious incidents did not trigger the state to review a daycare’s status as a quality program.
On June 9, the team disclosed the findings of its investigation about child safety issues at Quality Rated daycares to DECAL and asked to sit down with Commissioner Amy Jacobs and other department officials for interviews. Then on June 25, the AJC shared its data findings and methodology with DECAL.
DECAL declined our requests to do any in-person interviews in the intervening months.
In September, the AJC sent a letter to DECAL detailing its findings as part of its fact-checking and accountability process.
In October, Jacobs told the AJC for the first time that sweeping changes are planned for the Quality Rated program in 2027. She said the department was working to revise the rating and licensing systems since before the investigation.
Among the proposed revisions is the ability for the department to strip ratings from daycares that violate the rules or have a “major incident involving harm to a child,” Jacobs wrote.
Jacobs said a framework for the revisions was discussed in March and June 2026. She said the changes were shared with childcare providers during a webinar in August. A department spokesman later said the agency is still collecting public feedback about the changes, which are not yet a department policy.
The AJC additionally reviewed a decade of subsidies and bonuses that Georgia paid to daycares in the Quality Rated program. Many daycares continued to receive money even after serious incidents.
Read the full investigation at AJC.com.