Five takeaways from the AJC’s investigation into daycare safety
Georgia’s flawed quality rating system for daycares can be misleading to parents, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution revealed.
The state’s Department of Early Care and Learning is advertising hundreds of daycares as quality childcare options despite the fact that kids were seriously harmed or put at risk while in their care, the AJC found.
The AJC uncovered some particularly disturbing cases, including a child who suffered chemical burns to both arms, an infant with a fractured skull and a baby boy who died after being left to sleep on pillows.
Georgia officials still call these places quality daycares.
Here are five takeaways from the AJC’s latest investigation:
1. Georgia’s system to rate a daycare’s quality can mislead parents
Georgia uses a three-star rating system to score the quality of a daycare. It’s a voluntary program where daycares demonstrate they are going above and beyond basic standards. One star is good, two stars are better and three stars are reserved for the best daycares.
The state doesn’t reconsider or strip the star rating of daycares after it cites them for serious safety incidents, even when workers are arrested.
And daycares can keep those ratings for years after a serious incident because the state is on a three-year rating cycle.
Commissioner Amy Jacobs, who oversees the Georgia department that regulates daycares, said a major overhaul of the rating system is expected in 2027. State officials plan to strip daycares of ratings if they violate safety rules or have a “major incident involving harm to a child,” she said.
2. Kids hurt at daycares the state says are high-quality
The AJC reviewed a decade of cases state regulators labeled as the most severe and found hundreds of children suffered a wide range of harm at Quality Rated daycares.
Some included bruises from being roughly handled by workers, crushed fingers, injuries from playground accidents, allergic reactions and severe burns. Other children were put at risk when daycares failed to supervise them, including when children were left alone or wandered away into streets and parking lots.
Reporters found the serious incidents at these daycares did not affect their ratings.
Georgia allowed 350 daycares to keep their star ratings after they were cited for seriously harming children or putting them at risk. In some cases, the state’s daycare regulator even awarded them additional stars despite these serious incidents.
The Department of Early Care and Learning, in a statement, said the health and safety of Georgia’s children is its highest priority. Daycares may have isolated incidents that, while serious, are quickly addressed. That is different from when a daycare breaks many rules in a single year and requires the state to act.
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3. Daycares with serious safety violations have collected significant sums of money
Some Quality Rated daycares that were cited for serious safety violations have continued to collect taxpayer dollars, the AJC found.
One daycare was paid $341,000 the same year that a 7-month-old fractured her skull. Another daycare was given $310,000 the same year a 1-year-old was chemically burned.
Families are trusting the department to investigate and weed out bad actors, and state lawmakers are trusting the agency to spend money appropriately, said state Sen. Brian Strickland, R-McDonough.
Strickland said he strongly supports programs that help low-income parents afford childcare because they help working families, but funding for daycares that go astray should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
“If you’ve got a daycare where there’s intentional actions or gross negligence happening, that needs to be obviously addressed before they get any state funding,” Strickland said.
4. One Quality Rated daycare racked up at least nine violations
The AJC found one daycare in Lithonia has been cited at least nine times for severe safety violations since it became Quality Rated in 2017.
Three employees at Excell Preparatory Center were arrested in recent years for child cruelty or battery following incidents at the daycare. In one instance, a worker pushed a thumbtack into the backs and sides of five toddlers as they watched a movie, records show. That worker went to prison.
Another worker slapped a 3-year-old boy’s face. She also was sentenced to prison.
In March, another Excell worker was arrested for allegedly slamming a 1-year-old boy down on a cot and bruising his eye.
The state considers Excell a quality daycare and raised it from 1-star to 2-star in 2025.
Excell’s owner, Elizabeth Nelson, said in a written statement that the center works hard to provide quality programming for children, and the daycare is cooperating with criminal investigations and coaching from the department.
“We fire any teacher charged with inappropriate discipline at our center,” she said.
5. Other states do it differently
Most states have their own systems to score the quality of daycares. While Georgia does not currently strip ratings from daycares when things go wrong, several other states have policies that tie star ratings to the safety of children.
For example, Texas will take away a star if a daycare doesn’t do background checks or fails to report suspected abuse. It also will ding a facility’s star rating if a child is abused, neglected or exploited.
And Alabama can strip a daycare of its quality rating if a child is harmed or dies. The daycare is barred from reapplying for that state’s quality program for six months.
Georgia will temporarily take down a daycare’s rating from the state-run website if it acts badly. The rating is visible again once the state decides the daycare is no longer deficient, according to department officials.
The department also has a policy that deficient daycares must remove all Quality Rated logos and signs, but it does not visit programs to enforce this policy.