Daycares in New Jersey

New Jersey scores licensed daycares through Grow NJ Kids, the state's quality rating program. Grow NJ Kids scores providers on a 1 to 5 level scale across five standards: child growth and development, learning environment and curriculum, child assessment, serving diverse populations, and family and community partnerships.

New Jersey's minimum legal requirements for adult-to-child ratios meet the standards published by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), the leading professional accreditation body for early-childhood programs and the most widely cited benchmark for high-quality care, across the infant, toddler, and preschool age bands, and the state requires a higher staff credential than most. New Jersey lead teachers (Group Teachers) must hold one of several qualifying credentials plus one year of teaching experience: an associate's degree in early childhood education or child development, 6 college credits in ECE plus 9 in related fields, a Child Development Associate (CDA), a Certified Child Care Professional (CCP), an NJ Registry Group Teacher endorsement, or an NJ Infant/Toddler Credential. A high school diploma alone is not enough, which is more than most states require; NAEYC's professional standard is a bachelor's degree. The state caps infant ratios at 1:4 (matching NAEYC), toddler ratios at 1:6 (matching NAEYC), and preschool ratios (ages 2½ to under 4) at 1:10 (matching NAEYC); the 4-year-old ratio is 1:12 and the 5+ ratio is 1:15. Group sizes per primary caregiver are also at or under NAEYC: 4 for infants (NAEYC: 8) and 6 for toddlers (NAEYC: 12); the 12-infant and 20-toddler figures in NJ's rules are the cap on children in a single undivided room before visible partitions are required, not the group-size cap. Preschool groups are capped at 20, matching NAEYC. Required pre-service training is 18 hours, plus orientation within two weeks of hire. New Jersey also requires 20 hours of staff development each year (orientation can count toward up to 6 of those hours).

These minimum legal requirements apply to every licensed daycare in New Jersey, regardless of its Grow NJ Kids rating. They are one of the Structural inputs in every Childery rating shown above. The rating distribution above combines that Structural input with Grow NJ Kids scores and other Process inputs to produce the Overall scores. For the full breakdown, see the New Jersey methodology page.