Daycares in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania scores licensed daycares through Keystone STARS, the state's quality rating program. Keystone STARS scores range from STAR 1 to STAR 4, with STAR 4 reflecting the strictest standards. The rating evaluates providers across four categories: staff qualifications, the learning environment, partnerships with families and the community, and program leadership.

Pennsylvania's minimum legal requirements for adult-to-child ratios and group sizes mostly 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, with one exception at the young-toddler band noted below. The state caps infant ratios at 1:4 (matching NAEYC) and preschool ratios at 1:10 (matching NAEYC). For toddlers, Pennsylvania splits the age band in two: young toddlers (1–2 years) at 1:5 with a max group of 10, and older toddlers (2–3 years) at 1:6 with a max group of 12. NAEYC also uses sub-tiers and recommends tighter ratios for the younger end (around 1:3 to 1:4 for younger toddlers), so Pennsylvania's young-toddler ratio is looser than what NAEYC recommends for that age, while the older-toddler numbers sit at the weaker end of NAEYC's range. Group sizes follow the same pattern: infant groups capped at 8 (matching NAEYC) and preschool groups at 20 (matching NAEYC). The state's minimums for staff qualifications, however, are less strict than NAEYC's recommendations. Pennsylvania requires only a high school diploma for a lead teacher in a licensed center, where NAEYC's professional standard is a bachelor's degree. Required pre-service training is 4,160 hours, well above the 2,080 hours we recommend, and required ongoing professional development is 12 hours per year. NAEYC doesn't publish a flat annual hours target for ongoing professional development, but its standards require staff to participate in sustained, ongoing development beyond what a few hours a year would cover.

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