Daycares in Utah

Utah scores licensed daycares through the Child Care Quality System (CCQS), the state's quality rating program. Care About Childcare is the searchable platform Utah Workforce Services uses to publish those ratings. CCQS places providers into one of four named tiers — Foundation of Quality, Building Quality, High Quality, and High Quality Plus — across five quality areas: health and safety, learning environment, child-staff interactions, staff professional development, and family engagement.

Utah'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, at the infant and youngest-toddler age bands, but loosen for 2-year-olds and preschoolers. The state also does not set a lead-teacher credential requirement and the older-preschool group cap is well above NAEYC's recommended maximum. The state caps infant ratios at 1:4 (matching NAEYC). Utah's toddler band is split: 18–23 month-olds are capped at 1:5 (stricter than NAEYC's 1:6), but 2-year-olds — whom NAEYC still classifies as toddlers — are at 1:8 (looser than NAEYC's 1:6). Preschool ratios also vary by single age: 3-year-olds are 1:12, 4-year-olds are 1:15, and 5+ year-olds are 1:20 (NAEYC's preschool benchmark is 1:10 across the band). Group sizes are tight for infants (8, matching NAEYC) and 18–23 month-olds (10, stricter than NAEYC's 12), but loosen as kids age up: 16 for 2-year-olds, 24 for 3-year-olds, 30 for 4-year-olds, and 40 for 5+ year-olds (NAEYC's preschool group-size cap is 20). Lead-teacher credentials and pre-service training hours are not set in state rule, and required ongoing professional development is 20 hours per year (we recommend ≥25).

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