What the Numbers Tell Us

The real story isn't the net loss — it's the churn underneath it

A net loss of 433 programs sounds gradual. It isn't. Beneath that number, 1,649 programs disappeared entirely and 1,216 new ones took their place — more than a third of the entire system turned over in just over 27 months.

Churn at this scale matters even when replacements arrive: every closure severs relationships between families and caregivers, and every new program starts with no quality track record. A system that swaps out a third of its providers in two years is not stable — it is running to stand still, and losing ground anyway.

Home-based childcare is collapsing

Every home-based category is shrinking fast. Type B family homes — the backbone of home-based care — have lost 658 providers and replaced fewer than half. In-home aides are nearly extinct.

Net change by program type, July 2024 → latest. Day camps excluded.

This matters because home-based providers serve the families centers often can't: rural communities, non-traditional hours, infants, lower-income households. When a Type B home closes in a small county, there is frequently no licensed alternative within reasonable distance — the slot doesn't move, it vanishes.

The rating system is collapsing — because it's no longer required

Step Up To Quality's middle tiers are hollowing out. Since July 2024:

Programs by SUTQ rating (all types, excl. day camps).

New programs opening unrated has always been the normal pathway — a rating takes time to earn. What's happening now is different in kind, not just degree. The state eliminated the requirement that centers and Type A homes be rated to receive public funding, and the registry shows what happens when quality assurance becomes optional:

• The unrated share among publicly-funded providers — the group that used to be required to participate in SUTQ — jumped from 18.6% to 39.7% in two years.
• Of the 236 centers that dropped from 1-star to unrated, 222 kept their public-funding agreement anyway. Walking away from the rating now costs a provider nothing.
• 407 of the 731 new centers are both publicly funded and unrated — being rated is no longer standard operating procedure for new programs.
• Among surviving centers, downgrades outnumber upgrades 380 to 274; only the top tier is holding (92% of 3-star centers kept their rating).

The trend has continued. In the eighteen weeks between the June 12 and October 15, 2026 snapshots alone, the number of unrated programs rose by 100 while every rated tier fell — 1-star by 98, 2-star by 31, 3-star by 49. Ohio shed 178 rated programs in 125 days.

That last figure is the one to sit with. More than a third of the rated programs Ohio lost in those eighteen weeks did not close — 168 still-open programs gave up their star rating (against 107 earning one), while 134 rated programs closed and just 17 opened rated. A large share of the state's rated capacity is not shutting down; it is simply walking away from the rating, because operating without one has become the easier choice. (Since August 16, more open programs earned a rating than dropped one, 63 to 43 — but 53 rated programs closed against 10 opening rated, and 140 new programs opened unrated, so the unrated share rose again.)

The result is a quality crisis in plain sight: nearly half the system now carries no rating at all, and parents have less visibility into program quality than they did two years ago. SUTQ is mid-transition to a new Bronze/Silver/Gold system — but with participation voluntary and unrated the de facto default, the data so far shows providers exiting quality accountability, not migrating to a new version of it.

The losses are concentrated where the most families are

61 of Ohio's 88 counties have fewer licensed programs than in July 2024 — but the deepest losses are in the state's biggest population centers:

Net change in licensed programs by county, July 2024 → latest.

Urban losses hit low-income neighborhoods hardest, where transportation makes proximity essential. Rural losses are smaller in number but often eliminate the only licensed option in a community. Program-number tracking confirms these are genuine disappearances, not relocations or re-licensing.

Whatever is driving this, it sped up — and hasn't reversed

The closure rate has not been steady. Comparing the three phases the data covers:

That is an 11.6x acceleration over the 2024 baseline — roughly 1.1 net closures per day. At that pace Ohio is on track to be down nearly 520 programs by the end of 2026.

The pace within 2026 has not been uniform. The record interval was May 13 – June 12 (86 programs in 30 days, about 87 per month); June 12 – July 31 ran at about 48 per month, roughly half that. Since August 16 the count has stalled: the 51 days to October 6 ran a net loss of just 3 (135 closed, 132 opened), and the nine days to October 15 added 7 (13 closed, 20 opened) — +4 over 60 days. That pause has pulled the cumulative Feb-2026-onward rate down from 43.8 to 32.9 per month. A stall is not a recovery: the system is still 433 programs smaller than in July 2024, and the share of programs with no quality rating kept rising through the pause.

The data can't say why — candidates include the November 2025 hour-authorization changes, expiration of stabilization funding, workforce shortages, and enrollment economics — but it can say the losses have not reversed: even with the latest pause, the cumulative 2026 rate is more than ten times the 2024 baseline.

The public-funding footprint is growing — a qualified bright spot

Participation in Publicly Funded Child Care agreements rose from 70.8% to 74.0% among centers, and new centers arrive with PFCC agreements at a higher rate (83%) than the centers they replace (76%). Among surviving centers, 103 gained agreements and only 25 lost them.

Two caveats. First, a PFCC agreement is a floor, not a ceiling: most of the new PFCC-participating centers are still unrated. Second, the March 2025 snapshot shows a swing in PFCC rates (down 14 points, then fully recovered) that is almost certainly a reporting artifact — so treat fine-grained PFCC trends with care.

Ohio's childcare system isn't just shrinking — it's restructuring

Put the six findings together and a coherent picture emerges. The system is shifting from distributed, home-based, rated care toward concentrated, center-based, unrated care — while shrinking overall and shedding capacity fastest in the communities with the most children.

• Fewer choices for rural families and families needing non-standard hours.
• Less visibility into quality, as the unrated share of the system climbs toward 49%.
• More instability, as turnover churns through familiar providers at record pace.

None of these trends is self-correcting. The acceleration in Finding 5 is the strongest argument that this is a policy problem, not a market cycle.