What does a daycare director do? Duties, settings and how the job works

A daycare director's week is a management job stacked on top of an education job.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics describes the core duties as supervising teachers and childcare workers, hiring and training staff, providing professional development, setting and communicating policies, developing educational programs, meeting with parents and staff about children's progress, preparing budgets and allocating program funds, and keeping the facility clean and in line with state regulations.

In practice, that list splits into six hats:

• People. Recruiting and hiring teachers and assistants, training them, and providing professional development.
• Program. Owning the educational program — curriculum choices, classroom quality, and how the center's approach holds up from the infant room to pre-K.
• Families. Enrollment and tours, day-to-day communication, and the harder conversations when a parent raises a concern.
• Money. Preparing the budget and allocating program funds, then tracking enrollment and payroll against it.
• Policy. Setting and communicating the center's policies for staff and families, and keeping the parent handbook current.
• Compliance. Keeping the facility and its paperwork ready for licensing. In Texas, for example, inspectors must meet a licensed center's designated director at least once a year during an unannounced inspection to check the director's qualifications.

The hours follow the center's day.

BLS reports that most preschool and childcare center directors work full time, some more than 40 hours a week, and that they are on site while the center is open — which can mean early mornings before drop-off and late evenings after close.

In large centers, directors and assistant directors may stagger their schedules so someone from leadership is always on site.

About 91,900 people worked as preschool and childcare center directors in 2025, and most of them — 72 percent — worked in child daycare services, according to BLS.

Other settings include religious, grantmaking and civic organizations (10 percent), private schools (3 percent) and local public schools (3 percent); 6 percent were self-employed.

• Independently owned centers. The director follows the owner's guidelines — and at some centers, the director is the owner.
• Franchises and corporate chains. The director runs one site but must meet the parent organization's standards.
• Head Start and Early Head Start. Federally funded programs whose directors follow U.S. Department of Health and Human Services requirements.
• Faith-based preschools. The religious, grantmaking and civic organizations category — the 10 percent shown above — includes church-run programs.
• Montessori schools. "Montessori" is not a protected trademark in the U.S. — a 1967 ruling held the term generic — so the name alone doesn't tell you how a program runs. Training and accreditation tell you more than the sign.
• School-age programs. Before- and after-school care and camp programs employ their own site directors.

Directors in local public schools — that 3 percent — work on district payrolls rather than a private center's.

Less than the titles suggest.

Federal wage data doesn't separate the two: preschool and daycare directors share one occupation — Education and Childcare Administrators, Preschool and Daycare, SOC 11-9031 — in the BLS figures this page cites.

What changes the job is who the center answers to.

BLS draws the lines by governance: at independently owned centers the director follows the owner's guidelines; at chains and franchises, the parent organization's standards; in Head Start, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services requirements.

Pay follows the employer more than the title.

In BLS OEWS May 2025 data, directors in this occupation employed by elementary and secondary schools had a median of $76,220 a year, against $63,590 in religious organizations and $58,090 in child care services.

So read the program, not the sign: the ages a center serves, its funding and its governing structure tell you more about a director job than whether the posting says "daycare director" or "preschool director."

BLS names five qualities it considers important for the role: business skills, communication skills, interpersonal skills, leadership and organizational skills.

Mapped onto the duties above, each one has a concrete job underneath it:

• Business skills. Budgets, payroll and enrollment — the director allocates program funds and answers for the center's finances.
• Communication. The director is the center's voice to staff, families, owners and the state licensing agency, in both directions.
• Interpersonal skills. Hiring, coaching and keeping a stable classroom team.
• Leadership. Setting policy, developing the educational program and providing professional development that actually reaches the classroom.
• Organizational skills. Staffing schedules, enrollment records, budget check-ins and licensing visits all land on the director's desk, on deadlines.

There is no single national route into the director's chair.

Where a state sets director qualifications, its child care licensing rules define them, and states accept different combinations of education, credentials and experience.

National director credentials — Aim4Excellence from the McCormick Institute and the National Administrator Credential from NECPA — exist as one way to add a management credential to classroom experience, alongside degree routes.

Director qualifications come from state rules — not from a national license — and they differ from state to state.

Idaho, for one, has no state director credential or director education requirement for daycare centers.

The state rules reviewed for this research include non-degree routes, so don't assume a bachelor's degree is the only way in.

Texas, for example, accepts a CDA or Certified Child-Care Professional credential plus 6 college credit hours in management and at least two years of licensed-center experience as a qualification route for centers with 13 or more children (26 TAC §746.1015).

Background checks cover the director's chair too: under CCDF rules (45 CFR 98.43), every "child care staff member" of a licensed, regulated or registered provider — or of any provider eligible for CCDF subsidies — needs a comprehensive background check, and that definition includes directors, office staff, cooks and drivers, not only classroom teachers.

BLS OEWS May 2025 puts the median wage for education and childcare administrators, preschool and daycare (SOC 11-9031) at $59,300 a year nationally — a mean of $64,800, with the 10th percentile at $38,580 and the 90th at $98,240.

In the child care services industry (NAICS 6244), the median for the same occupation was $58,090.

Those figures count wage-and-salary directors — 73,660 of them nationally — so the self-employed, including owner-directors, sit outside the wage data.

For state-by-state medians and the full percentile table, see the childcare director salary page.

A director sits at the center of a leadership team, and the roles around the job vary with the center's size.

These are the ones to know:

• Assistant directors. The second-in-command where a center is big enough to have one — in large facilities, directors and assistant directors may stagger their schedules so someone from leadership is always on site.
• Curriculum coordinators and ECE coaches. Specialists who support classroom quality — coaching teachers and keeping the educational program consistent across rooms.
• Head Start directors and program managers. Federally funded Head Start and Early Head Start programs run a management bench of their own — education managers, family services managers and health and disabilities managers — whose qualification rules sit in the federal performance standards (45 CFR 1302).
• Daycare owners. At independently owned centers the owner sets the guidelines the director follows; at some centers one person is both.
• Family child care providers. A parallel leadership track: providers run home-based programs of their own rather than a center's classrooms.
• The lead teachers you supervise. The classroom team the director hires, schedules and develops — where every program decision finally lands.

Director openings come from every setting above — independent centers, chains and franchises, faith-based and Montessori preschools, Head Start grantees and school-age programs.

BLS projects about 5,200 openings a year from 2025 to 2035, all from replacement needs.

A posting tells you which credentials the employer expects, the size of the team you'd supervise and who you'd report to, whether that's an owner, a district manager or a board.

Expect the hiring process to verify your education and credentials.

At a licensed, regulated or registered provider, or one eligible for CCDF subsidies, it also includes a comprehensive background check — CCDF rules (45 CFR 98.43) put every "child care staff member" of those providers, directors included, inside that check.

ChildcareHires lists only childcare and early-education jobs — browse open childcare director jobs and filter by pay, benefits or location.

Career information, not licensing or legal advice. Director qualifications, background-check rules and program requirements vary by state and program — confirm the current rules with your state's child care licensing agency.