Performance reviews for childcare staff: process, forms and timing

Pick one cycle and run it for every role: a written review each year for each staff member, a shorter check-in halfway between reviews, and a review at the end of any introductory period you use for new hires. The uniformity is the point — when the cook, the floaters and the lead teachers all move through the same cycle, ratings stay comparable and nobody can read the process as personal.

Put the dates on the calendar a year ahead, and stagger them across the year so you are never writing a dozen forms in one week and no single month carries every raise at once.

For a new hire, hold the introductory-period review even when it is short.

It sets the baseline the annual cycle will measure against, and it documents that you showed them exactly what meeting expectations looks like in your rooms.

The training calendar gives the cycle its anchor.

The CCDF rule from the Administration for Children and Families (45 CFR 98.44) requires states to set pre-service or orientation health-and-safety training that must be completed within three months, plus ongoing annual professional development, for caregivers, teachers and directors in programs that receive subsidy support.

If your program receives subsidy, reviewing each person just before their training year renews means the goals you write feed annual training you already have to schedule — and the check-in doubles as a progress date for that training.

Schedule the meeting itself as paid time.

Under the Department of Labor's rules (29 CFR 785.27), attendance at training, meetings and lectures is unpaid only when all four of these hold: the time falls outside regular hours, attendance is truly voluntary, the event is not directly job-related, and the employee performs no productive work during it.

A required review of a staff member's own job performance does not meet the voluntary and not-job-related conditions, so plan the slot as paid work time on the schedule.

Edge cases go to the DOL or to employment counsel — not to a rule of thumb.

Evaluate what a visitor could watch, not what a résumé says.

The categories that hold up across roles are these: supervision and interactions with children; health and safety practices in the room; how the curriculum and the daily routine actually run; reliability — arrival, attendance, and being on the floor where the schedule needs them; teamwork with co-teachers and floaters; and communication with enrolled families from the center's side of the counter — handoffs at pickup, conference notes, the tone of a difficult conversation.

Compliance belongs on the form too, as its own row.

The CCDF rule requires pre-service or orientation health-and-safety training plus ongoing annual professional development for caregivers, teachers and directors in programs that receive subsidy support, and the federal CCDF health-and-safety topics (45 CFR 98.41) are the list that training is built from — pediatric first aid and CPR, safe sleep, medication administration, food and allergy emergencies, emergency preparedness, child abuse recognition and reporting, and more.

So the training row asks one simple question: is every required item still current for this person, and what renews before the next review?

Keep the review form and the state's rules in separate drawers. Your form is a management tool; the requirements behind the training row belong to your state child care licensing agency, and they change — confirm the current requirements with the agency rather than copying a topic list off any form, including this one.

For a classroom role you can score line by line, our teacher evaluation form for preschool staff turns the observation categories above into concrete items to rate during an observation.

A rating written from memory measures the last month; a rating written from notes measures the period.

Watch each staff member at different points in the day — arrival, a transition like cleanup or nap, outdoor play, the messy end of the afternoon — and write down what happened with a date on it.

Short notes beat adjectives: "modeled the greeting routine at drop-off; every child matched to a cubby before free play" is evidence a teacher can respond to. "Great with kids" is not.

Pair your notes with a self-evaluation on the same form.

Send it when you schedule the meeting, so each person rates themselves on the same categories before anyone sits down — a floater may rate their own flexibility higher than the coverage log does, and an assistant may surface a training gap you did not know about.

The gaps between the two sets of ratings are the agenda: start the meeting there, not with your own scores.

Observation should never be a surprise, either.

Tell staff when the review window opens, share the notes as you take them, and let the self-evaluation open the conversation — a review an employee could not have seen coming reads as an ambush, and it poisons the goals that follow.

Keep the dated notes with the signed form afterward; whether and how long to keep them is a records question for your licensing agency or employment counsel.

Decide the tie before the cycle starts, not the week the forms come back.

Write down what "meets expectations" earns and what "exceeds expectations" earns, apply the same key to every role, and record the decision — amount and effective date — on the form itself.

A review that quietly decides pay without a written key invites exactly the inconsistency complaints a good process is supposed to prevent.

One classification note before you attach money to a rating: a rating is not an exemption decision, and a raise alone does not settle one — overtime status turns on the duties and salary tests below, not on how the review went.

The FLSA white-collar exemptions require both the right duties and a salary of at least $684 per week.

The teacher exemption has no minimum salary, but it requires that teaching be the employee's primary duty and that they work in an educational establishment (29 CFR 541.303) — and whether a child care center counts as one depends on state law, because the regulation counts nursery school programs as elementary education only in some states (29 CFR 541.204), which is why many daycare teachers are not overtime-exempt.

Whether a particular raise or promotion moves a particular person across an exemption line is a wage-hour question for the DOL or employment counsel.

Bonuses carry their own note.

A merit bonus awarded after a review is wages subject to employment taxes, just like a referral or sign-on bonus, and federal income tax on supplemental wages may be withheld at a flat 22% — so budget the employer-side taxes together with the bonus, and confirm the treatment with your payroll provider before you announce amounts.

And if the honest answer is that pay has to move for market reasons rather than performance reasons, say that in the meeting: a market adjustment dressed up as a merit award devalues the rubric for everyone who earned theirs.

Where the whole schedule needs to move instead of one person, our guide to building a childcare staff pay scale shows how to structure steps by role and credential.

Finally, use the loop in both directions.

Staff who can see the line from goals to training to pay have one less reason to shop around — our guide to retaining childcare staff covers the rest of that playbook.

One form, every role, every cycle — the role-specific detail lives in the line items, not in a different document.

Fill it in with the employee during the meeting rather than beforehand in the office, and give the signature line real meaning by leaving a comments box the employee controls.

Adapt the sections below to your program.

Form section	What goes in it
Header	Employee name and role; classroom or assignment; reviewer; review period covered; review type (annual, introductory-period, or check-in); date
Rating areas	Supervision and interactions with children · health and safety practices · curriculum and daily routine · reliability against the schedule · teamwork and communication with families from the center's side — each marked on one shared scale: Exceeds expectations · Meets expectations · Progressing · Needs support
Evidence	Dated observation notes behind each rating — what happened, when, in which room
Self-evaluation	The employee's own ratings on the same scale, completed before the meeting, with comments
Strengths	What to keep doing, and where this person could coach others
Growth goals	Two or three goals for the next cycle, each tied to something observable in the classroom, with a check-in date
Training for the year	Required training due and current, plus the development training each goal needs — attach the professional development plan
Compensation outcome	The decision, any amount and effective date, and bonus eligibility — plus who follows up
Comments and signatures	An employee comments box; employee signature; reviewer signature; date — a signature means "we discussed this", not necessarily agreement

Then close the loop the same way every cycle: file the signed form, move the goals and the training dates into the professional development plan, and diary the check-in before anyone leaves the meeting.

If the ratings point at a gap your schedule cannot cover — nobody ready to lead the infant room, no floater behind the next resignation — that is a hiring need, and it is worth seeing what candidates see: browse childcare teacher jobs to read how postings in your area describe the role you need to fill.

This page is employer information, not licensing or legal advice. Training requirements are set and enforced by your state child care licensing agency; wage-hour questions belong with the Department of Labor or employment counsel, and payroll tax questions with your payroll provider or tax advisor — confirm current rules with them before you act.