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Arizona's poor showing on a new report ranking states' child-care programs came as little surprise to Tiffany Foreman and Lucia Cunningham.

The two Tucson mothers both struggled for months to find child-care centers where they were comfortable leaving their kids.

"It's just scary here, some of the things these schools get away with," said Foreman, who looked at 15 to 20 child-care centers before finding one she liked for her first son, now 4 1/2.

But officials with the Arizona Department of Health Services, which licenses the state's child-care programs, said the report drew some inaccurate conclusions.

Child-care advocates, meanwhile, praised the report, released Thursday by the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies, saying it shined light on the need for higher-quality child care nationwide.

"It says that we have to work to make things better for our kids," said Diane Umstead, associate director of Tucson's Blake Foundation. She is on a committee appointed by Gov. Janet Napolitano to draft changes in state rules governing child-care centers and homes. The panel has been meeting for more than a year, and it expects to finish its work by the end of this month.

For example: State rules require only one staff member at each child-care center to be trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The committee wants at least half of each center's staff to be trained in CPR. The national association suggests that all staffers should have the training.

"We are making progress because this work group exists, and people across the state know that it's time to make some changes," Umstead said.

Umstead and others held out less hope for improving the state's failing grade on staff-to-child ratios. The state allows one child-care worker to be responsible for up to 13 3-year-olds, for example, whereas a national accrediting group says a worker should watch no more than nine 3-year-olds.

Arizona also was faulted for allowing center directors and teachers to have no more than a high school education.

Bruce Liggett, executive director of the Arizona Child Care Association, said child-care programs in Arizona can't compete for teachers and directors who have college training. That's because state subsidies for child care are six years behind the actual cost of providing care, he said.

The Legislature is considering proposals to raise the subsidies as early as July 1.

"I don't know if there are enough child-care workers with a bachelor's degree who would be willing to work for what our child-care centers can pay," Liggett said. "In the absence of a statewide professional-development system and in the absence of better state support, you couldn't require everyone to have bachelor's degrees. Who would pay?"

Sherry Bolinger, director of Tucson Nursery School, said she has been in child care for 20 years. Although she doesn't have a bachelor's degree, she's taking classes to get one. She also insists on hiring staff members with experience, if not college degrees.

But like other child-care directors, Bolinger said she loses most college-trained applicants to other programs.

"If you have someone with a bachelor's, they want to go work in a school district," where they can expect higher pay and better benefits, Bolinger said.

Arizona scored 62 points out of a possible 150 — 48 points out of 100 possible for child-care standards and 14 points out of a possible 50 for oversight. Nationwide, states averaged just 70 points.

Arizona's strengths, the report said, include requiring centers to offer activities that support children's growth and development — something Foreman said was missing in centers she visited where children were plopped down in front of TVs instead of being involved in learning.

The state also got credit for requiring centers to communicate with parents and involve parents when possible in center activities.

The report faulted Arizona for not requiring its licensing staffers to have bachelor's degrees and for not having complaint and inspection reports on child-care centers available to parents online.

But Mary Wiley, the health department's deputy director, said the state not only requires each member of its licensing staff to have a bachelor's degree, but many have master's degrees in fields that qualify them to inspect child-care centers and homes, and help them improve.

The health department also expects to have reports from January 2005 forward posted online by the end of this month, said Lisa Wynn, the department's assistant deputy director.

The report also faulted Arizona for inspecting child-care facilities only once a year, but that doesn't include inspections conducted in response to complaints, Wynn said.

The department's surveyors are "100 percent compliant" with the state rule for following up on complaints about potential health and safety violations within two days, Wynn said.

And while each state child-care inspector is responsible for close to 80 centers and homes, the state is working to reduce that number to 50, the national association's recommended number, Wynn said. The governor's proposed 2008 state budget requests funds for nine more child-care licensing staffers, she said.

Like the request for higher child-care subsidies, that request remains to be voted on by legislators.

"I just feel that the state really overlooks the importance of early child development, and I don't feel the regulations are really being enforced," said Cunningham, who pulled her son, now 2, out of a child-care center when he was placed in a class with staffers she didn't like.

"The people looking after him were 18 years old and couldn't care less about kids," she said.

Cunningham said she is very happy with the center her son is in now. It has small class sizes, and she believes her son is learning, not just being watched. She wishes all children could have as good a child-care experience.

It costs her $108 a week — less than the center she took her son out of last year.

"There needs to be improvements, but then they would have to raise our rates, and people are paying so much already for child care — it's almost unaffordable for many families," she said.