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Requires criminal background checks for employees working around children -- check.

Encourages parental involvement -- check.

Enforces stringent health and safety requirements -- check.

Those regulatory strengths in Nevada's oversight of child care centers earned the state the No. 12 ranking overall in a nationwide survey released today.

"I think we're going to continue to get better and better," said Amber Vestbie, social services chief for the Nevada Division of Child and Family Services. "Right now we're working on a major revision of these regulations and looking at national standards to see how we compare."

Those revisions will address some of the weaknesses identified in the report, released by the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies. One area Nevada fell short in was the staff-to-child ratio requirements. For instance, the national standard for 2-year-olds in child care calls for one staff person for every six children. Nevada's minimum requirement is one staff person for every 10 children in that age.

"We are looking at that now," Vestbie said. "But it would be a lot of change all at once (for child care centers)."

Reducing the ratio would require child care facilities to hire additional staff, Vestbie explained.

According to the survey, Nevada has 358 child care centers serving more than 44,000 children.

Nevada's bright spot was eclipsed by the overall findings of the survey, which said that many states are distressingly lax in their regulation and oversight of child care centers. The lowest marks went to Idaho and Louisiana, and the report's highest grade was given to the far-flung system run by the U.S. military.

Among the common problems in the states are infrequent inspections, deficient safety requirements, and low hiring standards -- including lack of full criminal background checks -- for center employees.

"State child care standards and oversight in this nation are not protecting our children and are not preparing them for success in school," said Linda Smith, executive director of the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies.

She urged action by Congress and state legislatures. An estimated 12 million children younger than 5 are in nonparental child care each week.

In Nevada, child care centers undergo a minimum of three inspections a year -- more if the facility is under a corrective action plan or if a complaint has been made, Vestbie said. The state has eight inspectors responsible for oversight, a burden that's shared with Washoe County, Clark County and Las Vegas.

The association reviewed policies and regulations for all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the Defense Department, which ranked a decisive No. 1 overall and led both subcategories -- one measuring standards that are in place, the second measuring how vigorously the standards are enforced.

"Standards are meaningless without oversight," Smith said. "The Defense Department has good enforcement, and that has brought their program to a much higher level."

Following the military atop the rankings were Illinois, New York, Maryland, Washington state, Oklahoma, Michigan, North Dakota, Tennessee, Minnesota and Vermont.

Idaho ranked last; the next lowest scores were for Louisiana, Nebraska, Kentucky, California and Kansas.

Criteria for the rankings included caseloads for center inspectors, frequency of inspections, health and safety requirements, background checks, staff qualifications and activities offered to children.

The report, "We Can Do Better," said eight states do not even require annual inspections of child care centers, let alone conduct them quarterly as Smith's association recommends. The association also advises that each inspector have no more than 50 centers to monitor; the report said 21 states have caseloads of more than 140 per inspector.

Regarding staff, the report said 21 states have no minimum educational requirement for child care teachers; it said only New Jersey and the Defense Department require center directors to have a bachelor's degree.

The military's system, which has expanded and improved dramatically over the past 15 years, encompasses more than 740 facilities worldwide with spaces for 184,000 children. Its training and safety standards are considered state of the art.

Louisiana officials were not surprised by their low ranking and said they are working hard on an overhaul of child care licensing requirements that was interrupted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

"We have a lot of work to do," said Sherry Guarisco, director of child care for the state's Department of Social Services. "But I think that when the next report comes out, we'll see a much different standing for Louisiana."

Louisiana will soon join about a dozen other states that have established rating systems for child care centers. In California, a bill to create such a system was introduced in the legislature this week by Assemblyman John Benoit, who evoked the 2004 drowning of a toddler at a licensed day care facility in Riverside, Calif.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.