How the directory works and where its facts come from

How a provider gets listed

We read each provider’s own website and record what it says it offers children: ages, the weekly schedule, prices and what period they cover, languages, trial classes and whether a parent has to stay.

Addresses, map points and opening hours may also come from the provider’s Google Maps listing. For a youth sports club, membership in a state or national governing body may come from the club list that body publishes.

Every fact is stored with the address of its page, the date we read it and a short quote in that page’s own words. Directories, news articles, booking platforms, social media and reviews are never used as sources.

Source labels

Each source carries one of three labels. Published by the place: the provider’s own website. Google listing: its entry on Google Maps. Federation list: the member list of a sports governing body or a league association.

On a provider’s page the label and the date sit next to each fact, so you can see who said it and how recently it was checked.

When a fact is missing

If the pages we read do not give a fact, the provider’s page marks it as not published and the table shows a dash. Not published describes only the pages we read.

Gaps are never filled with guesses. A grade level is not turned into an age. A price keeps the period the provider states; the only math we do is the ≈ price per class, a package or session price divided by the number of classes it includes.

Class times and opening hours

Times appear in two columns. Class times are the days and hours of a class, an after-school program or a camp day, as the provider lists them. Opening hours say when the building is open and often come from the Google listing.

A building can be open at an hour when no group for a given age meets. A row with opening hours and nothing else goes below the line, under a heading that says why.

The after-school pages look at weekdays from 15:30 to 18:00, from school dismissal into the early evening. A class counts when one of its groups starts within that span; after-school care counts when its hours, late pickup included, cover all of it.

What we do not evaluate

• No provider, teacher, coach or program is rated, scored or ranked.
• No one visits the providers in person; each fact comes from a published source.
• Nobody judges the quality of teaching, coaching or care.
• We cannot tell whether a class still has an opening; ask the provider.
• We do not check child care licensing by Texas Health and Human Services, staff background checks, insurance or any other permit.
• Prices are shown as published, with their period and the date read, and are not confirmed with the provider.

Right of reply

If you run a listed provider and a fact is wrong, missing or out of date, send it through the edit form with a link to the page that shows the correct fact.

A correction backed by the provider’s own pages goes in at the next update and is logged in the change history. A provider that has closed keeps its page, marked closed, and leaves every table.

A provider can also ask to be taken off the directory: choose “Remove a listed provider” on the edit form and give a contact that shows you run it. Within a month the provider, its page and its records in the data files are removed.

Dates and updates

Each provider’s sources are read again within 6 months of the last reading. A price for a period that has ended stays on the provider’s page with that period, and the filters and the summary line skip it.

How the site is paid for

Providers do not pay to be listed, and no payment changes a row or its place in the table.

A provider’s page may carry one link to Zartrace, a service affiliated with this directory and labeled as such. Clicks on contact buttons are counted as totals, without any personal data.

Open data

The whole directory can be downloaded as JSON, one record per provider, or as CSV, one row per program. Both files carry every source, label and date, and state their license.

Areas, distance and the map

Inside the City of Houston, areas are the city’s Super Neighborhoods under the names parents use, such as the Heights, Montrose or Meyerland; a few with hardly any residents are joined to a neighbor. Outside the city limits a location is filed under its own city or census community, such as Bellaire, Pearland, Sugar Land or Atascocita, and Cypress covers the area served by the Cypress post office. A location in a town farther out, such as Katy or The Woodlands, is filed under that town.

Distance is a straight line from the point you choose to the nearest location, rounded to the nearest half kilometer. Your location is requested only when you press the button, and it stays in your browser.

A point placed from an address is approximate. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors; Super Neighborhood boundaries from the City of Houston; census community and ZIP code area boundaries from the U.S. Census Bureau.