Despite the growing need for child day care, the absence of federal regulation of child care centers gives individual states great authority in licensing care. Since states are the final authority concerning day care licensing, the quality of care varies from state to state. This study determined the extent to which current child care standards in the United States meet the criteria established in the 50 proxy standards developed and adopted by the American Public Health Association (APHA) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The child care licensing administrators of the 50 states were surveyed using the AAP-APHA Collaborative Child Care Standards Project Survey of State Licensing Regulations. Forty-eight states responded. Several comparisons were made: (1) current child care standards in the states were compared to the criteria established through the 50 APHA-AAP proxy standards; (2) this assessment of the 10 technical panel content areas of the 50 proxy standards was compared with the initial assessment conducted by the APHA and AAP; and (3) state differences on the 7 different configurations of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) Affiliate Structure were compared to the composite score of the 50 APHA-AAP proxy standards. The present study is, therefore, a partial replication of the original APHA-AAP study. This study found improvements in the child care licensing regulations since the original APHA-AAP study was made: states met 6 of the proxy standards with an excellent rating; compliance with 43 proxy standards increased, while compliance with 7 standards decreased; and 41 states increased their composite scores, while scores of 6 states declined. (Contains 14 references.) (TM)