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Apprenticeships and Alternative Pathways to Credentials and Qualifications
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Hello and happy new year! Welcome to the January issue of Workforce Wednesday, a resource disseminated by the National Early Care and Education (ECE) Workforce Center and developed in partnership with the Workforce Wednesday Collaborative that includes leaders in states and local communities, schools, Head Start, and center- and home-based child care. This month’s Eblast focuses on apprenticeships and other alternative pathways to build, support, and sustain the ECE workforce.
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Innovation Spotlight
Learn about a promising new workforce program to inspire ideas and innovation in your context.
Boston’s Comprehensive Workforce Pathways (CWP) is an initiative launched in 2022 by Neighborhood Villages that is designed to address the shortage of ECE professionals in the city. The initiative aims to recruit, train, and retain a diverse, qualified workforce by providing a range of early care and education career pathways, including a registered apprenticeship program with coursework offered in English and Spanish. The program offers no-cost coursework and provides wraparound supports to participants including laptops, technology assistance, business management training, Professional Pathways career exploration and counseling, and periodic wage increases to ensure participant success.
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Learn about other program, state, and national efforts to support ECE professionals in attaining credentials and other qualifications.
The Advancing Early Education Collaborative Initiative is a Washington, D.C. based partnership between six organizations, including Head Start provider Martha’s Table, and two universities to create accessible academic pathways for aspiring ECE professionals and those who want to advance within the profession. The program is focused on Black and Latina women and provides wraparound supports such as transportation, healthy foods, and child care, which help to facilitate program participation and completion.
Washington State is implementing the Equivalent Options for Education program, allowing for greater flexibility, accessibility, and affordability through options like stackable certificates and competency-based portfolios and assessments. Participation in the program can lead to the acquisition of credentials meeting state licensing and staff qualification requirements.
Head Start Promise is an initiative designed to increase access to college degrees for Head Start and Early Head Start educators, including stackable certificates and a flexible pathway to a bachelor’s degree. The initiative includes scholarships and scaffolded academic support to maximize accessibility for Head Start staff interested in participating.
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Read about the importance of supporting ECE professionals in their efforts to pursue training and education.
Strategies for Systems Change: Lessons Learned from the Transforming Early Educator Lead Teacher Preparation Programs Through Multi-Partner Innovation Grant Program highlights various strategies implemented by institutes of higher education to address barriers of aspiring and current ECE professionals.
Broader, Deeper, Fairer: Five Strategies to Radically Expand the Talent Pool in Early Education explores strategies like job-embedded coaching and practice-based training to improve early educator preparation programs.
Increasing Qualifications, Centering Equity Experiences and Advice from Early Childhood Educators of Color reflects responses and recommendations from ECE professionals of color in three states to explore potential unintended consequences of current efforts to professionalize the ECE workforce.
The Higher Education Inventory describes the landscape of ECE degree programs within states to examine variations in program goals, content, child age groups, focus, student field-based learning, and other characteristics. Most recent reports include Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.
Ideal Pathways: How Ideal Learning Approaches Prepare and Support Early Childhood Educators describes alternative training pathways for ECE professionals, common barriers to equitable expansion of high-quality educator development models, and key areas of investment opportunity.
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January 22, 2024, please join us for the third National ECE Workforce Center Foundational Series webinar. You can register for the Foundational Series here.
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January 25-26, 2024, consider joining the ECEPTS Apprenticeship Boot Camp in Nashville, TN. An intensive training on the Registered Apprenticeship system and the ECEPTS Apprenticeship model and its focus on equity and access. You can register for the Boot Camp here.
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For the latest information on the ECE workforce and to sign up for upcoming events sponsored by the National ECE Workforce Center, please visit our website.
If you have questions or requests about the National ECE Workforce Center, please email workforcecenter@childtrends.org. The inbox is monitored daily, and the team typically responds to any questions or feedback within a week.
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This work is funded by The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) through a financial assistance award (Award Number 90TA000004-01- 00) totaling $30 million over five years (2022-2027) with 100 percent funded by ACF. Resources and products developed by the National ECE Workforce Center do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement by, ACF, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), or the U.S. Government. For more information, please visit the ACF website, Administrative and National Policy Requirements.
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