“The lack of consistency [in standards for qualifications] is dissonant with what the science of early learning reveals about the foundational core competencies that all care and education professionals need and the importance of consistency in learning experiences for children in this age range.” (pg. 509)

Requirements and expectations for educators of children from B–8 vary greatly. Rather than being based on the science of early learning, they are instead based on educator title, age of children, care and education setting, and the agency with authority to set qualification requirements. The result is a dizzying array of requirements, voluntary standards, certificates, endorsements, and credentials. For current and prospective early care and education professionals, navigating the process of entering the field, staying in the field, or advancing in the field can be daunting to say the least.

Recommendation 1: Strengthen competency-based qualification requirements for all care and education professionals working with children from B–8.

Government agencies and nongovernmental professional and accreditation organizations at the national, state, and local levels should review their standards and policies for workforce qualification requirements and revise them as needed to ensure they are competency based for all care and education professionals and based on the principles identified in the earlier chapters.

Key Takeaway for Implementation

• Launching a review process guided by the principles of this report would lay the groundwork for greater coherence in the content of and processes for qualification requirements, such as those for credentialing and licensure. This work is already underway through the Power to the Profession, a national collaboration to define the early childhood profession by establishing a unifying framework for career pathways; knowledge and competencies; and qualifications, standards, and compensation.

State agencies, national, state, and local stakeholders, accrediting bodies, and institutions of higher education will need to come together to develop a multi-year, phased, comprehensive, coordinated strategy to move this recommendation forward. Its implementation should be tailored to local context and reasonable timelines for changes to occur at the individual, institutional, and policy levels. The federal government should align its policies, develop incentives, and direct resources to support this strategy.

Key Takeaways for Implementation

• The high level of complex knowledge and competencies indicated by the science of child development provides a strong rationale for establishing an equal footing among those who share similar lead educator roles and responsibilities for children.
• Simply instituting policies requiring a minimum bachelor’s degree is not sufficient. Implementation of this recommendation should be closely connected to those that follow as well as with an early care and education system financing strategy. (Another committee, Financing Early Care and Education with a Highly Qualified Workforce, through the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine is currently finalizing its report and recommendations, which is expected in early 2018.)
• Changes to degree requirement policies will need to be implemented over time and with careful planning. Concurrent steps will need to be taken to ensure that specialized training related to the foundational knowledge and competencies can be achieved through multiple and diverse pathways to meet the needs of current and prospective early care and education professionals.
• State and national goals and timelines are important, but local context must be considered. Local investment and benchmarks will be critical for ensuring that communities lagging behind are given the support they need.
• The degree requirement must allow for multiple pathways. A degree in a specific major is not what matters; what matters most is that candidates complete a course of study that includes child development, early learning, and instructional strategies. A bachelor’s degree program that is not aligned with the principles of this report will not equip candidates with the knowledge and competencies they need to be successful with young children.
• For a successful transition to new requirements, the supply of quality higher education programs and demand from the workforce to acquire them must move together. Federal and state policies will need to support new financing strategies that support increased compensation and financial assistance for teachers.

Recommendation 3: Strengthen practice-based qualification requirements, including a supervised induction period, for all lead educators working with children from B–8.

While field experiences are required for the majority of prospective public school elementary teachers, field experience for teachers of children in other early childhood settings is gained once on the job. And even though the field experience or student teaching experience is more standard for teachers of older children in public schools, states do not necessarily set standards around classroom setting, length of placement, and requirements of supervising teachers. More strategic thinking is needed around how to connect these placements to what prospective teachers are learning in courses, identify quality placements in a variety of B–8 settings, and ensure that once new teachers are hired there is someone to support and coach them.

Key Takeaways for Implementation

• Strategies are needed for ensuring a greater number and diversity of field placements that connect educators with qualified supervisors and mentors and provide opportunities to demonstrate knowledge and competencies needed to be successful with children from B–8.
• This requirement must be differentiated for experienced educators who are currently working in early care and education settings.

“For many practitioners who do not participate in formal preparation programs, such as those in early childhood settings, these activities during ongoing professional practice often overlap as default preparation for practice.” (pg. 393)

Professional learning during ongoing practice includes workshops and trainings, coaching and mentoring, reflective practice, learning networks, and communities of practices. This kind of learning has many purposes, including supporting and building knowledge and competencies and introducing new skills, concepts, and strategies. Because all professional learning aims to improve or sustain quality practice and improve child outcomes, its effectiveness can therefore be viewed in terms of how well it achieves these two goals.

Recommendation 6: Support the consistent quality and coherence of professional learning supports during ongoing practice for professionals working with children from B–8. 

Quality, consistency, and parity are needed across professional learning offerings. State and local governments, along with nonprofit groups, can help improve offerings by developing clearinghouse and quality assurance systems that promote access to strong learning opportunities, coordinate with other relevant state systems, and promote joint participation in learning across settings and roles. Federal and state agencies and philanthropic organizations should provide funding to support this work to better coordinate and identify high quality in professional learning systems.

Key Takeaways for Implementation

• While it is important to improve professional learning opportunities across the board for B–8 professionals across all settings, special attention is needed for those who work with infants and toddlers and for practitioners in settings outside of centers and schools, such as family child care.
• Early elementary school teachers have a more supported infrastructure for professional learning, but it is not necessarily focused on providing opportunities to best support the learning of young children; these teachers should have more tailored professional learning activities.
• There are many barriers for educators to access high-quality professional learning, including cost, obligations out of work hours, and geography. Consideration will need to be given to how to address these and ensure that all professionals have easy access to opportunities that hone their competencies.

“Current systems for measuring the performance of educators—even current reforms to those systems—are not sufficient for those who work with children in the early elementary years and younger.” (pg. 533)

New and revised systems evaluating and assessing the effectiveness of educators who work with children from B–8 are needed. Current reforms of these systems focus on student outcomes typically in only one or two areas (often reading and math) instead of capturing the full range of early learning domains. These systems also neglect important competencies such as trauma-informed practice, family engagement, and collaboration and communication with other early care and education professionals.

Recommendation 7: Develop a new paradigm for evaluation and assessment of professional practice for those who work with children from B–8. 

Policymakers at all levels along with stakeholders such as educators and administrators should review and improve how educators are evaluated and assessed. Federal and state policymakers and philanthropic organizations should invest in research and development to improve or create new tools for this purpose. These systems should consider multiple sources of evidence, including assessments of children’s progress and measures of knowledge and competencies. They should also account for setting and community factors and be part of a continuous system of support for educators. Evaluation and assessment systems should be able to answer questions such as: How are the children with whom professionals are working developing in each domain? Do professionals demonstrate knowledge and capacity for best practices in working with dual language learners and children with disabilities in order to support their growth across all learning and developmental domains? How skilled are professionals at engaging family members from diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds as partners?

Key Takeaways for Implementation

• B–8 educators need to be shown how the information they gather on children’s learning from assessment tools can be used to inform their lesson plans.
• Evaluators and evaluation systems should be able to account for overcrowded classrooms, poorly resourced settings, lack of access to professional learning, quality and quantity of supportive community factors, and quality of home environments.
•  In order to appropriately assess teachers, center/program directors, principals, and other administrators need training and support to understand what teachers need to be able to instruct young children in the ways they learn best and to identify when good instruction and learning environments are in place and when they are not.
• Systems should be developed, evaluated, and improved with meaningful involvement of early learning practitioners and experts.
• Educator evaluation and assessment systems will only serve their purpose of improving teacher practice and child outcomes if the information they produce is used to shape local-, district-, and state-level professional learning activities, investments, and policies.

“A critical factor in providing consistent support for children from birth through age 8 is the ability of care and education professionals to work in synergy with other professionals…” (pg. 542)

Early childhood care and education professionals must be able to and have resources to work with others in related sectors, especially health and social services.

 Recommendation 9: Improve consistency and continuity for children from B–8 by strengthening collaboration and communication among professionals and systems within the care and education sector with closely related sectors, especially health and social services.

One particularly important area for collaboration is in infant and child mental health. To improve these linkages, leaders in care and education settings should partner with mental health professionals. Because there is limited availability of mental health consultants, federal agencies and national organizations should prioritize funded, integrated training programs for educators that focus on both early learning and early childhood mental health. And, because of mental health consultants work with young children,the mental health sector should review their standards, practices, and systems for professional learning to incorporate basic knowledge in child development. 

“Implementing the committee’s recommendations will produce substantive changes that elevate the perception of the professionals who work with children from birth through age 8 and improve the quality of professional practice, the quality of the practice environment, and the status and well-being of the workforce—and ultimately, outcomes for children.” (pg. 560)

Accomplishing this will require coordination and alignment among funders, oversight agencies, and stakeholders conducting work to support and develop children from B–8. Setting policy alone is not enough; establishing ambitious but reasonable timelines for implementation and allowing for opportunities to revisit policies based on how well they are working or not working is necessary.

Recommendation 10: Support workforce development with coherent funding, oversight, and policies.

To support the transformation of the workforce for children B–8, federal, state, and local governments and nongovernmental resource organizations should review their policies and practices to ensure they are aligned with the unifying foundational principles in this report. This should include revisions of regulations for funding streams to remove barriers to continuity across settings. Existing streams have differing eligibility requirements and quality standards.

Recommendation 11: Collaboratively develop and periodically update coherent guidance across roles and settings for care and education professionals working with children from B–8.

National nongovernmental organizations that offer resources and support for local and state governments or directly to the care and education workforce should collaborate and update foundational guidance related to the care and education workforce serving children from B–8. Governments at all levels, nongovernmental organizations, IHEs, and professional learning providers should use the shared guidance to align and augment their own standards. The goal here is to promote consistency among the various groups with oversight and influence across early care and education. Federal agencies, along with philanthropic organizations, can and should support these collaborative efforts with the goal of getting to a more permanent, recognized organizational infrastructure.

Key Takeaways for Implementation

• The representation in collaborative efforts also should reflect practice communities, the research community, policy research and analysis, policy makers and government leadership, higher education, agencies that oversee licensure and credentialing as well as accreditation, and organizations that provide ongoing professional learning.
• For collaborative efforts to be helpful, it will be necessary to establish some form of infrastructure.
• Collaborative efforts should draw from and build on existing resources rather than create new and duplicative solutions.

Recommendation 12: Support comprehensive state- and local-level efforts to transform the professional workforce for children from B–8.

Governmental agencies and nongovernmental organizations should support collective efforts at the state and local levels to transform the workforce for children B–8. These groups should collaborate to provide technical assistance, financial help, and other resources. The report calls on the U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services to use this approach to jointly fund local or state coalitions to undertake a long-term initiative to review, assess, and improve professional learning and workforce development for the care and education workforce.