Early education and care providers are in the middle of several crises. There’s the pandemic. There’s the shrinking workforce. And there’s the pandemic-related mental health crisis that’s playing out in children’s lives.

To stabilize and strengthen the field, the Department of Early Education (EEC) is building a new professional infrastructure. These initiatives are part of the strategic action plan, EEC’s guiding vision for 2020-2025.

Earlier this month, EEC’s Advisory Council and its Workforce Council held a joint meeting to discuss a range of workforce issues and solutions.

“We wanted to get some insights on some of the very specific initiatives that are both being conceptualized at the moment as well as [those that] are ready to start launching,” EEC Commissioner Samantha Aigner-Treworgy said in her introduction. The goal is to build “the systems that we need to fuel our growth and recovery.”

The topics on the meeting’s agenda were:

• Status of EEC Workforce

• Launch of a Professional Registry

• Educator Credentialing, and

• EEC Professional Pathways

Here’s a summary of what was discussed.
 
Status of the workforce

As we’ve blogged for many years, EEC’s workforce is struggling and shrinking.

“The top barrier to growth in the child care industry is provider difficulty finding qualified educators to open and fill classrooms and care settings,” a meeting slide notes.

In addition, there are “significant logistical barriers to supporting rapid employment,” the slide says, noting that there is a “lack of career pathways and advancement, bureaucratic requirements that slow the process, and disparate systems of support that complicate entry to the field for new employees.”

To address these issues, EEC has a multi-pronged plan to streamline hiring requirements and develop early educator pipelines to supply the workforce.
 

Source: Department of Early Education and Care

 
Professional Registry

Before the pandemic started, EEC drew on feedback from the field and stakeholders to conceptualize a professional registry.

The goal is for the registry to be used by EEC and by early educators. The registry will be a digital filing cabinet for documentation. It will give educators a centralized connection point with EEC. And it will support tracking of educators at the program level.

In its first phase, the registry will include group and school-age programs, and compile existing records. Growth and new features will occur in later phases.
 

Source: Department of Early Education and Care

 
Among the future benefits: the registry should help streamline licensing visits and help with proactive planning for training and for certification renewals. It will also create real-time access to data about the field.
 
Educator Credentialing

As the slide below explains, EEC is launching a credentialing system that will help “create a career pathway that builds on existing systems.”
 

Source: Department of Early Education and Care

 
One credentialing pathway focuses on degrees. Another pathway focuses on work experience. This two-pronged approach acknowledges the balance between knowledge of the field and experience in the field. And educators can move back and forth between credential pathways.
 
Professional Pathways

In partnership with EEC, Neighborhood Villages has set up a new website that connects the workforce to centralized information about higher education courses and certificate and degree-granting programs.
 

Source: Department of Early Education and Care

 
Early educators can get help in multiple languages from the program’s student support associates.
 
Moving Forward

Now that the country has seen how essential early education and care is to children, parents, and the economy, it is vital to rebuild the field and make it stronger. EEC’s work on these issues is a key step forward.