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08/22/2014

Why CDA?

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Groucho Marx

The Council for Professional Recognition recently published a white paper, "Why CDA? Why Now — A Focus on Competence."  Here is an excerpt:

"For the 1.8 million members of the U.S. early care and education workforce, the realities of teaching are paradoxical.  On one hand, government entities across the federal, state, and local levels are spending billions of dollars annually to enhance early care and education programs.  Yet, many early education staff have relatively low levels of education, with two in 10 having a high school education or less.  

"Efforts to advance early care and education must confront this reality by supporting the professional development among its practitioners.  In this respect, many efforts have focused on increasing the education requirements of early educators.  Today, for example, 66 percent of Head Start teachers now have bachelor’s degrees.  In addition, state Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) include career lattices that recognize increased education levels...

"Since 1975, the field has relied on the Child Development Associate™ (CDA) National Credentialing Program to form the foundation of professional development.  The CDA represents expert consensus about what early educators should know and be able to do in the classroom.  For this reason, it plays a significant role across the spectrum of early childhood settings in the United States, from employer-sponsored child care to federal-government based entities such as Head Start and military-sponsored child care programs.  The CDA is also included in many state level QRIS systems and a wide range of community-based services for young children and their families.  Given its national stature, the CDA credential is portable across states and school districts nationwide.  It is competency-based, multilingual, and adaptable to any setting where young children are enrolled.  And, the CDA has stood the test of time — more than 325,000 people have earned the CDA credential, with 20,000 new and 18,000 renewal CDAs awarded in 2013 alone."




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