(NCDHHS) will partner with 16 higher education institutions to launch free, intensive, short-term training and certification programs to prepare participants for child care careers, according to

Traditional programs for lead teacher roles in early childhood education can last several weeks or months. These new training programs, called “child care academies,” will be shorter, while still offering curriculum that “meets or exceeds” minimum training standards, the announcement says. The length of programs will vary depending on the college or university in which the participant enrolls.

The NCDHHS press release says these academies aim to “address the severe staffing shortage that is a key contributor to the state’s child care crisis,” expand access to high-quality early learning, bolster workforce development, and reinforce the state’s economy by helping parents stay employed.

Funding for the initiative will come from NCDHHS’s Division of Child Development and Early Education, the announcement said, using dollars from a federal Preschool Development Grant.

“North Carolina’s early learning system depends on a strong, well-prepared workforce, and the Child Care Academies are designed to meet that need head on,” said NCDHHS Deputy Secretary for Opportunity and Well-Being Michael Leighs. “By providing free high-quality training, we’re opening doors for new educators while supporting families and ensuring children across our state have access to safe and nurturing care.”

These academies have gained popularity in recent months as a way to address early childhood educator shortages. that at least 11 counties across the state had institutions running child care academies. According to that report, a 2024 survey found staffing shortages were affecting three out of every five licensed child care providers across the state.

Earlier this year, a $1.476 million pilot to expand child care academies with state funding was included in the . However, the pilot funding did not make it into the General Assembly’s “,” which was signed by Gov. Josh Stein in August.

A February lifted up child care academies as “scalable local solutions,” and the governor’s North Carolina Task Force on Child Care and Early Education highlighted child care academies in its June .

The NCDHHS press release lists 16 new child care academies — including 13 at community colleges, and three at four-year institutions. Of the 13 at community colleges, only two were included in EdNC’s September report, meaning that 11 of the community colleges may be running programs for the first time.

Per NCDHHS, the list of institutions offering child care academies include:

• Appalachian State University
• Bladen Community College
• Central Carolina Community College
• Central Piedmont Community College
• Davidson-Davie Community College
• Durham Technical Community College
• Elizabeth City State University
• Forsyth Technical Community College
• Guilford Technical Community College
• Montgomery Community College
• Nash Community College
• Pitt Community College
• Roanoke-Chowan Community College
• Sandhills Community College
• The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Wilson Community College

According to the press release, participants in the academies undergo training in different formats — with virtual and in-person opportunities — covering CPR/first aid, health and safety, infant/toddler safe sleep and sudden infant death syndrome, playground safety, and identifying and responding to signs of child maltreatment.

Participants are also introduced to the North Carolina Foundations for Early Learning and Development, trained on the Environment Rating Scales, and briefed on program standards for Pathways to the Stars, the state’s updated Quality Rating and Improvement System. They also receive certification and guidance to complete the required NCDHHS criminal background checks.

“Children in early childhood care and education environments need well-prepared teachers to help keep them safe, healthy and learning,” said Candace Witherspoon, director of the NCDHHS , which licenses and monitors child care programs. “Child Care Academies quickly and fully prepare teachers to provide quality care and education to children and families in their communities.”

Each of these schools will have to offer at least three trainings through July 2026, the release says, though participating schools can set their own start date. Some already began in October, while others will launch in January.

NCDHHS’s press release said those interested in the academies should contact the admissions office of the program at their school of choice.

You can

EdNC’s Katie Dukes contributed to this report.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

To infuse the landscape with greater equity, funds innovations in financial systems that support long-term increases of compensation for the early care workforce. A recent round of grants supports systemic change in Colorado, D.C. and Louisiana.

“Focusing on compensation requires innovating on financing systems,” said Ola J. Friday, director of the Collaborative. “You need someone from the fiscal and budget office at the table.” The Collaborative designed the request for proposals to incentivize these partnerships, and many applicants, even those that didn’t receive funding, noted that the process of applying spurred collaborations that needed to happen anyway.

Friday introduced leaders from the three new grantees to Early Learning Nation magazine.

Colorado

An educator quoted in the reflected, “When I think about the vulnerability of young children under six years old . . . how impressionable they are . . . how important a caring relationship with an adult provider is . . . and how much time providers spend with young children, I can’t get over the fact that the compensation is not equitable. It’s not even a living wage. I would love to see greater compensation.”

The Collaborative’s $3.8 million investment will advance this vision through an expansion of the Teacher and Family Child Care Home Salary Increase and Compensation Pilot, among other initiatives. According to Rebecca Vlasin, Early Childhood Workforce division director of the state’s recently formed Department of Early Childhood, early findings from the pilot’s randomized control trial have shown a 92% retention rate for the providers receiving hourly increases of $3-8, compared to a rate of around 82% for those not receiving the boost.

Friday hopes that the Collaborative’s investment helps them demonstrate the effectiveness. “We’re playing a part in supporting their advocacy so they can get the funding they need to sustain the pilot,” she says.

“As we designed the pilot, we wanted to be sure that we were considering any unintended consequences of salary increases for teachers as well as for providers across Colorado communities,” Vlasin Said. “For example, we know that one-third of our workforce qualifies for public benefits due to the compressed wages, and we want to understand how a wage increase might make them ineligible — essentially, pushing them off a benefits cliff without a systemwide commitment toward a sustainable, livable wage.”

The Collaborative previously to help University of Colorado at  Denver facilitate a consortium of institutions of higher education to explore credentialing and access to postsecondary degrees — efforts that relate directly to the continued quest for equitable compensation. The recent grant will build upon this work by helping the various agencies to create the structures needed to facilitate greater inter-agency coordination, capacity-building and action.

According to Vlasin, Colorado’s long and unwavering commitment to supporting children and families results from collaboration between state and local entities across private and public domains. “Families, professionals, advocates and policymakers have worked together to build coordinated systems that support local areas to be responsive to the needs of their communities,” she says. This spirit of collaboration permeates the state’s .

The District of Columbia

Comparable to a state department of education in any other state, functions as D.C.’s education agency as well as its lead agency for the federal . Since 2021, the has increased compensation for early childhood educators, bringing it within range of what K-12 teachers earn.

Initially, OSSE partnered with an intermediary to issue payments directly to educators, but according to Sara Mead, OSSE’s deputy superintendent for Early Learning, the long-term vision was always that providers would see an increase in the paychecks they receive from their employers, and this shift is currently under way. “This is the first time any jurisdiction has tried to do what we’re doing at this scale,” she said.

A new mom herself, Mead said, “Parents just cannot afford to pay what it costs to really compensate our early childhood educators at the level they deserve. So, the only way to untangle that situation and really address the pay they deserve is by having a revenue source that comes from someplace other than the traditional early learning revenue sources. In our case, we are blessed with a rich ecosystem with so many supportive elected officials. The resulting tax measure enables us to do some of the most exciting work in the country.”

, a partnership with the District’s health benefits exchange, is making health care coverage affordable for child care employees. About a thousand individuals have enrolled so far, 40% of whom were previously uninsured. And deductibles are lower this year, thanks to an upgrade from the silver plan to the gold plan.

The Collaborative’s $2.4 million grant will also support an initiative called the D.C. Business Collaboratory, an OSSE collaboration with:

• Hurley & Associates

The Collaboratory will support child care programs with business administration, operational and management issues.

“We are excited to support D.C.’s success,” Friday said. “And to help OSSE bolster its data and information technology systems to more effectively implement the Pay Equity Fund and health care benefits.”

 “One of the challenges when you are standing up programs really quickly is that you are doing a lot of innovation really fast and don’t have as much time to reflect on what you’re learning and really document it,” Mead said. “That’s why this investment is so important.”

Louisiana

For Friday, one of the things that stood out about Louisiana’s plans for increasing provider compensation was the local-to-state implementation approach. “Orleans Parish has an existing compensation pilot,” she says, “We’re looking to support Louisiana to scale up that model to additional parishes around the state.”

Another distinguishing feature of this investment is that the grantee, the , is a nonprofit and not a governmental agency. Executive director Libbie Sonnier recalls, “We took this opportunity to the state department of education and asked if we could apply for the grant, since it aligned with our work, which is about systems improvement. And they were like, ‘Absolutely,’ since we are all working together so closely anyway.”

Candace Weber, partnerships director at the Louisiana Policy Institute for Children, notes that the timing of the project was perfect for their organization because it followed on the heels of their cross-sectional “Tiger Team” project (a term popularized by NASA) that resulted in their report. The team, which comprised experts from academia as well as educators with lived experience, found, “Competitive pay can boost employee retention and recruitment, which will encourage long-term quality improvements and directly benefit the young children in their care.”

“Louisiana isn’t the only state that’s grappling with compensation,” Weber said. “We know the economic benefits associated with child care and understand what’s at risk if we don’t address workforce compensation.  We get contacted by other states to learn what we’re doing, especially around our , which tracks the cost of child care breakdowns.”  ( found that parental absences cost Louisiana businesses $762 million annually from missed work, turnover and other related costs.)

Louisiana just inaugurated Jeff Landry as governor, and Sonnier anticipates continued growth in state investments in early childhood, building upon $87 million of recurring state funding over the last four years. “We have buy-in from the business community and the legislature,” she says.

The system building funded by the Collaborative will help early childhood educators by reflecting the true value of their professional work. Friday adds that the Collaborative is actively seeking aligned funding to support additional states.

The CDA requires significant coursework and teaching. Vargas had to gain 480 hours of experience in the classroom, besides taking 120 hours of coursework either in person or online. She admits that it was a lot of work, but says “It’s so worth it. Earning my CDA taught me new and different ways to work effectively in the classroom, so I continued pushing myself each day.” Like many CDA holders who use the certification as a steppingstone to further career development, Vargas plans to pursue a degree in early childhood education.

Calvin E. Moore, Jr., CEO of the Council, says, “CDA holders know the demands of a real-world classroom and increasingly have what it takes to meet them. I’m gratified that the number of CDA earners between 18 and 34 has been increasing.”

The CDA Credential dates back to the start of Head Start — part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty — when the supply of educators fell far short of the demand in the communities the program was meant to serve. In 1971, at the annual meeting of the told the National Association for the Education of Young Children, Edward R. Zigler, director of the U.S. Office of Child Development, declared:

“We must develop a middle-level profession to care for our country’s children. The need for the Child Development Associate, an individual who has not had as much scholastic training as those with college degrees, but nevertheless has the competencies to care independently for children, is central to a major issue in child care. Are we going to provide the children of this nation with developmental child care or are we going to provide them merely with babysitting?”

Before the Council took the helm in 1985, Bank Street College in New York City administered the CDA. “Providing child care is a profession,” said Ellen Galinsky, who taught at Bank Street for 25 years and went on to found . “Child care,” she added, “is a profession that requires a solid background in such fundamentals of child development as knowing what curriculum is appropriate to a particular age group, the basics of health and safety, and how to form effective partnerships with parents.”

Nearly 5,500 members of the CDA community have lent their voices and views to a survey on ways to bring more equity, ease and access to the CDA process. Nearly 90% of CDA holders report feeling more prepared for the classroom because they’ve gained a foundation in early learning and best practices for the profession. “The CDA was a wonderful way to get into my current position,” one teacher said, “and get into the job market I wanted to be in.”

Another respondent observed, “CDA holders appear to be better at interacting with children and communicating with parents. They also stay on the job longer and seem more committed to their work.”

According to Moore, remote learning is on the rise. He also sees increased recognition of the value of diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace, with an emphasis on advancing communities that are underserved. “That is the Council’s central mission,” he says. “We have always been committed to ensuring equity for all children and for the teachers who provide them with the quality learning they need.”

Ten U.S. territories and states that have embedded the CDA in their child care licensure and career ladder for professionals in the early learning field: Puerto Rico, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Alaska, Wyoming, Ohio, Michigan, Florida and Washington, D.C. Florida requires every child care center to have at least one staff member with a CDA. In the District, a 2016 law mandates that all assistant teachers must have a CDA.

Scholarships and support are making it easier for teachers to earn the CDA. For example, the Council and the Maryland State Department of Education are now partnering to provide thousands of the state’s early childhood teachers with financial support to help them earn or renew their CDA. These financial awards cover application and other fees, as well as books required for the program, and the state considers this a wise investment in the future.

The Maryland-Council partnership is also promoting the high school CDA, incentivizing teens to imagine a productive future at a time when they’re searching for a path from high school to careers. The CDA helps them take their first steps into the early learning field because it “provides you with knowledge if you have no knowledge of child care,” as one novice teacher said in the Council’s recent survey.

College may not be the next step for everyone with a high school diploma. Exorbitant tuition and other factors are encouraging more high school graduates to explore nondegree pathways. for those without a college education, but child care is a worthy and essential field, especially if the passion for building brains in young children is there.

Asked what advice she would give to a high school student contemplating the rigorous CDA process, Vargas said. “If you keep going forward, you will see the benefit of the journey.”

“High schoolers who earn a CDA,” Moore said, “give us high hopes for the future of our field.”

In a published with RAND Corporation this year, the at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa examined the wages, working conditions and benefit challenges for the ECE workforce in Hawaii. The project was funded primarily by a grant from the Early Educator Investment Collaborative. Researchers found that since the pandemic, it became more difficult to recruit teachers and retain them, according to Dr. Theresa Lock, director of the Hawaii Early Childhood Educator Excellence and Equity Project, who commissioned the study.

“Some of them, if they had an associate degree in early childhood education, could actually make even more if they went to work at a service industry job like a restaurant or even a fast food restaurant,” Lock said. “We found that that was the case, that some of our folks were actually leaving the field. So we wanted to really capture that in the data.”

The report also examined policy options in other states that employed both long-term and short-term strategies to improve recruitment and retention in the ECE field. Although Hawaii has increased investments in early child care education, the current level of funding has fallen short of what is needed to expand access to programs, the report notes.

Like their colleagues in the continental United States, ECE educators in Hawaii are often paid low wages and see little professional advancement in their careers. That low pay translates to a broader lack of respect for their profession, according to the RAND report.

“We work hard. And we try to get our children successful to get to kindergarten. But we still look like glorified babysitters,” one provider said in a focus group.

But Hawaii residents also face unique challenges; the state has the highest cost of living in the country, according to a recent ranking from the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center. Wages and salaries for early educators in Hawaii are not competitive with jobs requiring similar education or experience, the RAND report notes citing Bureau of Labor Statistic data.

“Median hourly wages, estimated at approximately $13–$17 per hour, are well below the living wage estimate of at least $28.50 per hour for the state,” the report states. “Although median wages for child care workers in Hawaii exceed the national median, the pattern is reversed once the high cost of living in the state is accounted for.”

Hawaii’s isolated location outside the mainland also means that the pool of ECE workers is not as flexible as other states, said Lynn Karoly, a RAND Corporation Senior Economist and professor at Pardee RAND Graduate School.

“If you were looking in other parts of the continental U.S. where people might move in and out more readily, you can expand the supply of your workforce more easily,” Karoly said. “So, when there are shortages of staff, they’re particularly hard to sell because it’s not as easy just to advertise, ‘We’ve got great positions and we pay well.’ You’ve got to move to Hawaii…that puts pressure on the ability to have the workforce that’s needed.”

The islands’ demographics are also distinct from their mainland counterparts and its workforce should reflect that diversity, including its native populations, the report notes. That means knowledge of the Hawaiian language and culture may also factor as a prerequisite for an ECE position. Hawaii could look to states like Oregon, which awarded grants to providers using an equity-based formula that accounted for underserved families, including culturally diverse families and those who receive subsidies, the authors wrote.

“There’s a real commitment to ensuring that programs in these early years are culturally relevant, with an increased emphasis on learning the native Hawaiian language,” Karoly said. “So that also means that you’re really looking for people who have that kind of training and backgrounds to serve in those roles, which, you know, is somewhat unique from what communities might be looking for in other parts of the country.”

Hawaii’s preschool infrastructure is one of the most tenuous in the nation. In 2016, just 1 percent of 3- and 4-year-olds were enrolled in state-funded pre-K in Hawaii, according to a report from Rutgers’ National Institute for Early Education Research. The existing issues with recruitment and retention have only worsened since the pandemic. In the wake of the Covid pandemic, nearly 40 percent of child care providers shuttered across the country and in 2021, state-funded preschool enrollment dropped for the first time in two decades, according to the .

“It’s already fragile, but I think it became even more fragmented and broken than ever before,” Lock said. “What we found even before the pandemic, we knew the wages were lower, especially in our private programs.”

The condition of preschools and the work environment for early child care educators is starting to get more attention among state politicians. In her , Hawaii’s newly-elected Lieutenant Governor Sylvia Luke singled out the high cost of tuition as another barrier to a coveted few preschool slots in Hawaii. Luke noted that the Hawaii legislature already provided funding for 2,000 to 4,000 new seats. While Luke has committed to expanding access to preschool, no one has identified state investments for the workforce yet, Lock said.

Successful Policies Ripe for Replication?

As part of their study, the authors looked at what policies have worked in other states to boost recruitment and retention. In particular, a recent tax increase in the District of Columbia drew their attention. In 2021, the in support of a tax increase on those earning $250,000 or more per year. The tax was expected to garner $100 million in revenue to fund early childhood education from birth to age three, Washington City Paper reported.

Karoly noted that D.C. and Hawaii’s ECE sectors are similar sizes and share challenges around compensating their early childhood workforce and getting a high-quality early learning opportunity. At the same time, she acknowledged that while the progressive tax solution worked for D.C., regressive taxes might garner more support in other states.

The D.C. Council also established the Early Childhood Educator Equitable Compensation Task Force, which provides recommendations on how to implement an employee compensation scale for early childhood development providers. In 2018, the D.C. Council passed the Birth-to-Three for All D.C. Act, which requires the Office of the State Superintendent of Education to create compensation scales that ensure compensation parity with D.C. public schools teachers. While the pay scale was still under development, D.C. distributed pay supplements to early educators.

Researchers also examined wage programs in North Carolina, Tennessee and Illinois. The COVID-19 stimulus package pumped $805 million into the North Carolina Child Care Stabilization Grants, which aim to improve recruitment and retention. Since the grant program launched, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services distributed more than $335 million to nearly 4,000 child care centers, . In March 2021, Illinois launched a three-year pilot program that provided $3.8 million per year to hire additional staff or increase the salaries of existing staff for 35 child care centers in rural counties. Illinois drew funding for the pilot from both the federal Preschool Development Grant Birth through Five and state child care funds.

Salary scales and compensation parity work offer long term, sustainable solutions, while the bonus programs have often prevented the existing workforce from looking for jobs elsewhere that pay the same or more, Karoly said.

“The problem with these wage bonuses is that because they don’t change the underlying base compensation, they can easily go away and you’re back to where you are,” she said. “It becomes kind of a temporary fix, but they also used it as a way to make the transition to this approach of having a salary scale.”

Legislators in Hawaii are already looking at wage pilots or bonus programs of their own. In early 2022, Hawaii State Senator Bennette Misalucha introduced two bills aimed at improving child care worker retention. The first bill, , would authorize the Department of Human Services to require staff of licensed and registered early childhood programs to provide specific information each year to the Department’s Early Childhood Workforce Registry. Misalucha’s other bill, , would use department of human services funds to establish a one-year child care worker subsidy pilot program to help retain the existing workforce.

SB2701 failed, but advocates plan on taking up similar bills again during the legislative session in January, Lock said. She hopes the report is the first step toward more concrete efforts to improve ECE worker compensation in Hawaii.

“The vision for our state is that every child should benefit from high quality programs that are supported by a well-prepared, well-compensated early care and education workforce,” Lock said. “And it’s going to take time.”