Early Childhood Industry Initiative
As science understands more about brain development in children, the time children spend in early education and out of school time has taken on increased importance as have the qualifications of the educators who perform this work. For example, the Early Childhood Program Standards of the MA Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) for programs receiving Community Partnership for Children (CPC) funding require (85% of the programs in the target area receive this funding) that, by the year 2010, all new hires of teachers and lead teachers must have a minimum of an associates degree with at least 12 college credits in early childhood education and 9 months of work experience; and by the year 2017, all newly hired teachers and lead teachers must have a minimum of a bachelors degree with a minimum of 18 credits in early education and care and 18 months of work experience.
The Early Education for All Legislative task force advocates that every child age 3-5 have access to a high-quality early education delivered by at least one teacher/family child care provider with a bachelor's degree in Early Childhood Education or a related field. Legislation is expected to pass and be approved by the Governor for voluntary, universal preschool for all 3, 4 and 5 year olds.
In the fall of 2002, the Cherish Every Child Initiative developed a strategic plan, which recommended eight actions that could be taken to ensure that every child in Springfield [as a reproducible plan for the region] has access to and receives the highest quality care and education possible. Strengthening the early childhood workforce became the focus of the Workforce Development working Group. A summary report prepared by the Preschool Enrichment Team, Inc. July 2004: "Who's Taking Care of Springfield's Youngest Children? A Profile of Springfield's Early care and Education Workforce" reported data for 550 staff working at 47 childcare centers and 296 family childcare providers in Springfield. 89% of the childcare centers participated and the response rate was 59% [346] and for the Family childcare providers, 79 or 27% responded.
Developing Early Childhood Educators (DECE)
We need to bridge the education and skills gaps of our region's early education workforce in order to meet increasingly challenging skill qualification demands on the industry. This project, called "Developing Early Childhood Educators" (DECE), seeks to align local stakeholders to develop a consistent, clearly articulated, well integrated, universal and comprehensive system for early childhood educators to access, afford and attain industry recognized credentials. This will be accomplished by creating a career lattice, training structure and wage enhancing vehicles that elevate the work of the profession from a job to a career at all levels, through multiple points of entry, especially for women, minorities, non-English speaking and economically disadvantaged candidates. We will build upon current pilot projects by bringing them to scale and align efforts that are not currently well coordinated, so that we can develop industry-wide solutions. Clearly, having a better educated Pre-K workforce means higher-quality instruction and a better learning environment for the children in the programs, resulting in a better-educated workforce for tomorrow.
See presentation as a Link to the right for a downloadable overview of the DECE initiative.
