The Center for the Early Educator is a workforce development and research innovation that is part of Child Care Associates. The Center for the Early Educator was established to address the critical need in Texas for early educators, specifically for ensuring that the North Texas region has a well-educated and supported early educator workforce essential for children (ages 0-5), for working families, and for industries in the growing economy.
Purpose
The Center for the Early Educator seeks to support early learning professionals in achieving their full potential while addressing the workforce demands for quality care of young children. Through credential development, career development, professional development, community-centered research, and collective capacity-building, the Center for the Early Educator aims to develop pipelines, pathways, and retention strategies for early educators. The Center for the Early Educator will lead valuable research to further inform the early education sector.
The Center for the Early Educator is dedicated to:
- Convening regional workforce boards, institutes of higher education in the North Texas region, and credentialing non-profit agencies to collaboratively develop and implement solutions that build and strengthen the early educator workforce in the region.
- Identifying pathways, pipelines, and retention strategies for early educators by focusing on credentialing that can lead to career advancement.
- Sourcing professional development opportunities through existing resources available throughout Texas.
- Engaging in community-driven research to better understand early educator needs.
- Collaborating with key stakeholders to enhance collective capacity and support the early educator workforce.
North Texas Child Care Workforce Study
The North Texas Child Care Workforce Study provides a comprehensive picture of North Texas’s early care and education (ECE) workforce, including workforce size, child care supply, educator characteristics, and experiences and challenges child care directors face. The findings support the development of data-driven strategies to improve families’ access to child care and strengthen the early care and education workforce across the region.
In this report, we detail findings for child care programs across three local Workforce Development Board regions (Workforce Boards): Workforce Solutions Greater Dallas, Workforce Solutions for North Central Texas, and Workforce Solutions for Tarrant County.