How to Earn a Development Associate Credential

Earn a Development Associate Credential

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Children are our most important asset. Teaching them in a quality environment is crucial. A Child Development Associate Credential is a credential designed to improve care for young children. Care providers and early childhood educators receive education and training in appropriate subjects. After training, these providers and educators are evaluated on their ability to apply the information in a classroom or care giving setting. This credential illustrates the educator's ability to meet the physical, social, emotional, and intellectual of the children in their care. A person who is interested in making a career of caring for children improves their employment and salary potential by completing a CDA.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Step1

Decide on a career caring and educating young children. A career in early childhood education is not for everyone. Consider if you love working with young children and are willing to work for a salary that is not extravagant. Providing high quality care is now a focus of this field. Educators must be willing to learn best practices for early childhood education and apply these practices at work.

Step2

Learn the eligibility requirements for the CDA Credential. To be eligible for the CDA, an applicant must be 18 years old and hold a high school diploma or GED. Applicants must have 480 clock hours working directly with children in the last five years and they must have 120 hours of formal child care education. These hours must be in specific areas. Ten hours each are required in eight different areas. These areas include: Planning safe learning environments, steps to advance children's physical/intellectual development, positive ways to support social and emotional development, strategies to establish productive relationships with families, strategies to manage an effective program, maintaining commitment to professionalism, observing and recording children's behavior and principles of child development and learning.

Step3

Begin work on your experience and training requirements. Find employment caring for children. Locate local training opportunities. Child care resource and referral agencies often can direct interested individuals to local training opportunities. Community colleges are good places to begin child development and child care course work. If you are employed at a child care center, the center will be able to tell you about other training opportunities.

Step4

If you have extensive experience and training, you are ready to work on your application and evaluation. Obtain an application from the Council for Professional Recognition. You will need to select an adviser to assist with your CDA evaluation. The Council for Professional Recognition also provides a referral list of CDA Advisers to assist you in your selection.

Step5

As a part of their application, CDA Candidates will prepare a professional resource file related to the candidates work, hand out parent opinion questionnaires to get feedback from parents of children in the candidates care, and will have a copy of the CDA Observation Instrument completed by their adviser. Once completed, the candidate will submit the entire application to the Council for Professional Recognition along with the assessment fee.

Step6

Applications are reviewed quarterly by a committee and then verification visits are made by a representative of the Council for Professional Recognition to do a final assessment of the candidate. At the end of the visit, the candidate will get their resource file back. The candidate will be notified in writing of the award of their Child Development Associate Credential.

Tips & Warnings

Find an employer who pays for the CDA. You will receive free training and the certification usually in exchange for your promise to stay in the position a certain length of time.
You must complete the required hours experience and training before any application will be considered.