Children’s Equity Project – SEED

Children’s Equity Project – Supporting Equitable Educator Development (SEED)

In 2020, a SEED grant laid the foundation for Trust for Learning to partner with the Children’s Equity Project (CEP) and the Council for Professional Recognition (the Council) to embed equity in the content of the Child Development Associate (CDA), a crucial milestone in career advancement within Early Childhood Education. This goal was operationalized in two phases: 1) integrating equity concretely in Essentials, the CDA curriculum that higher education and training programs use to prepare candidates, and 2) developing new equity-specific functional areas in each of the CDA’s six competency areas. This project supported a review and edit of the  500+ page curriculum to prepare CDA candidates and brought together a technical working group of experts in early childhood equity to develop the new functional areas. Working meetings of this group reviewed each of the CDA’s existing competencies and concretely embedded equity through the development of a new functional area. These changes were disseminated through a Facebook live session, press release, and other social media efforts (see below). 

CEP is partnering with the Council to review public comments related to these changes and finalize the document for the field. 

For additional information, please see the updated Essentials for Working with Young Children book, and more information on the CDA website.